"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…
If I may disagree with "we are most compatible with those whom we are able to grieve with," I would say that the greatest mistake one can ever make is to look for compatibility in grief. Indeed, every relationship is a mess, whether it your relationship with your spouse, friend, or family member, and this mess defines the beauty about the whole relationship. Nevertheless, my conviction is that it is always wise to grieve with a stranger. I may find solace with this stranger, and our lives may seem strikingly compatible (and this is when we may think that this compatibility is promising) but I can never build a healthy relationship with him/her because we share grief, and this illusive compatibility can be dangerously misleading.
ReplyDeleteIf to love is to grieve, then to grieve is to love, which is not always true. As such, if I grieve with a stranger, at least I will not have to pay the price of his/her sorrow, and he/she won't pay the price of mine. I can choose that, or I can grieve alone.
Of course, when I say "grieve with a stranger" I mean grieve with someone with whom you will not develop any kind of healthy or long-term relationship. Someone distant, I suppose..
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments they are most thought provoking. I would say that sorrow is not a price rather it is a gift. When couples struggle they show anger. Anger is not a primary emotion, rather, it is a secondary emotion. It is a defense against a sorrow that already exists. Sharing that sorrow with each other I would say is the best way to bridge the gap in many relationships. When I do couples therapy, I am relieved when they come in angry. It tells me that there is something to work with. Love and hate are not opposites, rather they are both strong emotions. Their opposite is apathy. When we give anger to our partner we hide what we truly feel and there is no room to heal with a partner. If you share that grief with your partner and they reject it, that is when we see the downside of risk. We experience the abandonment which we all fear. We experience true loneliness even in that person is right in front of us. Emotions historically have always been tied to discovery and exploration both positive and negative i.e. Zarathustra's discovery, Plato's cave analogy... Both examples lead the main characters back to their co-sufferers. Zarathustra ran to his community to share his excitement. The freed man experiencing a truer form of light ran back to the cave to share with his partner who was still bound. The truth is that we bond in suffering and build from there. I don't think that the point of life is to live in perpetual sadness by any means, rather, it is to walk with someone who will struggle with you not against you. That can only come by learning to grieve together. Thanks again for you comments.. great food for thought!
ReplyDeleteYes, the point of life is not live in perpetual sadness. That is very true. You can also choose to walk with someone who will share your sadness, or you can walk alone and be satisfied with the idea of walking on your own, even if your partner is by your side. The risk that you find yourself in when your partner rejects your grief is not your fault, and it is not necessarily dangerous. It rather becomes your responsibility. In Existentialism and Human Emotions, Sartre said "I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without anything or any person being able to lighten it." (57) Thus, carrying the weight of the world will not put me or my relationship with my partner at risk if I am able to bear the responsibility that comes along with grieving alone or with a stranger.
ReplyDelete"The one who realizes in anguish his condition as being thrown into a responsibility which extends to his very abandonment has no longer either remorse or regret or excuse; he is no longer anything but a freedom which perfectly reveals itself and whose being resides in this very revelation." (59)
These are my answers to your last questions: Love yourself, and choose a distant grieving partner, or grieve alone. Once you learn to love yourself, you will be able to carry the weight of the world without feeling the very weight you are carrying. Being able to carry the weight of the world on your own, and without feeling the need to share this weight with anyone, or with someone to whom you are not emotionally attached, leads you to freedom and peace. I am free to express my sorrow as I wish, and to find ways in which I can relieve myself from the burdens of my sorrow, and this becomes my responsibility, and mine alone. Coming to this realization relieved me of anxiety and fear, but not before enduring a bitter war with myself and with the voices in my head. In the end, my love for myself prevailed, and I am free.
