Ineffable Sadness

My volunteer work of answering phones for suicide and crisis prevention hotlines has taught me that the single most common characteristic of the type of person who calls: ineffable sadness. What has brought most of these people to the point of desperation is their inability to express to those around them, those most important to them, that they are sad or the reasons for why they are sad. Usually they have experienced some form of trauma and have not been able to talk about their feelings about the event or even of the event itself.

The story of one young woman I had spoken to on two occasions stands out in my mind as the best example of the correlation between ineffability and sadness. She told me that she feels she has come to a point in her 28 year old life that she could go on no longer, that her anguish has become so unbearable that she contemplates ending her life. She spoke calmly and eloquently of her shame about what has become of her once active and achievement-filled life. Four years ago she had moved back into her family home when she was no longer able to work due to health issues. Previous to that, she was a top student who eventually became a teacher. At the time of her health failure she was on her way to earning a Master's degree in Education. She had become the highest achieving member of her family. When I asked her what her health problem was she said that she had a bladder control issue, which had made it virtually impossible to go through school and the workday without the embarrassment of constant interruptions. Recently, her bladder had become less problematic and she would have been able to finally leave the house on a regular basis, yet she still could not bring herself to do it. She loss all motivation to do any of the things that used to fulfill her. Meanwhile, she was starting to feel the pressure from her family to 'buck up' and get her life together again, which meant finally supporting herself financially and moving out of her mother's home into a place of her own. The feeling of being a burden to her family seemed to be her biggest reason for wanting to die. That she was more concerned with their welfare then her own was evidence of her pure and humble heart.

I asked her how long she had been suffering from bladder control issues and was surprised when she said it had been since she was 14. It was then that she revealed that when she was 14 and still living at home with her mother that a cousin who had been living with them for a short period of time had sexually assaulted her, and it's likely that the force of his thrusts caused her bladder problems. I asked if anyone knows about this she said that only her mother knows, but mother ordered her to never mention it to her or anyone else ever again. Her mother and the rest of the family, the woman pointed out, was very concerned with maintaining appearances in the face of'others, particularly the neighbors and other friends. In effect, the mother was more concerned with what the neighbors thought of her that with what her daughter thought of herself.

For 14 years, the woman has kept the trauma secret to protect her mother and the rest of her family to her own detriment. It had at last gotten to the point where the anguish caused by keeping the secret had gotten so unwieldy she was nearly ready to give up. Considering the situation she was in, it is easy to see why.

I asked her if there is anyone close to her that she would feel comfortable telling her story to. She was quick to answer no, but eventually considered talking to her sister about it.

"Security"

The notion of "security" is a driving force in our society. We go to great lengths to chase the feeling of financial security, pay high premiums for the feeling of physical security, and sacrifice thousands of young people and billions of dollars for national security. We'll do anything for these feelings of security; in this life, as far as many of us are concerned, it's what makes the pursuit of happiness possible. However, we can never feel ultimately satisfied in the level of financial, physical, or national security we can achieve. One way or another our feeling of security is compromised: we can never have enough money to cushion us from every sort of disaster, we can never be perfectly healthy or avoid physical injury, there will always been enemies of the state with increasing levels of technological advancement.

Meanwhile, within ourselves we are profoundly insecure about who we are, which entails knowing what we care about, what we're good at, what we enjoy, and therefore what we need. Most of us are driven to achieve heightened levels of security of self, probably because there is no directive on exactly how that's done. The best way to work toward it is to just try things, try anything, especially crazy things.

The Sex in the City Woman

Sex in the City is hugely popular among women between the ages of 17 to 45. It is owing to this series that we learned about Manalo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos, and Badgley Mischka. And somehow, this show, with is focus on fashion is about sex and therefore heterosexual relationships from the point-of-view of the modern urban woman.

The problem with Sex in the City is that it has given women notions of how to be—among themselves and with a man. The show fails to factor in the likelihood that most men do not care what brand of shoe the woman he favours romantically is wearing. He doesn’t care if she’s showing up for their date in Philip Lim or JCrew or something homemade. These women claim to desire a monogamous, committed romantic relationship with a man, but other than peacocking, what are they doing to get it?

