Counseling Kevin

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I recently finished Julian Barnes' award-winning novel "The Sense of an Ending," and, as I read the final pages of this short (163 pages), marvelous book, I felt an emotional tug, not of sympathy with the protagonist, but of recognition of how many of us, me included, spend lifetimes trapped inside the four corners of the stories we've created to explain our lives and our experiences. The creation of such narratives is universal, and a necessary process by which we try to give our lives meaning. Just as universal, however, is our capacity for self-deception, and many of our stories' plots are riddled with it.

Barnes' beautifully crafted narrative (reviewed by The New York Times here) is a first-person reminiscence by a man of a certain age, an age close to my own, that focuses on his close friends and former lover from their teenage years on. Without giving any plot spoilers, it becomes clear in a rapid fashion at the end of the book that the judgments that the protagonist has made about the characters and motivations of his friends and his lover, and, most critically, himself, have been dreadfully wrong. The stories that he's been spinning for decades to justify and explain to himself his life and the lives of others are shown to be false.

I put the book down with a mixture of melancholy and satisfaction. "Melancholy" not in the sense of gloom, but of sober thoughtfulness, recognizing that I, too, am a flawed human being who has lived for decades as an adult who has spun his own personal stories to explain (and justify) myself and others, and that those stories are just as likely filled with erroneous judgments about my own acts and omissions, my motivations for those acts and omissions, and their effect on others (and on me), as was true for Barnes' character Tony.  "Satisfaction" in the sense that Barnes' story, as often is the case when a novel works as "art," communicated truths to me about myself and the larger human condition on levels more profound and emotionally resonant than a work of nonfiction could achieve.

It's easier to observe the traps of self-deception in others than in yourself, of course. I thought, especially, of one person I know who had concocted a story about this person's relationship with me a number of years ago that was a mixture of fact and plain fiction. This person had ascribed to both of us false statements and actions, and omitted critical true statements and actions, but mixed in a healthy enough dose of truth to give the created story a patina of plausibility. After awhile, perhaps a short while, this person began to believe their own fiction was the truth. Once emotionally committed to that "truth," and after a number of years of holding out to others close to you that version of the "truth," it must now be difficult to cut through the hard shell of self-deception without an emotional acetylene torch.

In fairness, I wonder how many of my own stories are hide-bound with the same self-deception. I'll bet more than one, perhaps a lot more than one.

To be fascinated with words for words' sake is a child's game. To employ words to spin a story that breaks apart other stories and sifts through the shattered pieces to reveal hidden, powerful truths about what it means to be human: that's a high calling.

Twisting Our Vision

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
---Thomas Merton

I was "reflecting" upon this quote this morning and it called to mind one of my favorite observations about love, an observation I've discussed previously on this blog.

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of the what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true."

The "love" that Frankl and Merton understand, and that I did not for many years, requires, initially, a certain passivity, and objectivity. By "passivity," I mean that you must not actively project what you desire another person to be upon that person. Instead, you must try, as best you can (realizing that perfection is impossible), to step back from your own needs and wants, and objectively observe the strengths and weakness of the other, contemplate those strengths and weaknesses, and, with humility and a selfless wish to help the other, offer whatever words and actions you genuinely believe might assist the other to "actualize her potentialities."

This is a very difficult task. At least, it has been a difficult task for me for most of my life. Even now, I recognize two recent instances in my personal and professional life where what I thought I was doing out of love for another (not in the the emotional or romantic sense of that word, but in the sense, in one case, of "philia," and in the other of "agape," as those terms are discussed by Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical, "God Is Love," a condensed version of which can be found here), I think I was doing out of baser desires.

In one case, I offered a business opportunity to a colleague, an opportunity that was presented to me and that I could have taken advantage of myself without involving him. I thought that I was doing this because it was, selflessly, "the right thing to do." Upon further reflection and discussion of the pros and cons of having involved the other person, I realized that I might have also had a less selfless motive, one that involved "paying back" another colleague by not involving him in the opportunity. That motive would have been based on a past transgression by the second colleague for which I'd consciously forgiven him, but which, on an emotional level, I've apparently buried in a shallow grave. I'm fairly certain that "pay back" played a role in my decision and it doesn't make me proud of myself.

In the instance involving my personal life, I urged someone who I thought had talent to stop holding back in her fiction writing and tell us the truths only an artist can communicate. This person had once meant something more to me than merely a "friend" and she had once called me her "muse." We had a falling out a number of years ago, and when I saw that she was pursuing fiction writing seriously at this time, I thought I would attempt to make a small gesture of atonement by sending her encouragement without any expectation of reciprocation. She thanked me for it; however, after reading more of her most recent work, I've decided that I'm not doing her any favors by continuing that line of conversation.

