Category: Culture

  • Debauch

    A friend once taught me that “debauch” comes from a French verb meaning “to turn away from one’s duty.” The word now has loosened its connotations to include a general sense of licentiousness, hedonism, or indulgence in activities of vice. This evolution of meaning has a logic, in that these are the same activities likely to turn a person away from a sense of duty—imagine choosing between a night of cold discipline and one of abandon and indulgence, whatever kind of indulgence tempts one the most.

    Debauch, from the Thoth Tarot

    While we have culturally retained the pleasures and release of debauchery, we’ve lost a reverence for duty and discipline. The virtue persists in smaller pockets of culture, in the military, among martial arts, among religious communities, but in a broader sense, “duty” lacks a solid core to give it weight and heft. Duty to family erodes through increasing consciousness of the dysfunctionality bred by too much credence to one’s parents and familial culture. Duty to one’s job is increasingly more of a liability than a value, as excessive loyalty can prevent the worker from opportunities that would be more profitable, and most companies are more than ready to dispense of an employee if they have lost their value, no matter how loyal the person has been.

    As with any opposition, duty’s erosion in turn diminishes debauchery. A life of pure indulgence in every transient craving and whim is no life at all. It may feel wonderful, this constant escape from the world drudgery, mundanity, and pain, but that world is the foundation of a meaningful life. Seven of Cups, from the Rider-Waite-Smith TarotEven subtle fantasies can debauch us, pulling attention away from the uncomfortable work of the moment. Fantasies of all the wealth we should be amassing, the fame and glory we want and fear to have, the inflated sense of purpose that says the simple presence of a moment is not enough. We look to heroes, saints, or other legends and imagine that they never had to deal with the kinds of insults and daily mess that we face. They never had a boss that criticized them, or a child who struggles to pay attention, or a lover who confronts them with their faults. We imagine that we’re destined for something more, which means this moment is not enough. This relationship, this chore, this task somehow fails to feel filled with the sense of ebullience and expansiveness that we long to feel, so we abandon the task and go into fantasy or some other debauchery. We can be debauched by memories of the past—successes or failures that take us away from making an earnest effort in the present.

    So what is duty now? Duty seems to need deference to something outside of the transient wants and cravings of the ego—to a higher power, a human organization or movement, or even simply a virtue like Justice. Duty is that commitment and call to service, even when service is unpleasant. As a Boy Scout, I vowed to “do my duty to God and my country.” Now I interpret that vow more broadly. My duty is to vote, sometimes to take part more actively in the political process by canvassing or making calls, even when the cynical part of me wants to consider the project worthless and wallow in a comfortable despair. My duty is to wake up daily and meditate, then go and attempt to live according to my values, even when something within me resists. My duty is to go to work, pay my bills, and keep my house clean, even if I don’t feel like it, because all of those things are in service to maintaining my household.

    Duty, I think, must be anchored in the Self to be fluid, adaptable, and filled with life. If one of my duties no longer serves me, then simply sticking to those commitments by rote becomes brittle and life-sapping. If this job no longer serves my larger life’s purpose, then duty means looking beyond to find something that will. If this relationship feels empty, then duty means looking honestly at myself to see what in me has retreated from intimacy, and why, and to discern whether I can return. When I find myself thinking, “If only I can make it to [this point], then things will be okay,” a part of me has turned away from an uncomfortable truth about my duty. That too is a kind of debauchery, this deflation of self in favor of a harsh, punitive devotion to benchmarks and accomplishments.

    What fantasies pull us away from the life that is before us? What longing stops the flow of joy that is available? What painful constriction makes withdrawal from duty the more desirable choice?

    What do you serve? What service are you offering today? How can you bring yourself back into this service, no matter what is happening?

  • Honoring the River

    “I don’t know why I feel like I always need to look like I have it together.”

    Someone in particular said this to me yesterday, but it could have been a number of people. I know I have said something like that. We talked about the lost opportunities that arise when we do not admit to others that we are not as together as we want to look. Anger boils over into a conflict that an honest admission might have averted. Hurts that could have been shared and healed linger and deepen. Resentments build because we do not share our longings. And even if we dared to show each other our needs and vulnerabilities and the other person refused to join us, we would at least know who is not worth our hearts.