The Sex in the City woman pursues the latest bag or the most desirable pair of stilettos, kidding herself into believing that the potential mate will home in on it and find her. Really, what she is seeking by seeking out the Jimmy Choos is the approval of other women, well, women like her, anyway (and possibly her gay male friends, or Steven Cojucaru, if ever they were to run into him). In this way, the approval of the other women takes precedence over the approval of a potential hetero love partner. The Sex in the City woman, therefore, unwittingly settles for approval over love, and flattery over generosity (of self).

If approval from other Sex in the City women is what she desires most, then perhaps -- deep down -- she doesn’t really want true love to begin with. If she doesn’t want the true exclusive union with a love partner it’s perhaps because she is afraid it entails surrender, becoming vulnerable to harm and hurt feelings. She would love for a man – or anyone -- to love her, but she doesn’t trust man enough to really love him back. She must have been hurt before. So she turns to Manalo Blahniks, which have become for her a symbol of power, over her own self and her feelings. This power gives her the sense that she, and no man, has power over her heart, that she has complete governance of it.

She thinks her Manalo Blahniks are transmitting the message to a potential mate that she is independent and doesn’t need him to provide her with security, comfort, and material trappings because she has taken care of that herself. However, what it really tells him is that her preoccupation is with her vanity, and therefore ego. If she is egoistic, then her energies are directed toward feeding the ego, and therefore she is incapable of generosity of self to others.

The Sex in the City woman fails to realize that it’s in surrendering her heart that she finds it. She must not try to exert control over it, but rather let it control or guide her. There is more security in the power and wisdom of one’s heart than there is in her head, her ability to reason. It is the most secure, because the heart is the source of one’s truest self, which is divine. Once she has allowed her heart to drive her to true love, then she can buy those Christian Louboutins. But by then, she may not even want them.

The Artist's Laziness

To be an artist is to be lazy. This laziness is borne, in part, from fear, fear of producing something worthless, invisible, unlikable, bad, or even worse, mediocre. But I think that this laziness to produce also comes from one’s lack of any kind of instruction manual on how to be an artist. The normative guide book to living seemed to have been inscribed on the tablets of our souls: most of us have entered this world believing that to earn a living is optimal human modus operandi, and that all the things that follow from earning, is the goal. Living, i.e. being, is much easier when we have manual to refer to and precedents to emulate.

I suppose the way to overcome this laziness is to cultivate one’s sense of himself as something other than a doer, but instead as a creator. How things would change for us once we think of ourselves as First Creator, as primum mobile, prime mover of… who knows what? And that’s the beauty of it: and then there was art.

And the only way to cultivate one’s sense of himself as creator is just to create and to keep creating.

Flattery as sloth and therefore aggression

I am reminded recently of a quote I had read as a young adult, fresh out of high school, and listening religiously to the Indigo Girls for lessons on how to approach the path before me. I’m an obsessive reader of album liner notes: in the liner notes of one Indigo Girls album is printed a quote by Marge Piercy. I have never really been able to get into her work, and at the time, at the age of 19, the quote struck me as trite. Today, I get it: “High energy doesn’t mean ‘fast’. High energy has to do with heart.”

Is it possible to vest heart into each of the numerous activities we fill our schedules with? If we’re moving so fast we can hardly think – and I mean contemplate – until we are too exhausted to enjoy the fruits of our labor, is there room for heart?

When we’re furiously busy working, or stacking our c.v.s, or simply ‘keeping busy’, we sometimes employ words to serve as surrogate for actual feelings. We take cues from society on modes of affectionate behavior, such as paying another a compliment, then crank up the volume. Flattering is often confused for complimenting; they are not the same. Flattery always superfluous: High energy, as Marge Piercy puts it, has to do with heart. What we lack in heart, we will make up with words, cheap ones and too many of them. It’s slothful. In this way, we can see that it’s actually a form of aggression. It’s not possible for one to be human and indifferent. We can only be either loving or aggressing. There is no in-between. For the flatterer, words have come to mean more that action; they have forgotten that words signify reality and that it’s the mere words that are the substance.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the flatterer is unloving and loathing. Rather it means that the flatterer is riddled with doubt, doubts about meaning, the meaning of things, “things” such as people and deeds. And because people and deeds are contingent to Life, they have doubts of the meaning of Life, therefore. They have lost faith in meaningfulness. And Love is the only meaning.