I think that what I thought I saw long ago was my own reflection in her eyes, and that I was blinded by the glow given off by my ego being stroked, by having someone of her beauty and intelligence state that she admired me and that my opinion mattered to her. Instead of exercising critical, honest discernment, I was projecting upon her what I wanted to see, and giving her "feedback" that was not designed to honestly evaluate and nurture her talent, but, rather, to elicit from her continued warm feelings toward me. I wasn't feeding her, then, or perhaps now. I was feeding myself. I wasn't doing any of that consciously, but it's suddenly become as clear as crystal to me.

That being the case, whether or not "there is any there, there," is a question I'll need to leave to more objective, dispassionate critics to answer. You don't accurately see the "potentialities" that need to be "actualized" in another person when you're looking in a mirror. In other words, I'm simply not fit to make the judgment.

Whoever said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks was only half right. Even slow learners have a 50/50 chance of eventually getting it right.

Deus Ex Machina

"The saddest thing in life is wasted talent." Chazz Palmenteri, A Bronx Tale

Some time ago, I wrote a pissy little post about how artists have to take a plunge into the depths of human nature and tell us the truth about what they discover, no matter how painful, not matter how indelicate, no matter how offensive. My defense of artists doesn't apply to hacks posing as artists.

I read something today by a professional writer that was so devoid of real depth, yet posed itself as so profound, that my first instinct was to sneer, but then I quickly turned to despair. If you have the God-given talent to see what the rest of us limited mortals are too dim to perceive, and if you are blessed with the ability to reveal what you see in a written narrative that can enlighten while it simultaneously moves us deeply, why do you opt to play it safe and dance on the surface of life like a water-bug jittering across the face of a pond? For Christ's sake, use your talent! Tell us something we don't know, or, at the very least, tell us something we do know in a way that moves us.

Quit squandering your inheritance by playing it safe. Either that, or quit wasting our time.

Nothin' From The Ground Is Good Enough

Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.
--Raymond Chandler

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
--Zig Ziglar

. . . It is now well established that public perception of lawyers is at an all-time low; lawyers are reporting record levels of dissatisfaction, substance abuse, and mental illness; one-third of attorneys appear to be clinically depressed, alcoholic, or addicted to drugs; and attorneys are reporting anxiety levels at least double (and perhaps up to five times greater than) those of the general population. For the first time in recent memory, a cottage industry has sprung up to help lawyers find ways to leave the profession, and indeed a recent survey by the New York Law Journal found that 40 percent of young associates at large firms plan to leave the profession. All of the available evidence – anecdotal and statistical – points to the inescapable conclusion that the legal profession makes young people unhappy, anxious, depressed, and desperate.
--Douglas Litowitz, The Destruction of Young Lawyers: Beyond One L

People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all.

They can only conceive one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men. They do not know that reality is to be sought not in division but in unity, for we are "members one of another."
--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Every day now, I begin with meditation and prayer, and following that, right before I commence work, with knowledge of the man I have been and am, and with hope of the man I wish to be, I recite to myself the concluding stanza of Chesterton's poem, "The Sword of Surprise":

Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life's brave beat
Till I shall save myself as I would save
A stranger in the street.

That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling

Houston-based novelist Chris Cander advises readers who "fall in love" with a book they read to send the author "a love note." She says that the author will appreciate it.

It sure makes me feel good to be on the receiving end of warm and fuzzy feedback.

Ms. Cander relates that reaching out and touching other authors has led her to some "gentle acquaintances," and a few "genuine friendships." Such relationships are to be treasured, no matter how they arise.

I've only written one author of a novel a "mash note" about their book. That was Alice Sebold, and the love note was for her book The Lovely Bones. The book follows a young teenage girl, who is raped and murdered by a neighbor, and her family, both before and after her murder. The book explores many themes, but the one that especially spoke to me was the possibility of a husband and wife, unhinged by grief, each venturing off on destructive paths that should have shattered their marriage, finding the grace of redemption and not only the salvation of their marriage, but the resurrection of it on a level much deeper than would have been possible without their experience of suffering.

The possibility of finding life's meaning through suffering the loss of a loved one has been explored by authors and thinkers much deeper than me, or Ms. Sebold, for that matter. Yet, she tells her story powerfully, and through the magic of her talent, communicates to the reader meaning in a way impossible by any other means. While I may have amplified her novel's power through my projection into it of meaning Sebold did not intend, that is the natural consequence of a story told by a gifted storyteller. When artists speak truth, readers speak back to the artist with their own truth, and thereby imbue the artist's truth with an even deeper meaning. It moved me profoundly, and I wrote to Ms. Sebold and told her that.