ReplyDeleteLet me first address the question of existentialism. We have to dissect them just a bit. Let's start with two categories, pessimistic and optimistic. The pessimist will focus primarily on the idea of ultimate loneliness and individual responsibility. Nietzsche for example wasn't simply writing on moral evolution. Many of his writings came from the disappointments in his own childhood. He was driven by the lack of intimacy he experienced from his father. His father and grandfather if I remember correctly were both clergymen. He lived out the pessimistic existential life. He ended up in an asylum and died of syphilis very lonely. I would challenge you to look at a more optimistic standpoint. Yes we are individuals, we do have a responsibility to grow and mature. I will point out that growth and maturity come in many forms and ways. If you look at Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, you will find the example of a pre-existentialist. The idea was that one man would have absolute power and would sacrifice on behalf of his people. The power he had was solidified not in his strength but in his willingness to sacrifice for those over whom he had authority. I think that relationships function in much the same way. If we choose the path of loneliness and isolation we may walk with someone but there is ultimately a gulf which spans between you. It is not true intimacy and is governed by fear of abandonment, hence a distance is made by default to cushion the blow of abandonment. Without risk and sacrifice intimacy will wain and we are left with an illusion. The illusion is that we are not alone because we are with someone but ultimately we find ourselves in the chair pessimism. There has to be a balance I will admit. There is a level of grieving we do alone but this will also be influenced by our partner's involvement and risk.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, sharing the weight of grief is actually a healthy thing, at least when it's done mutually. Too often it is done alone by necessity and reinforces the desire for isolation.
Oftentimes, loneliness and isolation are synonymous with pessimism, but this is not always, and not necessarily the case. And oftentimes, the desire for solitude and silence is seen as the desire for despair. I argue, almost all the time, that the greatest wealth a man can possess is privacy in retreat. I choose to bear the weight of the world in perfect optimism. This responsibility that I have chosen to carry on my own brings me freedom from the need to rely on a co-sufferer, and knowing that I am responsible for my own grief and happiness is truly relieving. This responsibility that I am describing is optimism at its core.
ReplyDeleteI also think that Nietzsche was no pessimist. Indeed, life was not so friendly to him, but he brought about cheerfulness as much as gloom. In Ecce Homo, Why I Am So Wise, he writes the following:
"The food fortune of my existence, its uniqueness perhaps, lies in its fatality: I am, to express it in the form of a riddle, already dead as my father, while as my mother I am still living and becoming old. This dual descent, as it were, both from the highest and the lowest rung on the ladder of life, at the same time a decadent and a beginning- this, if anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom from all partiality in relation to the total problem of life, that perhaps distinguishes me. I have a subtler sense of smell for the signs of ascent and decline than any other human being before me; I am that teacher par excellence for this- I know both, I am both."
He also said in Why I Am So Clever:
"Life was easy for me- easiest when it made the hardest demands on me. Whoever saw me during the seventy days this fall when, without interruption, I did several things of the first rank the like of which nobody will do after me- or impose on me- with a responsibility for all millenia after me, will not have noticed any trace of tension in me; but rather an overflowing freshness and cheerfulness. I never ate with more pleasant feelings; I never slept better."
Let me share William Wordsworth's poem with you. You will understand my point exactly:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
If I choose the path of loneliness and isolation, there will definitely be a gulf that spans between me and my partner. The key to bridging this gulf, and to fill the void that has been created as a result of my choice to carry the weight of the world on my own, is to find ways to share our experiences, and to share a lot of them, without giving way to complete exposure. If my partner chooses not to accept and share my grief, it is my responsibility to find contentment in privacy. This, in my opinion, is optimism. If, however, I choose to be pessimistic, I will find discomfort and despair in my isolation. This is the basic difference between optimism and pessimism in privacy.
ReplyDeleteYou will find spiritual strength in solitude. Once you learn to connect with your inner self, you will find freedom from the desire to share your grief with anyone. Of course, I completely agree with what you said about sharing being a healthy thing when it is done mutually, but when only one party strives to share and the other rejects it, this is when the partner should seek bliss in solitude, or share his/her grief with a distant acquaintance.
ReplyDeleteYou said " To love is to grieve and to grieve together is intimacy at its climax." I say "To love is to laugh. And to laugh together is intimacy at its climax."