"Without exposure to potential failure there is no risk"
-Brennan
Manning
Someone to whom I owe so much respect and gratitude once
gave me a compliment. Which was followed
by words that to this day echo in my head.
He described a trait in me, which he called a gift. He said that this is your strength, but Jason
often times your greatest strength is your greatest weakness.
I can be arrogant, brash, stubborn, inconsiderate and even
selfishly cold. I can disconnect from so
much of the world when it hurts too much to open my eyes. There are moments that I am proud of
accomplishments or feel that I have made a change in someone’s life. I was raised in a home where you had to stay
ten steps ahead of everyone else to keep your head attached. It means that often times I can describe what
someone else feels before they do. I guess that’s one reason I’m a
therapist. It is my strength, but it is
also my weakness.
I remember a time when trust was a foreign word. I would look ahead those ten steps and see
the motives, nonverbal comments, even a slight change in someone’s eyes. It was how I protected myself from the
world. I could be in a room full of
people and I could have conversations that would seem so deep and heartfelt,
but I stayed safe.
Safety, that’s one thing that I believe we all seek. At the root of most disorders is isolation
and fear of abandonment. It makes
sense. We fill the gaps with just about
anything we can to make it work, but often times we refuse to risk and hence we
remain alone. Risk, by it’s very nature,
in a relationship of any kind means that we can be left alone or
abandoned. The possibility always
exists. Abandonment and loneliness don’t
always mean that someone is even physically absent. It can look like a paralyzing fear that
drives a person to remove their heart or push the world away. I know this well as I have done it at so many
points.
Risk, however, is a passionate abandonment of the fear of
being left alone, no matter how many times you have been left alone. Risk, grief, and love are always
connected.
There is a beauty to grief.
It’s almost paradoxical. When you
meet someone you have an idea of who they are.
You, in your mind, fill in the blanks that you don’t yet know of the
other person. As you grow closer you are
faced with a great dilemma. Rarely, if
ever, is the person we imagine the person we grow to know. We must grieve one of two people, either the
imagined or the real. If we abandon the
real person we will isolate ourselves in fear, only allowing ourselves to keep
a hope alive that this person really is the person we hope them to be. To grieve the hope of whom we might have,
that is both beauty and risk. It is the
ability to see the faults in someone and to cleave to them as they are. It is to learn to love, quite simply as we
are loved by God. Sometimes it connects
and you both grieve the loss of who you had hoped for, simply to find that have
grieved together and grown closer. Other
times, as is the case with risk, one may grieve the hoped for and the other the
true person. It is here where you
experience a dark night of the soul. To
love is to grieve and to grieve together is intimacy at its climax. Jacqueline Novogratz said it this way, “Grief
releases love and it also instills a profound sense of connection.” I believe that we often look for
compatibility based on mutual interests, goals, or a myriad of other
demographic nonsense, when in reality it may be that we are most compatible
with those whom we are able to grieve with.
If you have seen my grief you have seen my fear, sadness and insecurity,
and in some ways I have shared my heart and my soul. When my grief is rejected I have experienced
the dreaded fear of loneliness save that I have learned to move toward living
and have abandoned surviving. There is
beauty in grief. The risk is that I may
grieve alone but that grief will lead me to a world that offers freedom and
hope. I am no longer chained to my fear
and isolation.
Relationships will hinge upon
this. I have sat with countless couples,
they always ask similar questions.
Sometimes it is, “will we make it?”, other times it is, “will they be
the person I hoped for?” The answer is
always the same, can you grieve with each other and risk? The happiest marriages I have ever seen are a
mess! They are a beautiful mess! The reality is that at the root we are all a
mess and to embrace another’s messiness allows me the opportunity to truly be
embraced with all my mess intact. I am
not alone anymore.
In Hemingway’s, “The Old Man and the
Sea”, Santiago experiences eighty four days of fishing with no success. He was shunned by the other fishermen and
even his young friend Manolin, was forbidden by his parents to fish with him
because of his terrible luck. Santiago,
determined to succeed, risks. He pushes
his skiff in beyond Cuba and into the Straits of Florida. Once in the Straits he hooked a Marlin, which
he fought for days. He was tied to
Marlin and both were determined to survive. Eventually, Santiago captured the
Marlin and stabbed it with a harpoon. As
he made his way home the blood of the Marlin attracted many sharks. He fought off as many as he could, but when
he finally reached the shore only the bones were left of the great fish. Santiago, exhausted returned to his home and
fell asleep. When the other fishermen
awoke and saw the massive skeleton they were amazed. Manolin ran to Santiago’s home to find him
sleeping. When he woke, Manolin,
promised him that he would fish with again.
Santiago risked…. He dreamed of the profit the fish would bring
in, and the number of people it would feed.
He lost his dream but gained something deeper, his young friend Manolin.
This is where I leave you… Who do you love? With whom do you grieve…
