Ideas

Category: Interpersonal

  • The Fellowship of Suffering

    An excerpt from an article by Vivian Gornick.

    Natalia Ginzburg came from a dysfunctional family and very young she learned that self-protection required the cultivation of an inner distance from others. Eventually it took a heavy toll. In adolescence, she developed a “stony-faced” (her word) hauteur that made her feel unreal to herself, and soon enough it made everyone around here seem unreal as well. In time she became sealed into an emotional anomie that hardened with the years.

    In 1938, at the age of 21, Natalia married Leone Ginzburg, an anti-fascist, and, in 1941, when he was declared persona non grata by the government, accompanied him into what was then called “internal exile” – removal to some rural area from from the urban centers. In 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, the family (by then they had three children) decided it was safe to move back to Rome – a miscalculation for which they would pay dearly. Leone went first, and five months later Natalia and the children followed. Within 20 days of the family’s arrival in the city, Leone was arrested by German police and taken off to prison, where he was tortured and killed.

    Ginzburg’s armor – her haughty anomie – had been in place all this time. But now, with war on the ground – the loss of her young husband, death raining from the sky, countless children abandoned in the rubble – life shocked her into an experience she could never have imagined. Suddenly, she felt stifled inside the separateness from others she had valued all these years. No longer a protection, this deep withdrawal of hers now seemed dangerous: a threat to her own survival. Somehow, she realized, she must begin to feel connected, or at least to act as though she felt connected. She must teach herself – now! – to mimic the look and feel of unthinking, everyday, comradeship.

    Ah, she has it: “We learn,” she writes with something like wonder in her voice, “to ask for help from the first passer-by.” And then, “we learn to give help to the first passer-by.” And then, at last, she finds herself – and that’s exactly it: finds herself – feeling not only saved but curiously alive through the simple act of taking part in the fellowship of suffering.

    The experience led Ginzburg to the insight that dominated her work for the rest of her life. In “that brief moment when one day it fell to our lot to live when we had looked at the things of the world for the last time,” she had “found a point of equilibrium for our wavering life.” From then on, she writes, “we could look at our neighbor with a gaze that would always be just and free, not the timid or contemptuous gaze of someone who whenever he is with his neighbor always asks himself if he is his master or his servant.”

    I don’t for a minute believe that this seemingly epiphanic moment brought about a permanent change in Ginzburg’s behavior. But when the war was over and the fellowship of suffering had loosened its hold on her, she remained grateful to both, not because they had destroyed her original sense of aloofness but because they had taught her that it had been in place for so much of her life. She now understood that all these years she had been a stranger to herself.

  • Une Noix

  • R1.

    “Grief is not an enlightenment program for a select few. No one needs intense, life-changing loss to become who they are “meant” to be. The universe is not casual in that way: you need to become something, so life gives you this horrible experience in order to make it happen. On the contrary: life is call-and-response. Things happen, and we absorb and adapt. We respond to what we experience, and that is neither good nor bad. It simply is. The path forward is integration, not betterment.

    “You didn’t need this. You don’t have to grow from it, and you don’t have to put it behind you. Both responses are too narrow and shaming to be of use. Life-changing events do not just slip quietly away, nor are they atonements for past wrongs. They change us. They are part of our foundation as we live forward.”

    It’s ok that you’re not ok, Megan Devine

  • Questions of Reliability

    “He was good, I believed, at heart. Or mainly. He was kind, or could be kind. He knew things. But I was also certain that I knew things he didn’t and could see how he could be led wrong and be wrong that way all his life. “Niall will come to no good end,” my mother said a day after his letter came. Something had disappointed her. Something transient or displaced in him. Something had been attractive to her about Niall in her fragile state, and been attractive to me, in my own rare state. But you couldn’t bank on what Niall was, which was the word my poor father used. That was what you looked for, he thought, in the people you wanted closest to you. People you could bank on. It sounds easy enough. But if only—and I have thought it a thousand times since those days, when my mother and I were alone together—if only life would turn out to be that simple.”

    “Displaced” by Richard Ford

  • Baseline

    “But if there’s one single thing that has made the difference between partners who have hope and partners who are struggling, it’s this: we – the ones with ADHD – have to own it. We have to say to ourselves and our partners: “Some of the things I do don’t work for us. They don’t work for the family, for my job, for me. I want to change them.”

