Someone I care about recently told me that he often feels worthless. He’s an older man, he worked courageously for three decades to keep people safe, and in retirement he has continued to check in with folks to see if they need anything. He’s also deeply traumatized as a result of the things he experienced when other people chose to use violence to achieve political ends, or merely didn’t choose to learn how to regulate their emotions. Part of the reason for those choices was that those people felt they had no choice, because other people were choosing to exercise power in a way that left others powerless. Part of the reason that some people didn’t choose to learn how to regulate their emotions was because nobody told them they could.
We live in a different time, with different resources - not least of which is vastly expanded access to stories of creativity, courage, and the common good, both at a societal and individual level. It’s harder to make the case for violent revolution when we have more evidence that a) nonviolent revolutions are better at producing more whole societies, and b) violent ones make lots of other things worse too. And it’s easier to ask for help to learn to regulate emotions when we see examples of others who have done the same.
It’s not rocket science, or at least it shouldn't be: People imagine not only what’s possible, but what’s desirable through observing others and deciding whether to imitate them.
One problem is that the decision is usually unconscious, more of a gut feeling or blind following. An obvious place where this happens is in the potentially vast canvas of electoral politics, but it animates the smallest places too. What shall I wear today? What is friendship? How should I get out of bed, and what should I have for breakfast? What should I do with my life? When I say “we”, who is the “us”, and does there have to be a “them” for me to be a “me”?
Soren Kierkegaard (fancy name, unless you’re Danish, in which case it might be a bit like Joe Green; profound philosopher, often quoted by people who haven't read much more of him than the very quote they’re quoting - myself included) apparently wrote that the most common form of despair is not being who you are. Who knows what he really meant by that, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to produce a mass movement of egotists devoted to getting what they want for themselves alone.
The problem with the memes and meditations that tell us to just be who you are occurs not only in the fact that they often don’t acknowledge the imposed limitations on just who gets the time and other resources to tend to a sense of self (some people have more time to devote to individuation than others), but also when those memes and meditations are divorced from the community of people and wisdom that help us discern what kind of me is truly me. We have to have some kind of theory of what who you are is, that takes account of its interrelation with the world. And by world I mean every individual we meet (and don’t meet), the structures around us - from the building we live in, the HOA and city council, religious institutions and other affinity groups, our local biome, and the animals, flora and fauna that constitute the rest of the ecosystem, not to mention the universe in which we’re spinning. We belong to, and can reject or serve the common and cosmic good.)
Thousands of years of spiritual wisdom and philosophical reflection alight upon the truth that the self is bigger than “me”. Contemporary neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics seem to show that there is no separation between “science” and “religion” in their nearness to truth. We are, as friend of The Porch Dan Siegel says, intra-connected, and the myth of the separate self isn’t just an old way of thinking about things, but fundamentally dangerous, because it can leave us believing that there is actually no we after all, there is only them, with me an isolated entity, unprotected against the mass.
It’s no wonder people default to defensiveness, and first seek to ensure our own safety even if that safety is merely antiseptic, or worse, if it ends up causing others to suffer.
Not being yourself is perhaps indeed the most common form of despair, but the antidote is definitely not to become an even more separated individual through terminal self-regard. If following your bliss doesn’t increase your love of neighbor as well as self, if it doesn’t lead you to a deeper consciousness of how you are not only partly responsible to steward the ecosystem, not only are you part of that very ecosystem, but your very life - never mind your thriving - depend on expanding the interdependent dance between all humans and the biosphere, then it would be wise to reconsider your definition of bliss.
If it’s only bliss for you, and pain for others, it isn’t bliss.
But if following my bliss includes asking not only what makes me come alive, but what responsibility do I have for you being able to be you, in the most authentic (and therefore love-enveloped) way, then even the most mundane experience can be treated like transcendence.
David Bentley Hart says that Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience. It is the ability to see again what most of us have forgotten how to see, but now fortified by the ability to translate some of that vision into words, however inadequate.
I am due to turn 50 in just over four months from now, which used to feel old, a time by which I would be, in Bentley Hart’s sense, experienced. That’s partly true, I suppose, but it’s also true that my life experience has taught me that being at peace with a lack of certainty about things that matter less is far more important than being right. Certainly it's more important than pretending to be right when I’m not sure that I am.
And with that in mind, I return to the person I care about a lot, and who told me of his feelings of worthlessness. People chose to put him at physical risk, because they did not pursue nonviolent means of achieving what they wanted. And people hurt him because they did not choose to learn how to regulate their emotions. I know the feeling - on both sides - of that choice. He deserves to know that he matters. He deserves to know he is made of stardust, and whether or not he believes in religious tenets perhaps poetry will do: He is made in the image of Love. He has made his own choices, too, and I’m sure he doesn’t think he’s perfect.
But he lives at a time in which broadcasting how little we think of each other is a cultural norm. It’s not the only norm - he also lives at a time when vulnerability is beginning to be seen as a mark of character, and asking for help is not weakness but strength. Yet some of the loudest voices make it harder to hear the tender ones. One badly played tuba can drown out twenty gentle woodwinds.
A public spokesperson for a political campaign recently referred to someone as “a despicable person”. This tuba-playing (and apologies if that’s your favorite instrument) was directed at a woman who was apparently trying to ensure that quiet respect would be observed for people who had given their lives for the sake of others. I initially reacted to the spokesperson with a kind of unthinking rage, for not only are there no despicable people, only despicable things that people sometimes do, but calling such a person a despicable person is indeed one of those despicable things.
I probably needed to express that feeling in a soundproof room, because we won’t overcome a culture of dehumanizing language by mirroring it, or merely opposing it. We need to oxygenate the best possible ways of speaking, the highest ideals, the most sacred ways of thinking. At the risk of sounding naive or of pontificating, we need to say not only that there are no despicable people, but that even the people who try to build political power by despising others are not not despicable either. They’re mistaken, for sure; and they may even be acting from conscious cynicism or manipulation, but even they matter. Most likely, part of why they like to think of themselves as better than others is because somewhere deep down inside they can’t cope with the fact that they’re not.
What’s better is the unfolding realization that we are all worth much more than the minimum standard of bare mutual tolerance that we somewhat absurdly call a society.
I am magnificent, and flawed. So are you. Our mutual discovery of that magnificence depends on us talking to each other like we both matter.
Gareth Higgins is an Irish writer and co-founder of The Porch. www.garethhiggins.net
