Enablers and Adversaries (Part 3)

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The danger during times when we feel like a diminished version of ourselves is that we can naively come to assume or believe that the people who offer to prop us up or help us heal have our best interests at heart. This is seen quite frequently within cults where vulnerable people looking for belonging or a higher sense of meaning to their lives are love-bombed by devotees of the cult leader, while effectively being groomed for membership of something that will prove deleterious to their best efforts at moving productively forward with their lives. While that may appear to be an extreme example, there can also be individuals within our familial and friendship circles who by their own deficit of character or woundedness would be inclined towards facilitating co-dependence or enmeshment with us if they were given the opportunity to be leaned on as a means of support. While no doubt this sounds like a highly cynical take on what motivates some individuals to interject themselves into the challenges that we sometimes face in our lives, I have found that the possibility of encountering these individuals is not to be underestimated.

When we see the world through rose coloured glasses as a consequence of our weakened state of being, we can become too trusting of what others say or how they seek to make us feel, especially if the effect of that would be to numb us to the pain or discomfort that we feel as a consequence of our predicament. While we might long for the temporary relief of this tension or suffering, when we outsource that task to someone who wants to ride in on their white horse to fix our problems from the outside, we unknowingly make the path towards identifying the right actions and solutions that much harder to discern and pursue. Any psychologist or counsellor worth their salt knows this to be true, and when there are avenues of resolution that present themselves to a patient during the process of therapy, they will see it as their task to defer to the patient coming to those realisations themselves, rather than being pre-emptively prescriptive about what they think that person should do in the circumstances. While one could argue that providing these solutions is what a psychologist or counsellor gets paid for, there is also a cost to be borne by the patient, who because they are told what to do are deprived of the opportunity to piece together their own understandings from the broken fragments of meaning that were inherent in the adverse experiences they encountered. And here we have an adversary in the form of a competent psychologist or counsellor appear in the frame again.

I’ve heard it said that if a person finds the therapeutic process to be a pleasurable experience, then they need to seek an alternate form of assistance immediately. Working through our trauma or dysfunction is a naturally uncomfortable and painful experience, and if we are coddled through that process, not only do we risk getting stuck along the journey to healing but we can also retreat into becoming a less resilient and empowered version of ourselves. If someone truly loves us and cares about our flourishing, then this should be the antithesis of what they want for our lives. No doubt, the people who love and care for us the most genuinely have that intention, but they likely don’t have the know how to help us through difficult periods effectively. If that is the case, I think it is better for all involved that they humbly realise their limitations, rather than trying to rush in with a saviour complex to try and fix our problems.

What I’ve observed, especially of late, in the activism space is a pervasive narcissism which manifests in this complex that oftentimes has the counter effect to whatever it is that these activists say they are standing for. Take the current pro-Palestinian protests for example. By focusing their anger and condemnation on the Israeli Defence Forces for the civilian deaths that have resulted from their best attempts at weeding out the scourge of Hamas fighters that still present a threat to Israeli security, these activists are unwittingly fortifying the legitimacy of that brutal terror group whose failures in properly leading the Palestinian territory have been the primary cause of the havoc and suffering wreaked on its inhabitants lives. By deflecting the responsibility (or blame – depending on how one sees it) for what is taking place so that they can identify with the present victims of the conflict, these individuals are in effect enabling the true source of these people’s subjugation. Like fools, they rush in where angels fear to tread.

What the better angels of our nature have to teach us here is the wisdom of enabling nobly (which could otherwise be expressed as ennobling others) and being a formidable adversary to those whose capacities we want to see develop to meet the vicissitudes of life. Personal and collective thriving does not occur if we allow others to indulge the deficits in their character that we call vices. Neither do they cultivate the fortitude to move forward with courage and confidence, if we treat them with kid gloves. In this age of entitlement and victimhood where people are inclined to play that role to garner attention and empathy for themselves, it is worth pausing before we respond to their ‘need’, lest we come to the ill-formed and self-indulgent conclusion that our intervention is necessary for ‘good’ to be done. Those who are truly virtuous don’t have those motives working in the background to orient their behaviour, so we need to evolve beyond our ego to embody the forms of enabler and adversary that can serve others and bring generative life to the world.

Enablers and Adversaries (Part 2)

In a very real sense, adversaries of this type enable our progress forward in a similar way that our encountering of adversity does. Having a very similar etymological derivation in Latin, what we see in these two words is the necessity of turning towards that which challenges or opposes us on our path. Key to this process of progress is our willingness or volition to face what confronts us. In every moment, we have a choice as to how we will respond to the circumstances of life that appear before us, and the decisions we end up making in these instances will be pivotal to the course that our life will take.

In many respects, I think we have a lot more riding on the decisions we make in times of challenge than those we make in times of comfort and stasis. This presents us with a fertile opportunity to exert leverage in changing the course of our lives for the better when we embody courage, strength and resilience (among other human virtues) to face those things that will really test us at the core of our being. In my experience, I have never much grown from decisions I made during easy periods of my life which I was happy to go along with, but where I feel I did take large strides in my personal evolution were during periods of personal hardship.