    That’s it. That’s the baseline. There are many different ways to go from there: couples counseling, education about ADHD, medication, support groups, and forgiveness and growth. There’s no one-size-fits-all “next step,” but if we can’t at least do this – if we can’t at least say “something has to change” – there’s nowhere we can go.

    ADDA – We All Want to Be Heard

  • Posttraumatic Growth (6/17-6/18)

    “PTG is a cousin to resilience, but more of a thug: meaner, more brutal, more devastating – and more transformative. Rich Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, psychologists at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, coined the term in 1995, when they noticed they some people did not recover from their traumatic experiences in a typically resilient fashion. Rather than return to their set point, everything about them radically changed: their worldviews, their goals in life, their friendships. […]

    “The one thing that overwhelmingly predicts it is the extent to which you say, ‘My core beliefs were shaken,’” Calhoun adds.

    “What kind of core beliefs? “The degree to which the world is just,” Tedeschi says, “or that people are benevolent or that the future is something that you can control. Beliefs about, basically, how life works.”

    Life Reimagined, The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife, Barbara Bradley Hagerty

  • “Ley”

    Zeddig remembered the courtyard of the Hanged Man the night she and Ley broke up – no, “broke up” wasn’t the right terms – the night their six months’ war grew too hot. Dreamdust addicts sprawled on couches, mewling in their stupor as dreams and bass pulsed from the dance hall upstairs. She reached for Ley’s arm, but Ley always could slide away when she wanted. “She didn’t leave us to die.” Just me. And not to die: just to live my life without her. “She just left.”

    Ruin of Angels, Max Gladstone

  • Communication Breakdown

    “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself …” – Carl Jung

  • End Game Analysis: Relationship Principles

    This article, and the articles that follow analyze my thoughts on what I am calling my “end game.” You can read more about this concept here.

    In the article entitled “Mind the Gap,” I wrote about the importance of having both self and situational awareness when it comes to managing relationships. Since it is difficult to provide explicit guidance across all personalities and situations, a better alternative is to rely upon a set of relationship principles.

    The absence of principles is akin to traveling without a map. This approach may be suitable for local exploration, but arguably irresponsible when traveling in unfamiliar territory (at least if you wish to reach a specific destination). Principles allow one to navigate successfully independently of the situation.

    Let’s build an initial set by posing the following questions:

    Do I feel comfortable with this person?

    Is the relationship balanced?

    Is the relationship moving forward?

    These translate into the following three criterion: comfort, balance, and strength, and are neutral enough where they can be easily applied in both professional and personal contexts. They also follow a natural order (i.e., relationships which make one uncomfortable should probably not move forward by default).

    Lastly, since change is ever present, these questions need to be continuously asked. Each assessment should inform whether the relationship is on track or requires recalibration, containment, or termination.

  • End Game Analysis: “Mind the Gap”

    This article, and the articles that follow analyze my thoughts on what I am calling my “end game.” You can read more about this concept here.

    In my last post, I spoke about two positions within a “relationship spectrum,” one based on complete openness, and the other, extreme isolation. Understanding and managing what lies between can enable one to make better decisions when interacting with different people, all of whom have unique perspectives and ways of operating.

    You may be asking: “But what does this have to do with the original end game? Isn’t the end game about critical thinking and advancement?”

    I’ve learned that very close and fulfilling relationships can act as a source of fuel towards greater intellectual and creative achievement; their benefits are multifold. In contrast, challenging relationships can interfere with one’s ability to concentrate and ultimately advance.

    At their worst, the ending of close relationships can result in severe depression and anxiety, the combination of which can cease all effort for an extended timeframe. Without an appropriate course correction, this decreased activity can begin to permeate into other areas.

    This can be a major problem.

    I used to believe that the fluid nature of relationships made it naturally resistant to any form of management. I no longer believe this. Relationships involving some type of mental disorder require considerable patience, understanding, and need to be carefully managed. Relationships that do not harbor such disorders also require a certain degree of management, although to a lesser degree.

    While self-awareness is invaluable, situational awareness is what really matters here. Thus, the ability to remain mobile is largely dependent upon the relationships one finds him or herself in, and how each relationship should be managed, or ultimately contained (more about this later).

    Given the various relationship types, personalities, and situations that blend the two, it is difficult to share specific examples. Books like “How to Deal with Difficult People” provide this type of guidance fairly well in both a lighthearted yet grounded way.

    In my next post I’ll talk about an initial set of relationship principles that can enable one to effortlessly “mind the gap” without letting emotions run the show.