Consider Carl Sagan's quote: “This little planet...goes around an insignificant local star, the sun. And that star is on the obscure outskirts of an ordinary galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains 400 billion other stars. And this galaxy is just one of something like 100 billion other galaxies that make up the universe.” Reconcile that with the inner struggle of being human, of existence, and then I don’t know, go do laundry? The cosmos is vast, but so is our suffering. “I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul,” wrote Andrew Solomon in his gargantuan, “The Noonday Demon.” I get this. I don’t see how I could have learned to feel so deeply without the suffering I have faced. But then, stars; I can barely tolerate this paradigm, but a look at the flickering heavens is helpful, like a reset around what matters. If I could sift out one specific trouble to solve that might benefit mankind, might reconcile the vastness inside us and above us, it would be the ambivalence around how we treat each other.
Life is relationship rooted in the sacredness of being human. I’m not talking about dogma, but the pure, naked essence of the human soul housed in its’ evolving, squishy biology. With it, we are irrefutably connected to the cosmos and each other, a most powerful acknowledgement that instills value in self, in our cosmic belonging above all else. When we believe in ourselves, and tend the necessary work towards inner wholeness, miracles happen. When relationships crumble, ancestral, and/or current, someone suffers the shortfall; the trauma of rightful acknowledgement and care dismissed as pointless. The Latin phrase, “Amor Fati,” is a good sentiment, helpful I find, especially now while cultures crumble under the divisiveness of gluey oatmeal-trapped ideologies based on fear. Really, there is nothing but to love what’s in front of you, your unique life, because all is opportunity. I’ve worked hard to address the scars and wasted potential left by my ancestors, ridiculous, eye-rolling failures during my childhood, and the overall influence of environment. I have come to grok our inherent need for meaning, for healing, and our instinctual tether to the cosmos, and I feel that I have made great progress: It is astounding to be alive, but it’s clear to me that we rarely treat each other as sacred just for walking upright with thumbs, which we should. It’s quite remarkable, you there, reading with your eyeballs on the front of your weird human face, and that you wonder, and that you do laundry.
I’m wise enough to know that sometimes my thoughts might be wrong and that in yearning for clarity, and in an effort to short circuit any ambivalence–any lazy assumptions, it’s helpful to pull back and observe. Thanks to this I’ve developed a technique, a kind of anti-ambivalence relationship spell-breaker. Consider whatever the story running in our mind about the day, whatever is challenging us deep down that influences our assumptions about what the people in the room are thinking. It is probable that our assumptions are flawed, so in a moment, I launch a conversation with the person involved to break the spell. For example, in the middle of taking off my coat, “Hey, I know I was a dick, but here’s the thing; I don’t want to be a dick and I am struggling and I love you, and I am really trying, but it’s hard.” The most challenging part is the first word, the “Hey,” because once I say it, I’m committed to being vulnerable, admitting failure, but then it feels so good; freeing because it’s all true. In my experience, anyone also navigating the weeds of the mind responds in kind, and voila, the relationship reboots based on sincerity, and that is the most fertile grounding for clarity, for potential in that microcosm. I began using the spell-breaker once I realized that the life I had planned had gone up in flames and that nobody was coming to save me. The outcome is not always stellar; I used the spell-breaker to address the ambivalence my mother held in our relationship. She was unable to respond with the sincerity I was seeking, but to not try on my part would have been the failure.
Amor Fati: In an odd turn, I met new friends on a mental health ward while navigating back from the edge. It was these people who sparked my soul, helped me to value the fertility of my own “acreage,” instead of, as previously, parceling it off as an annoyance. This was a tremendous relief, an experience for which I was grateful. I had been completely lost-drowning in ambivalence, but with this renewed worth, this sincere appreciation for my hard-won depth of feeling, I can reach through and ahead from a place of strength.
Someone on the ward noted how hard it was to talk to normal people. We laughed, but I think of that often. Those of us suffering whatever mental challenge do tend to have a hard time simply talking about the weather; we want the loot, and we serve by offering the loot when others are ready for it.
I can’t demand that you look within; expecting others to change is a fools game, but I can continue to broadcast the seeds. As talk therapy is helpful to healing, as storytelling is part of our past, Solomon again, “the idea of articulation as release is absolutely fundamental to our society.” We have to put words to things, to feelings, to possibilities. In this deficit, this breaking the spell of ambivalence I will persist, here with the written word, elsewhere out loud. I can’t ignore it despite some days irritated that my heart continues beating, but I talk myself back into it–this persisting. I love the stars. I look for them every single night.