When sh*t is about to hit the fan…
Things don’t look good. It’s getting harder to be an optimist. It doesn’t matter if you are liberal, conservative, man, woman, old, young, even wealthy or poor — there is a sense that we’re moving through dark times. Worse, it seems to be hitting us from every direction: health, safety, economy, relationships, ecology…
Of course, not everyone
agrees. Pinker (Our Better Angels and Enlightenment Now), Rosling (Factfulness), and Norberg (Progress) argue that — contrary to what our brains (and the
media) want us to believe — we are living in the safest, healthiest, most
educated, and most prosperous times in human history. Then again, plenty argue
the opposite. Graeber & Wengrow (The Dawn
of Everything), Hickel (The Divide),
and Mann & Wainwright (Climate Leviathan)
claim that inequality, ecological collapse, autocratization, war, and mental
health crises put humanity at risk.
I am not a global trends
analyst but a psychotherapist. In my sessions, I don’t deal with the reality of
the world, but with my clients’ perceptions of it. This makes my work both
easier and harder. Easier, since we don’t need to figure out what is “real”
(although at times reality-testing is useful). Harder, since facts don’t matter
as much as how clients feel about them. (Nietzsche wrote, “There are no facts,
only interpretations.”) In any case, I keep hearing concerns about the state of
the world. It’s been a while since a client said, “I have a good feeling about
where things are going.”
How can we face this reality?
Faced with distress, our brain seems to have a limited number of preprogrammed
responses: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Depending on circumstances, we
select the most viable. We can despair, give up, curl into a little ball and
wait for impact, pray for divine intervention, etc. With my clients, we’ve
explored many of these alternatives. None of them (with the exception, perhaps,
of some forms of prayer) feels truly satisfying.
Fortunately, there are other
options. Some existentialists, who also faced extreme circumstances (WWII, Nazi
occupation, concentration camps), urge us to accept the absurdity of existence
(not an easy thing to do) and remember that even in the worst situations (e.g.,
Frankl in Auschwitz), we still have the possibility — even the responsibility —
to choose how to respond. We have agency. Our actions matter. We get to choose;
we must choose. Regardless of the outcome, it is we who define the meaning of
our lives. Some take it even further. Leaders such as Gandhi, MLK, or Thích
Nhất Hạnh urge us not only to avoid running from suffering but also to face
violence without succumbing to it, to transform hatred through love, and to act
decisively with compassion.
There is yet another possible
(and perhaps puzzling) approach. As a transpersonal psychotherapist and
psychedelic facilitator, I am familiar with the teachings of sacred plants and
mystics throughout the ages. Paralleling Buddhism and Hinduism, plant medicine
consistently reminds us that life is illusory, a cosmic game or līlā. Many times, I’ve witnessed clients
cracking up (what I like to call the Cosmic
Laughter) when they realize how silly and pointless our toils are —
echoing Julian of Norwich saying, “All shall be well” amid Europe’s plague, or
Ramakrishna’s supposed answer to why suffering exists: “to thicken the plot.”
How are you facing our
current situation? How is the barrage of negative news affecting you? What
resources do you have to move forward? Please remember: if you are struggling,
if you feel despair (perhaps the healthiest reaction to our profoundly sick society),
reach out. You are not alone. We are not made for suffering in isolation. There
is help.
Since my clients are not
mystics (yet), and many would not even consider themselves activists, my job is
not to philosophize or tell them what to do. I am there (and here) to explore
alternatives, to empower them (and you) to make their own decisions. How to
face suffering, and what to do about it, is a deeply personal choice. Yet,
perhaps influenced by those same mystics and plant-teachers, I — most of the
time — remain optimistic. Mostly because I witness in my practice the strength,
beauty, and dignity of our shared human struggles.
Perhaps, until each of us
finds our own answers, the best we can do — as Vonnegut suggests — is to
remember that “we are all here to help each other get through this thing,
whatever it is.”
www.sergiointegral.com
purposes.
Comments