What is the cure for all that ails me? One of my mottos is "embrace the struggle." In other words, see the struggle itself as something of value. Another approach comes from my friend Bob:
Here the idea is to treat oneself like a friend. I have been having a hard time accepting the numerous flaws in my own make up. My lazy and dilettantish nature, for example. I tell myself that these kind of thoughts do not actually do anyone any good. In other words, me, sitting by myself and wishing I had a different nature is of literally no use to myself, or anyone else in the world. The second step is to think that these supposed flaws are actually part of the overall dynamic that makes me tick.
Unamuno has an interesting take on envy. You cannot really envy someone, because that is wishing for the obliteration of the self. He's not talking about envy of what someone has, but of envy of what someone is. To wish to be someone else is nonsensical, because then one would no longer be one's own self. I am probably summarizing this with some inaccuracy, because I don't have the text in front of me, but that's the idea that's stuck with me all these years, after either reading it or having someone explain it to me.
So the idea here is not self-acceptance, but a step beyond that. Actively embrace those features of one's self.
Two caveats here: This does not preclude the possibility of growth. In fact, it is only through embracing deficiencies that growth is possible. Otherwise, the first squack on a violin would be the end of every violinist's career. You could earnestly pick up a violin, try to play it for 15 seconds, and cheerfully conclude that you have no talent.
I can look back at difficult moments and also remember that that was when I also took up musical composition, so I must have been doing something right.
The second, related caveat is that this does not excuse being an asshole. "Oh, that's just me! I'm mean-spirited," etc... It doesn't work like that. You can't just embrace your own flaws and be ungenerous with everyone else's. It's a little bit like the extra clause to the golden rule--for all the masochists out there! "Do unto others..." doesn't work if one likes to be abused. "Love thy neighbor..." implies a certain self-love to begin with. In zen we often say that the assholes's behavior stems from their own duhkha.
5 comments:
A dear friend once lifted me out of a deep whole years ago with this: "I love my friends *for* their faults. No one should ask you to change your essence, Bob."
*deep hole ... (ha!)
Hm. This is one of the reasons I decided as a young person that I did not like literature. Too many characters were focused on self-criticism, and too many readers felt this was soulful. I did not think I was important enough to focus on that much. I also lived in a beautiful place and wanted to look at it more than I wanted to look at myself. That might have been avoidance of self, I suppose one could say, I do not know. I may have been frozen emotionally then, and I am still called cold, but I think it is just that people do not know how to handle objectivity in a woman.
They say you dislike in others what you dislike in yourself but I disagree. What I dislike in others is extreme invasiveness and extreme distance, especially in combination. Inequality. Unfriendliness. Evasiveness. I don't think I have these characteristics, but I was definitely raised by some people who did and I feel I am within my rights to dislike these characteristics, and not to try to find them in myself, accuse myself of them.
What do I *actually* get on my own case about? I say yes to too many things, am interested in too many things. I went to CA to deal with my Dad and should have been working. I'm going to Austin next to see my little girl and I should stay home and be good. I'm stopping off in Houston and I should just drive straight through, get back to work, not spend money. I'm grading the AP exam to pay for clothes I bought and I should not buy clothes and just do real work. I'm working on immigrant rights when I should be relaxing. I'm on more committees and in leadership roles in more organizations than I can handle well, or than is required. I'm less interested in the nitty-gritty parts of basic teaching than I ought to be. I'm very research oriented, too much for a girl, but I'd like to be in science or something like that, which hurts the family, and I am not a sedentary enough type for philosophy or narrative.
So on your formula, I would just say yes to the objectivity, the science, the engineering, the activism, etc. I'm cool, within my own business, with being bored with narrative and philosophy and only interested in poetry, essay, theory and arts. As I say, I am embarrassed not to like the nuts of bolts of lower division teaching -- I thought it was fine, but it turns out that unless you're in a PhD granting department at an R1 you are really expected to love this stuff -- and not to be sedentary enough in nature for literary research (except in California, where the views are good, or certain other countries I like, but not in most of the U.S., where all I can think of is that I need to get up and get out, and I'm too agitated for a sedentary job).
So I suppose the formula is to embrace the activism. It is what we are supposed to stamp out of ourselves in these jobs: be passive-aggressive in your avoidance of service while still taking credit for it, and say no to all political activity and anything that would help others and/or cut into your writing time. BUT that very attitude is what has caused faculty to permit the destruction of universities.
AHA -- I see what you are doing, it is like erecting an astrological chart with correct house placements and serious study of aspects. It reveals the facets of a personality and shows how they work together. And you're quite right, you need them all. Also, I don't seem to notice this good/bad issue outside Christianity. Or maybe outside religion? One doesn't think as much in judgmental terms. Maybe this is why I feel like a stranger
I don't do astrology, but the analogy is apt. Suppose we could *improve* you by making you care more about made up characters in novels, or love certain aspects of undergraduate teaching. It would throw things out of equilibrium, but without being an improvement in reality. Even defining these things as flaws or faults in the 1st place is mistaken. What if my colleague's *good* quality, his punctilious attention to detail, is actually what makes him an asshole?
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