Doing The Work

I will never understand how nature vs. nurture ever made it beyond a thought experiment and into the world of debate when it's so obvious that who we are is shaped by both. Yes, our parents parenting styles, physiology, spiritual beliefs and financial status have a significant impact on shaping our worlds. As does the time and place we are born into. The micro and macro experiences we have. In short; each one of us is a beautiful clusterfuck of intentional planning and random chance. That is to say, well, life is unfair.

Therapists know probably better than anyone just how unfair it is due to the wide sample size of lives we have the honor of hearing about with what we must assume, at least most of the time, is honesty. We sit day after day listening to tales of unimaginable trauma, some almost inconceivable to comprehend, just as often as we sit listening to someone with more wealth than we will ever have complain about their financial woes. We hear from people whose lives were made very, very hard to endure and we hear from people who seem intent on wreaking absolute havoc on their own.

There are many reasons some of us seem more equipped to manage the life we have co-created with external forces. Some are the obvious such as resources and support. But there also seems to be something, something less concrete that exists in each of us that plays a part as well. Lets call it spirit. Or soul. The thing that fills up the empty cavities and embodies that liminal territory that we know is there with nothing but a felt sense.

A few years ago I started to observe what I sensed was a soul ready to get the hell out of dodge. My own. And by dodge I mean my body. It was more what wasn't there than what was that alerting me to the fact that it seemed to be checking out other options in the way we might spend way too much time on Ebay or Redfin. It was about restlessness, boredom, dissatisfaction yes, all the things I wanted to run from but it was also, and I hold on to this now, about hope. And the idea that something had to be better than the here and now. It's not unusual for people to arrive at this place in their lives and I talk to a lot of people that have found themselves there too. Sometimes it causes them to have an affair or quit their job or try to dive back in with both feet and have another baby.or buy a new house. I've seen all of those attempts and many more and the motivation in every one of them was the same. To find yourself again. To feel something.

For some, these choices did lead to a more prolonged and meaningful change because sometimes we really do need to leave our marriage or our job or move away from a place that is harming us. Sometimes new experiences can unlock something or teach us about what we need. But a lot of the time the respite is brief. And sometimes the consequences are devastating. Powerful, but devastating.

If you know me you know I am not a fan of spiritual bypassing. If you haven't really dug into your shit or you care more about what's outside than what's inside or yourself more than others I probably am not going to learn much from you and therefor am not inclined to listen. If you are a person with a lot of unexplored privilege I also likely won't give your opinions or supposed wisdom much consideration other than to nudge you in the direction of a bit of increased self awareness. I'm by no means perfect in this regard myself but I'm not afraid of a my shadow. Spiritually speaking. Unsurprisingly, I am fascinated by people. Hopefully if you are in the field of helping them, you are too. And one of the greatest gifts of being a therapist is that once you leave the office and if I'm honest sometimes while you are in it, a lot of light can get shined on your own dark and webbed corners. So there I was, nearing the end of my 40's and noticing that a lot of my feelings were being spoke aloud by my clients. And I started to really wonder, "what the fuck?". Why were we all so unhappy and lost? Even those of us with much more good than bad to (hypothetically) speak to.

Interestingly, the survivors had often found a way to find their way to peace and even joy faster than those of us with little T trauma had. I suppose it's because they had to or they wouldn't still be alive. They didn't talk about unfairness or injustice because it was a given. The ideological ship of an idealized life had sailed a long time ago. So somewhere along the way they had learned to find beauty in even the most shit of circumstances. That doesn't mean that they didn't feel grief or anger but they worked with it. They worked on it. If there is something I could wish for, I think it might be that trauma was spread around a little more evenly. Not that I wish suffering on everyone but I definitely wish less for some. But here's what I have found. Struggle can, if it doesn't destroy us, makes us more grateful. It pushes our limits and helps us find our strength and our people. It's those with the least money that tip or donate the highest percentage of their resources. Why? Because they know what it's like to go without.

Back to the what the fuck and the why. It's because, in my opinion (and everything here is my opinion which hopefully you understood upon opening) most of us just don't care about much anymore. We want to. That's why we seek things that make us feel like content or consumption or other people that maybe we can absorb some feels through osmosis from. We want to care. We were born to care and we were born with a whole tangled mess of big emotions that we, or at least some of us, eventually learned to translate and put language to. But language is famously imperfect. We use words like trust, love, happiness, sadness to attempt to diffuse many complicated and sometimes conflicting ideas into one nicely convenient , succinct and presentable one. One that we can say and have other people nod their heads in understanding.

So if we were born caring and feeling, where did we go so wrong? For some of us life did in fact scrub down for us. Too much pain or confusion or fear. But I think for the rest of us, which is most, we were brought the clear edge of a clean pond and told to drink. We wanted meaning and purpose and connection. We were given stuff. We wanted to dance and sing and make art and we were told to make money to buy the stuff. Walls replaced forest and ocean and land got sold off and borders were created. We were told some people mattered more than others. We were taught in schools what reality was. What history meant. What we believe and how we should live and what we should value. Then we were given screens so we could compare our lives to others or distract ourselves from it all. To expertly extract us from our own lives. To leave our souls in limbo feeling just beyond reach.

When I feel down about how much life I've missed out on I remind myself that the odds were always stacked against us. That that is the point. Free minds are dangerous ones that can't be moulded as easily and that means some people can't maintain their power and control.

So if we understand the why, it's time to ask about what. What are the alternatives? What's next? How can we locate that small flame, even if its little more than an ember with the most delicate curl of smoke and fan it until it becomes a bonfire. Maybe it even leaps the stone circle and takes out the whole town. I guess in a way that's what I want. I want to be alive and I want you to be too. Because we need all of us. All of us with the fires in our bellies to not waste this. This life. This moment. A lot of us had a lot of things taken away. Some more than others. Our families, our partners, our government, strangers who never even knew us took things from us they shouldn't have. And we are still here.

I believe in you. And I finally believe in myself or I wouldn't be here talking to you. It took a lot to shut down and block the noise out until I could hear the voice that came from me. It still takes considerable effort but at least I can find it now, know its timbre. I want to hear your voice. More importantly, I want you to hear it. It's the only one that matters. And it is never, ever to late to start listening. Lets take all the awesome and all the truly messed up that our individual lives have given us and do something with it. We have so much more power than they'd have us believe. We only need to lift the curtain to see it. Lets lasso that wandering soul, the one that wants back in, and bring her home.