I never heard back from Ms. Sebold, but at the time she was riding high, had sold the movie rights to the book, and was writing a second novel. Moreover, it wasn't important to me that she respond, only that I had communicated to her how much her work had meant to me. I think that is what Ms. Cander is also saying when she tells us how "warm and fuzzy" she feels when she receives our praise, that it is the communication from reader to author that is most important. As icing on the cake, in Ms. Cander's case, her reaching out to authors has led to some genuine human connection with her correspondents. Since life is so short and human connection one of the critical ways in which life is infused with meaning, I think that she's a lucky woman to have had that result.

So, reach out and touch someone today, especially if that someone writes novels.

Was It Something I Said?

I had an e-mail correspondent, a woman steeped in the wisdom of this age, write me recently about her decision to leave her husband after over twenty years of marriage when she realized that the shackles of conventional marriage prevented her from unleashing and empowering "the inner goddess" that lay buried in her. A therapist helped her realize that she had unconsciously sabotaged the fulfillment of this "need" as the result of a twisted sense of self-punishment arising from the unspoken guilt she felt because her great grandfather had molested her when she was a young girl.

I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist, not even a therapist. I didn't know this woman well, and she corresponded with me initially because of her admiration for something I wrote on my professional blog (with which she did not agree, but with respect to which she liked the way I expressed myself). Proving the truth of the old adage "No good deed goes unpunished," I responded cordially and soon enough was rewarded with with too much information.

Drawing on my finely honed sense of the most appropriate bon mot for any occasion, I suggested that she read Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" for his insight about the efficacy of seeking "the inner light." As expected, it was the last I've heard from her.

Don't blame me, blame Gil.

From G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy":

Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.

Me and Mr. B

As I've worked my way (joyfully) through Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bohoeffer (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy), I've found a number of passages that speak to me in a profound manner, but none more so than the following, in which Metaxas effectively summarizes the essence of Bonhoeffer's theology and then let's Bonhoeffer sum up the matter in his own words:

He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive.  It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets.  It had everything to do with living one’s whole life in obedience to God’s call through action.  It did not merely require a mind, but a body too.  It was God’s call to be fully human, to live as human beings obedient to the one who had made us, which was the fulfillment of our destiny.  It was not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but a life lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom – that was what it was to obey God.

Bonhoeffer talked about how the German penchant for self-sacrifice and submission to authority had been used for evil ends by the Nazi’s; only a deep understanding of and commitment to the God of the Bible could stand up to such wickedness.  "It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture."  Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin.  One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God’s purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes.  One’s obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible.

If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ's largeheartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real compassion that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christians is called to compassion and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.

Bonhoeffer has been a burr under my saddle since I read his book, The Cost of Discipleship, not long after I made an intellectual decision to return to practice of the Catholic faith six years ago. His condemnation of "cheap grace" damns me and every other half-baked Pharisee who presumes to call himself a "Christian."

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Here's a man of God who gave his life in a very dangerous (and ultimately futile) plot to stop a madman and his minions from murdering Jews because "[o]nly he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants."

It's not the fact that I can't "Be Like Bonhoeffer" that nettles me. After all, there aren't many born in any generation who burn so brightly for Christ and put their wonderful words into action with such a combination of bravery and grace (in the many senses of that word). No, what bothers me most is the fact that I know Bonhoeffer hits the nail squarely on the head, yet still, I can't seem to make even baby steps onto the path he strode.

Yes, I know, I've got a bad case of "bad theology" (he said with a smile on his face), but even a disordered soul such as mine ought to be able to get off the dime once he knows what must be done. Perhaps I'll take the advice of a priest who once told me that many people think the decision to have faith is an intellectual decision, when it's actually a decision of the heart. Therefore, if you're really serious about it, don't think, act. First of all, however, pray. As Bonhoeffer warned, you'll never climb your way to God through your own efforts. Instead of trying to get there yourself and becoming frustrated because you cannot, empty yourself of yourself and permit Christ to fill the vessel.

If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.

The "richness of the Word of God." Wait a minute: I should pray by reading sacred scripture? There's a thought. Maybe I ought to meditate on the Word, and permit God to come to me by getting out of his way.

Bonhoeffer: executed 66 years ago, yet still prodding us as though he was standing right next to us. In many ways, perhaps he is.

Venus and Mars

From Richard Russo's novel, Mohawk:

At her center was not law but profound lawlessness. Its initial revelation had left him stunned, excited, afraid--because it corresponded to something he had long suspected in himself. The physical beauty seemed to him an expression of this inner wildness...But neither time nor childbirth nor disappointment seemed to have touched Anne, whose daily existence, the undeniable reality of it, seemed unconnected to that inner life, which remained as feral and hopeful as ever.

 

They drove to Albany and took a room in a small, out-of-the-way motel, and skipped dinner. He remembered thinking, as they made love, I'm gone...too far gone to ever return. He pictured himself breaking into the homes of all the respectable people he knew, and loading all their most valued possessions into a large canvass sack. He wouldn't get caught, either.

 

As he drove back to Mohawk, with Anne cradled against him, a twinge took his breath away.