    I have also seen people admit that along with their bravery and apparent having-it-all-together-ness, they feel vulnerable or bruised, sometimes discouraged. Frequently others respond to these admissions is with an encouragement or praise, an effort to harden that façade of strength that can leave the vulnerable person feeling as though it is not okay to feel weak, to be a little moody and irritable, to be vulnerable, to ask for help or even just want to be seen. Unfortunately we do not see how allowing ourselves these moments helps us to become more resilient and whole. If we could allow ourselves to really feel sad, defeated, or whatever it is we feel, that energy could move from its stuckness and re-enter the river’s flow.

    How often is it when people are hurting the first instinct is to tell them to stop feeling? “Don’t cry.” “Don’t be sad.” “Oh, you’re better off.” We think we’re saying, “Be happy, focus on the good,” but what we’re generally saying is, “I don’t have the time or tolerance for your feelings now.” We want to believe we can choose and reorient our feelings, but often the choice is to experience them all or experience nothing. There are people, of course, who become stuck in particular feelings and seem unable to move no matter how much they process, vent, or share, and we have every right to set boundaries about how much we can stay with them.

    Grand Canyon Horse Shoe Bend, Christian Mehlführer

    How would life be if we could allow ourselves to feel sad together without needing to fix it? What if we trusted that these moments of vulnerability could be honored without diminishing all the other wonderful things about ourselves?  What if we also were willing to say, “This is as far as I can go with you and we’ve had this conversation several times now. I think you might need to talk to someone else.” What if we gave each other the opportunity to treat us with respect, thereby treating ourselves with respect?

  • Balance

    Balance is a state of dynamic tension between forces. When this tension has reached equilibrium, for one moment we can experience profound stillness and peace. This peace cannot be static. Forces eventually shift.

    For those who can afford it, “balance” is a virtue that inspires clearer boundaries or more engagement in life, but it also can become yet another stick with which we beat ourselves. Striving for outer balance means we have yoked our capacity for peace upon things that will never be within control. Balancing one’s finances is an important practice and one that will inevitably be offset by some unexpected occurrence: a car breaking down, a medical bill, an impulsive buy.

    Justice from The Ukioye Tarot Deck

    What feels balanced in this phase of life will not work for another. Sometimes it’s worth putting in the extra two hours of work to guarantee a weekend of relief from concern or feeling that things are undone. Other times, we need to learn to stop ourselves from working and invest energy in play, or family, or cultivating another kind of joy.

    Equilibrium is a state of presence. We arrive at deep, responsive, fluid balance by starting within. The heart offers a fulcrum upon which one’s inner state comes to rest. We can bring attention to what is occurring inside, whether it is a storm of thoughts or multiple competing feelings, and we can bring a gentle acceptance and equanimity. If all inner experiences are welcome to occur and subside as they will, space becomes available for deeper attention. We can hold a pose for longer, subtly adjusting our muscles and weight and holding even while parts are screaming that they will go insane if we don’t stop.

    Even this equilibrium is fleeting, though with practice we can become better and better at returning to balance when balance is upset. To paraphrase Bruce Wayne’s father in Batman Begins, we lose balance so that we can learn how to regain it.

  • Honesty and Secrecy

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    What keeps things hidden? How does secrecy feel to you? Is it like a deep, reflective silence where truth grows rooted and strong? Is tender or brittle and chaotic, a forgotten bear trap lying in wait for some unsuspecting person?

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  • Suffering Consciously

    “Only conscious suffering has any sense.” – Attributed to Gurdjieff’s Study House in Prieuré
    “The only cure for the pain is the pain.” – Rumi
    “You have to be free from the painkiller / To be free from the pain” – Fetish

    Avoiding pain is a great source of suffering. Some of our biggest problems in life might be considered solutions to the problem of pain we do not want to feel: addictions, depression, anxiety, even behaviors that actively hurt us or interfere with our desires. When coupled with the tyranny of positivity, avoiding pain hurts us. Sometimes the thing that heals mental illness is learning how to feel the suffering a person does not want to feel.

