Inner and Outer Life
While it may seem contradictory for me as a practicing psychologist to invoke this paradox, this is perhaps an elemental idea we need to learn to embrace.
Many self-help books promote the development of the self. However, an over-emphasis on the self is a wellspring of suffering.
Instead, focus on two things:
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Jewish Buddisht teacher Sylvia Boorstein said,
“The GPS never gets mad at me… It just says, ‘recalculating.’ No matter how many times I don’t make that turn, the tone of the voice stays the same.”
Instead of being rigid and demanding of what we expect of life, perhaps our approach to parenting, relationships, and work should be have an improvisational quality of recalculating, recalibrating, or re-routing, and being openly responsive to what life presents.
The real challenge perhaps is how to stay unfrazzled.
Here lies a paradox: while we hold steady to pursue or goals and maintain our focus, we must continually let our expectations die. When we learn to let go of our demands of life, then maybe we can encounter life; the opening to live.
Daily, we must recalculate. And let the tone of our voice be fiercely gentle.
Note to self: Remember this when my kids don’t do what I tell them to do.
Everyone becomes older. Not everyone becomes an elder.[1]
We get older by the passage of time. We do not necessarily become an elder. We get to become an elder by joining the realm of conversation, which entails deep listening and wonder.
If you are someone in the first half of life, we must invite people who are older than us into a space of being treated like an elder. This is not about naive reverence, but this type of mentoring relationship requires an earnest perspective that eventually, we will also become older one day.
If you are someone in the second half of life, make room to enter into conversation, not preach, and to listen to someone into speech. Question in order to listen, not listen in order to question.
To be the best teacher, we need to become great students.
The ultimate touchstone of our lives is not self-improvement. Ultimately, any form of self-improvement is for the benefit of others. Otherwise, self-improvement becomes a self-indulgent enterprise, purely for its own sake. The ultimate act is to grow the ability to be a witness (I prefer the word with-ness) to another.
To become an elder, we must be warmly invitational. To help the older person be treated as an elder, we must suspend what we think we know, and appreciate the lived experience of the other through sharing of stories.
Holding our ideas lightly—as if to pray not with clasped hands, but with open arms—invites others into a space that helps others see themselves in a truer light, either as an elder, or a to-be elder.
Notes:
[1] I first learned about this distinction from author and mythologist, Michael Meade.
Image by Pablo Heimplatz
Do not make a permanent decision in a temporary storm.
This is one of the most compelling argument I’ve seen on the topic of suicide. This is from the poet, philosopher Jennifer Michael Hecht.
Hecht makes us rethink from a nonreligious perspective our cultural position on suicide as moral freedom:
“One of the arguments I hope to bring to light is that suicidal influence is strong enough that a suicide might also be considered a homicide. Whether you call it contagion, suicidal clusters, or sociocultural modeling, our social sciences demonstrate that suicide causes more suicide (emphasis mine), both among those who knew the person and among the strangers who somehow identified with the victim. If suicide has a pernicious influence on others, then staying alive has the opposite influence: it helps keep people alive. By staying alive, we are contributing something precious to the world.” ~ from her book, Stay, A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.
Ripples
The evidence is clear that suicide impacts not just loved ones, but people around us. This is not to put people on a guilt trip. Instead, the empirical findings point towards reality, that we live in a web of relationships. Even a celebrities suicide has a ripple effect on others (e.g., Robbin Williams, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell).
Hecht goes on to make an important point: “Your staying alive means so much more than you really know or that anyone is aware of at this moment.”
Though suicidal ideation is different from attempting suicidal (The evidence is clear that suicidal thoughts are more common than we realise, and thoughts about suicide isn’t predictive of suicide attempts). If you are feeling vulnerable to suicide, or know of others who struggle with this, I highly recommend you check out the following, in order of priority:
1. 10 things I wish people understood about suicide
2. An interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht, on the renowned podcast and radio show, On Being with Krista Tippett
Stay
Here are two points that stand out:
1. Staying alive is a life-saving social contribution.
2. We need to consider the rights of our future selves.
Here’s my plea to you:
1. You matter more than you will know at this point.
2. Let’s figure out a way to end your problems, not your life.
3. Living is your right. You have a right to Life.
A recent Canadian study based on 2,884 people uncovered a really hopeful piece of information. Suicidal people are 7 TIMES more likely to recover completely from their mental health concerns when they have SOMEONE TO CONFIDE TO. [1]
Do not make a permanent decision in a temporary storm. Stay.
Blessings,
Daryl
~
Footnotes:
1. Baiden, P., & Fuller-Thomson, E. (2016). Factors Associated with Achieving Complete Mental Health among Individuals with Lifetime Suicidal Ideation. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 46(4), 427-446. doi:10.1111/sltb.12230
2. I am a psychologist, but I’m not your psychologist. This short article should not be used as a substitute for the advice of a mental health professional. Please seek professional help if you are at-risk, or contact your local helplines to connect with someone. The first step is to step out, because isolation hurts.
For people in Australia, here are three helplines:
Lifeline
13 11 14 – www.lifeline.org.au – A crisis support and suicide prevention service for all Australians.
Suicide Call Back Service
1300 659 467 – www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au – A free service for people who are suicidal, caring for someone who is suicidal, bereaved by suicide or are health professionals supporting people affected by suicide.
Kids Help Line
1800 55 1800 – www.kidshelpline.com.au
“Suffering is wasted when we suffer entirely alone.” -Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, p.85
There is a myth in our modern culture that we got to make it on our own. A month ago, I was working with a bright young man in his early twenties. Tommy (not his real name) has a passion for the arts and literature. He hasn’t been able to sustain meaningful employment. He was struggling with bouts of depressed mood, existential crisis, and what I would call “analysis paralysis.” We hit it off well when we started, as we shared our deep love for the creative field. But I had a sense that he wasn’t too keen to continue. I wasn’t the first therapist he has seen. It was under the insistence of his mother to seek help. I broached this openly with him, asking if he would like to collaborate further in our work together to help him out of this rut, and he confirmed my hunch. He went on to tell me something important, that is pervasive in our modern culture: “Daryl, thanks, but no thanks. I think I got to do this on my own.” I began to understand that this wasn’t just an issue with not wanting to seek help in therapy, but rather, he was buying that myth of independence across all aspects of his life; he was alone. He had no help in guiding, coaching, and feedbacking with him in his literary work. He had no pastoral or community to walk with him in his journey of faith. He has cut off from friends since his was bullied in secondary school.
I suspect that this notion that we got to make it on our own is fueled by what we read in self-help books, popular media, and maybe even in biographical accounts of iconic personalities. When we think of successful people in the limelight, we are enamored by their achievements. They make even inspire us to persist in our dreams and aspirations. What we fail to realise is that we often only see the fruits of their labor. We see their outputs and not their inputs. What we also fail to see is the community of others that has helped them to reach great heights. In turn, we begin to value the myth of independence.
~
What we fail to realise is that we often only see the fruits of their labor. We see their outputs and not their inputs.
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