"What's wrong?" Anne said.

"Nothing."

"You just shivered."

"The night air," he explained, rolling up his window. "There's autumn in it."

"I've never felt warmer," she said.

The Final Form Of Love

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
---Reinhold Niebuhr

July 1968: An eighteen year-old soon-to-be college sophomore was out with two close friends for a warm summer night of what-would-come in Leatherstocking country in upstate New York. They stop in a bar on the outskirts of Hamilton, a college town now empty of the Colgate college crowd and happy to see some local boys of drinking age flush with their first paychecks of summer jobs. The three see two of their high school buddies banking pool balls off the side rails and the night gets better. After only two beers, the night's promise blossoms when in the door waltz three just-graduated lovelies from our hero's high school, one of whom has the hots for your storyteller.

She's the girl in the back row of the color guard whose hips have been mesmerizing him with their symmetrical swaying since he assumed right guide, front rank of the marching band in his sophomore year, the girl with the high cheekbones, the cascade of light brown hair, the skintight jeans, and the superstructure worthy of Rubens. She's the girl the color guard captain, one of the trio, is now telling him has had a crush on him for years ("Didn't you know?"). Of course he didn't know. He's a guy.

Two and one-half hours later, after consuming an amount of beer only the young can guzzle and remain upright, there are three couples taking turns swinging naked from a rope over the Lebanon Reservoir and crashing through beer cans that litter the surface of the water. A full moon pulls hard as the naked, wet couples pair off on blankets and (in one case at least) make a memory that lasts for decades.

Three months later, the boy has returned to his hometown for the homecoming football game, and brought his roommate, a handsome lad from Boston who had, and would, break many a female heart, home with him for the weekend. As they stand watching the Friday night bonfire, listening to the pep band, cheerleaders, and fans do what they do on such crisp October nights, the boy's love of that July night appears at his shoulder.

"Linda," he says half with shock, the other half with shame.

"You never called me," she says simply with eyes that are not angry, but sad. Without another word, she turns and walks away.

The former color guard captain walks up and stares him full in the face.

"You are SUCH an asshole," she declares. Her eyes are appropriately angry. She follows Linda into the darkness.

My older sister, also home for the weekend (although from a school she never ceases to remind me, has much higher entrace requirements than mine) suddenly appears, apparently having witnessed the entire episode, and concurs, "You ARE an asshole."

My roommate takes this all in stride. He watches my sister walk away (appreciating her ass, I notice and file away for future ammunition), then turns to me, grins, and declares, "It's unanimous: You're an asshole."

I manage a grin, although I'm feeling a mixture of regret and desire I've not yet matured sufficiently to realize is the permanent human condition. Since then, like Edith Wharton's Archer in The Age of Innocence, I've  learned that it is sometimes difficult "to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime."

Life Lived Humbly, In The Round

"Most men seem to live in a space of two dimensions," complained Theodore Roosevelt, who tended to live his life "in the round."

The hash that the main stream and "heterodox" media, and our political class, have made of "the lessons of Tuscon" give proof to his complaint. The greatest "blood libel" that has been uttered has nothing to do with anything Sarah Palin or Tea Partiers might or might not have uttered and who was or was not influenced by the same, and everything to do with the fact that every pundit making an assertion as to the lessons we should learn from this seemingly senseless act of horrific violence claims that his or her assertion is "the truth."

The truth? You can't HANDLE the truth!

Here's what I think may be approaching the truth, and I don't assert it as a fact or even as something as profound. It's merely something that, to me, sheds a little light in the darkness. Maybe that light is equivalent to that of a firefly flickering in the bowels of a deep, dark woods, and if you find it so, move along, because there's nothing to see here.

We're incapable of making sense of such senseless acts of violence, and it's hubris to claim otherwise. While we always must do the best we can to "police up the area" and take whatever actions we think -- with the application of our limited reason and with a conscious recognition that we are all flawed human beings who will never get it absolutely right -- we deem appropriate to preserve public order and minimize the risks, the ultimate "reason" that six people died and others were seriously wounded in a Safeway parking lot by a man who thinks that government is controlling our grammar and therefore a score or more of other human beings must die by his righteous hand, is beyond our ken. Not if you're a commentator on MSNBC, Fox News, or HBO, of course, but for most of the rest of us, most assuredly.

Writing of the death of his beloved wife from cancer, in his most personally anguished book ("A Grief Observed"), C.S. Lewis uttered a passage that's stayed with me through many a horror, public and personal.

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness...But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.

Either way, we're for it.

Yes, either way, we're for it. You "take your choice" about what to believe and in that choice lies all the difference in the world about how you respond to your inability to control the world around you and the bad things that happen to you. Some respond with a humility fit for a life lived in the round, others with the arrogance that a political or legal construct will assure us all that "it will never happen again."