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  • A Life of Gratitude and Connection

    In last week’s post, I railed against my pet peeve of the Tyranny of Positivity. After exploring what was so limiting and unhelpful about compelling each other to positivity, I decided now is an opportunity to explore a useful, if subtle, distinction. In some ways I contradict myself, railing against positive thinking and platitudes about believing in ourselves while still wishing to avoid the equally unhelpful dominion of negativity and indignation.

    “Positivity” and “Negativity” are oppositions, which means they are conflicting facets of the same belief structure. To be beholden to one and reject the other is to be caught in the trap of both. Health and sanity might lie on the middle road between these poles, but even better might be to consider that the positive-negative belief structures impairs our ability to perceive reality as much as it helps us to form a coherent understanding of it. If I am desperately trying to look like I “have it all together” while someone I love is dying, my partner and I are having enormous problems, or something in my life is failing, then I am caught in the trap of positivity. If I insist on the misery of life when I am in good health, I have a home and food to eat, and I have people who care about me, then I am caught in the trap of negativity.

    Real life is messy and rarely free of problems or blessings, and our minds get trained to focus on a few facets of life and ignore others. We have nothing to fear from being real. We can cultivate gratitude and connection to help us live more fully. (more…)

  • The Tyranny of Positivity

    Although I am passionate about mental health and believe a life well-lived is benefitted by generous portions of gratitude and remembering what is sweet in life, I believe the cultural injunction to “keep a positive attitude” is at best irksome and at worst toxic. Barbara Ehrenreich offers an interesting social, political, and economic critique of the power of positive thinking, but I want to focus on mental health and growth.
  • Knowing You Are Enough

    Lately, I and several brilliant thinkers I am lucky to encounter have been discussing the idea of being “enough.” Some of us experience a sense of vulnerability around the idea that we’re not enough, or that we’re too much.

    • I’m not smart enough, attractive enough. I’m not a good enough lover. I don’t have enough money.
    • I’m too emotional, too damaged, too ugly, too stupid.

    These experiences of deflation or inflation suggest that some part of us gets identified with this quality of being inadequate, somehow wrong, somehow not quite compatible or capable of satisfying our wants and needs. (more…)

  • Help and Power

    At some point in life, everyone needs help, and almost everyone gets an opportunity to offer it. Another thing humans like to do is build identities around certain aspects of our personalities, such as: the person in charge, the person who helps, the person who gives; or others being the person who is lost, the person who is helpless, the person who needs. If these opposing identities meet each other in different persons, this perfect match can quickly lead to toxicity, blame, resentment, and disempowerment. (If we can find these opposing qualities in ourselves, we can become more whole, more free, more resilient.)

    Caritas, Stanisław Wyspiański

    Let’s look at our attitudes toward giving and receiving help. Toward the end of this article, Shauna Aura Knight offers an example of the boss who attempted to give her a task, and when she asked clarifying questions, impatiently took the taskback and said he’d do it himself. I’ve been that person on both sides of the exchange. When I worked as a barista, we did high volumes and expected a lot out of each other. We also grappled with periods of high turnover, when trained employees left and untrained employees entered. Those of us who were trained and used to operating at a particular level of performance could get highly stressed by the feeling that we had to pick up the slack, maintain our usual level of service, and deal with the honest mistakes and ignorance of a new employee. It could get very difficult to patiently explain how to make a drink with a new employee when there was a line of customers out the door and a backlog of drinks. Sometimes the best choice was to simply put the employee in a position they could manage while a more experienced worker pushed through the rush.

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  • On Indignation

    Something about indignation is enticing. Where there is a group of people, particularly an institution, there are pockets of indignation, complaining, and gossip. Groups within the group form, sometimes around a core of mutual disdain for a particular person or policy. When groups become too insulated, and feed on their indignation, they can stoke each others’ feelings of persecution, warranted or not.

    Shared complaining has value. It can bring cohesion to a group and healing to its members. As a person who tends to think problems are in my mind, I can feel enormously relieved to discover that others share my concerns. Feeling included in a person’s confidence, to share their problems and secrets, can inspire feelings of self-worth, however temporary. These conversations can be opportunities to relieve emotional pressure, identify shared problems, and start to work toward solutions. Gossip can protect potential victims from abuses that are not otherwise being addressed, or transmit information that affects many people, although the information becomes quickly diluted, changed, and separated from the facts.
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