Reality, Forgiveness, Irony, Pity, & Respect
Reality
"Resilience is accepting your new reality even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that is good." - Elizabeth Edwards
I knew a courageous woman who wore her bald head uncovered because she was angry. "I want to remind people I could be them dying of ovarian cancer." She knew without a shadow of doubt that reality matters, she used the time she had left to write in journals for her daughters. I will never forget her.
As human beings we have an instinct to pretend to ourselves that terrible things are not true:
I am not fat. I can have a machine give me oxygen and still sneak a smoke. I am not angry and bitter in the last years of my life. I won't get any STD's. I am not forty-one looking pitiful when I drink too much and flirt. My daughter can't be a prostitute. There is justice for all regardless of your ability to pay for legal representation.
Therapy is most often about facing terrible truths about ourselves.
Short term thinking encourages avoiding reality. I'll admit the affair but pretend I protected my wife and used condoms. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.
Long term truth really matters because that is the only way to restore and rebuild trust.
Facing reality is the opposite of self-deception. Think of the massive amount of self-deception that played out in the later 1930's in Hitler's Germany. Think of how much personal debt has been ignored in America since the 1990's.
Reality really does matter. I taught my kids to tell the truth to me when they were very small. "Tell Mommy three things you don't like about me" I'd ask. Reality means we're all good and bad. Solely good people don't exist. Why do mother's torture themselves wondering how to be perfect when it just isn't possible.
My daughter made a cardboard TV set when she was little. It was very elaborate with a paper 'screen' of the two of us in a flower garden. In an endearing misspelled effort she wrote "Yer the greatest Mom. Happy Mother's Day." When you flip the flap to the other side it says "Well, sometimes." That was a refreshing truth.
Change is consistent in everybody's life. Those who resist change seem fragile and stiff with their resistance. Think of those you know who ignore new technology in comparison to those who work hard to be open and embrace it.
There are lots of hard parts to life. It's hard to accept that in the beginning of being in love with someone, one person usually loves the other person more. It's hard to be an immigrant who's qualifications are discounted in their new nation - doctors working as orderlies and engineers as house cleaners. It's hard to watch someone you love continue to pile up their bad choices. It's hard to face that you drink too much and you've been more than foolish in front of other people.
We are all in cocoons of illusions that we use to defend ourselves. It's breaking through them that makes us a better person. It is only through self-awareness, often painful self-awareness, that we can change. It is only then that we get to grapple with the reality of our life and make better choices.
"There is a bird in a poem by T.S. Eliot who says that mankind cannot bear very much reality; but the bird is mistaken. A man can endure the entire weight of the universe for eighty years. It is unreality he cannot bear." - Ursala LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven
In the quote above it is both T. S. Eliot and the bird in his poem "The Waste Land" that believed ignoring reality works. Eliot had his first wife committed to a mental hospital in 1938 and never once visited her. (Noted on page 561 - Painted Shadow by Carole Shemore-James.) Eliot wrote what he believed; the much wiser science fiction writer Ursala LeGuin corrected him.
Find your courage to face hard realities and you will make your life work better, guaranteed.
Forgiveness
"“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."” - Lewis B. Smedes
"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."
- Catherine Ponder
What I Want My Words to Do to You (2004)
Documentary of mistakes & forgiveness issues for women in prison. Read a review of this movie on my blog.
A number of years ago when the Pope forgave the man who had
shot at him, it seemed a great symbol. Now it seems like a
hollow gesture because it skipped over anger. Where was the
Pope’s anger? In reality it's hard to forgive someone you haven't
blamed.
If there is someone in your life you want to forgive try writing
an angry letter first, one that you don’t send. It’s
even better if you write a letter and have it witnessed
(someone neutral listens). Anger
needs a safe way to breathe before it can move into a different
emotion. Emotions in and of themselves have the principle
of movement. It’s humans who interrupt that process by
carrying grudges.
If you hold a grudge, ask yourself what is the purpose? There
is always a reason that can be understood underneath every
nutty thing we do. You will not change unless you honor what
the stuck-ness is about. Self-protection is one possibility
of the purpose of a grudge. Consider whether it is useful or
truthful in the present.
A work of literature that captures the process of forgiveness
is Mr. Ives' Christmas
by Oscar Hijuelos. There is forgiveness
of self that is an important part of life. One of the saddest
things that can happen is when someone signs up to do penance
for decades with the result of giving up on life. The novel,
A Map of the World
by Jane Hamilton really illustrates this. About Grace : A Novel
by Anthony Doerr is another lovely book about heartbreak & self-forgiveness.
In a review of A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness
by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, the Time magazine reviewer Lance
Morrow says that the author "knows that forgiveness is
less a matter of understanding than a more profound motion
of the heart-a transcendence. The importance is not so much
that it absolves the one forgiven as it cleanses the one who
forgives." This describes the essence of forgiveness.
The book is the complicated true story of a South African
psychologist who served on Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. She interviews Eugene DeKock,
a white commander of the state sanctioned death squads.
Irony
"“Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do." - Soren Kirkegaard
To truly know yourself is to understand the ironies of your
life. These ironies really capture truths that might be hard to face.
A high-powered example of irony can be found with Hillary Clinton, who attacked (and apologized to) Tammy Wynette,
whose signature song is "Stand by Your Man." Hillary is now
herself a cultural icon for this song. An example of irony that exists for many women who are homemakers: they are excellent caretakers
of everybody in the family and yet often they remain very invisible themselves.
The tricky part of irony is to understand what your responsibility
is in allowing this to happen. For both Hillary and the homemakers
in these two examples, they have enabled the pattern.
There are people who too readily repeat a pattern that defines
them as victims throughout their lifespan. Their irony is
that they need to look at how they've learned to abandon themselves.
They're repeating the role that's been learned in childhood
instead of learning new ways to think, feel, and become empowered
to create a healthy future.
Pity
"Pity is treason." - Maximilien Robespierre
It is safe to say that all choices based on pity will backfire.
Pity is an emotion to be erased from the emotional tool box
because it lacks respect.
It is only acceptable to feel sorry for objects, never people.
If you are in a relationship with someone you feel sorry for,
you lack respect for that person. My daughter invited a new
girl to her 10th birthday party because she felt sorry for
her. I advised her that nothing good comes from feeling sorry
for people, and at the same time I respected the fact that
it was her decision. Sure enough I was proved right at 2 am
when the new girl refused to let anyone else on the couch
and several people ended up in tears.
Another example of pity being false, is all the people who feel sorry for mentally retarded
people. Meanwhile, mentally retarded people are extremely
savvy at steering clear of people who feel sorry for them
and know when they are in the safety of honest respect.
Pity erases the clarity of truly seeing the other person.
Don’t spend ten minutes in a relationship marked by pity.
Keep in mind, though, that there is a distinction between
pity and feeling honest sorrow or compassion for another,
which has the quality of respect. This is very different from
feeling sorry for them and wanting to fix it for them because
you know better than they do.
In general, pity includes a
lack of awareness of the disrespect that's involved.
Respect
"“Men are respectable only as they respect." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the polar opposite of pity, respect is the infrastructure
of any solid relationship. Respect is the only way we can
help each other grow. The lack of respect is why racism and
sexism are such vital forces in our culture.
When respect is missing in a couple's relationship, I hear
the death bell toll. Change cannot occur without respect, that
includes the experience of client and therapist.
A lack of
self-respect can mean a lifetime of people pleasing and losing
your sense of self. This is an issue for people who are, “Too
Little” (see the couple's troubles section for a better definition).
A lack of respect for others is the central issue for those
who are “Too Much.”
Respect is more important than love to help relationships last.
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