An exception to this was when I chose to voluntarily take on challenges that would stretch my ability to deal with, and eventually overcome them, such as undertaking my PhD project which I wasn’t sure I could successfully complete at the time I commenced the project. The benefit of choosing to volitionally face what confronts us is that we become energised, empowered and resourceful in ways that we cannot be when we are reactively forced to deal with problems that we feel incapable of effectively dealing with. By reconnecting with the sovereign nature of our spirit from which we are equipped with what we need to meet the challenges that confront us, we enable our own advancement along the path of actualising our potential.

The outgrowth of this self-enabling is that we can serve as enablers of others’ development and progress. This can be done in a variety of ways that are context dependent, and experienced as inspiring by those who are assisted, which is an accurate characterisation of what has intrinsically moved us to affect that contribution. What is not nearly as inspiring and can cause others harm is a faux form of enabling that indulges others dysfunction and fosters a co-dependence which has a disempowering effect on the person in need. There is a lot of wisdom in the saying, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. While no doubt there is a time for giving to others in order to meet an immediate need, over the longer term of people’s lives where a real difference is made, this impact is affected by capacity building that makes others more competent, confident and self-reliant.

It takes a genuine care and selflessness to want to make that contribution to another’s life and to extend those qualities to achieve an outcome that is in that other person’s best interests. This nudging of others towards the precipice of transformation often takes the form of tough love or pushing them out of their comfort zone, which requires sacrifice on the part of the person assisting because they will be fought along the way, and won’t be seen in a favourable light by the person being assisted as they experience their own struggle of doing the difficult work that transmuting one’s dysfunctionality requires. This perceived adversary is in actuality an indispensable ally, without which that person needing help couldn’t find their way back to centre. On any journey to reconciling the broken parts of ourselves, we require guides who have done their own integral work that allows them to effectively lead the way and help us navigate the pitfalls that we don’t yet know will be ours to encounter. Absent of this person who has walked the path, we will find ourselves in the company of those who may promise salvation or success but in our following of their lead are much more likely to lead us astray.       

An Ode to the Coalface (Part 1) (Interlude)

In every person’s heart of hearts, they yearn to make a difference or have a profound impact on the world, which no doubt is a noble aim that characterises a calling, but how a person thinks they can make this contribution is important to decipher. I say this because often our egocentric ambition can hijack this intention of our heart and have us believe that in order to make the contribution we are destined for, we need to be elevated to a higher station in society, where power, influence and our perceived wisdom to solve its problems will effectively enable us to serve a saving role in the world. When this idealised grandiose vision of the future is contrasted with our more modest present reality, we can be tempted to feel that nothing we are doing now really matters, and that it is only those who are celebrated in the media/social media and by the broader culture (who are where we want to be) that are making the type of difference that is worthy of us.

When we think in this way, the daily work we partake in can be seen as ‘small’ or beneath the limits of our potential, and therefore taken for granted with its significance. This way of viewing our efforts can also be amplified when we are working in one-on-one settings where our perceived reach to the broader units of society is limited. While this is understandable if within ourselves we know that we have so much more to give, we mustn’t allow this myopic yearning to blind us to the reality that it is at the coalface that the greatest difference is made to peoples lives. Teachers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, psychologists, mental health professionals and customer service roles are but a few examples of a broader range of professions that interface directly with the public to meet fundamental needs that these people have. While the organs of society don’t always honour the contributions made by these workers by compensating them properly, the immense value of the services they provide is clear to see.

Without these individuals being there as the backbone of society, doing this hard graft with little if any fanfare, its degeneration would be swift. For this reason, I highlight the paramount importance of not diminishing these professions or overlooking those who engage in them as a calling or vocation. In every field, we need committed professionals who love and care about what they do and whom they serve by their efforts. Not only does this make for a meaningful enrichment to the quality of life being derived by those who are served, but it also fosters an enduring sense of fulfilment in those serving, who we need sustained for their continued contributions to be made. This has become all the more important in the wake of the Covid pandemic where workers across professions are having to deal with increased workloads and demands with less support and resourcing for their core functions. While doing more with less appears on its face to be a paradoxical impossibility, in my experience those best able to manage it are the heavily invested and resourceful few who see their work as more than just a job or career.

Another thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is that as we climb the ladder of ‘success’ in our chosen profession which moves us closer to having the outsized impact that the ego finds appealing, we will often become disconnected from the core work that was cause for our involvement in the first place. When I was working in the law, and since moving on to academia, I have witnessed numerous instances of purpose driven and passionate lawyers/lecturers being promoted to executive administration roles that did not resonate with them at all, and drained them of the enthusiasm that infused their work at the coalface, dealing with clients in need and students who were thirsty for the knowledge they had to convey. Chasing the money or promotions in organisational life can have that downside, so if we don’t want to compromise parts of ourselves that keep us connected to and fulfilled in our work, we must be cognisant of the trade-offs involved in taking that course. What is often perceived as ‘levelling up’ by the ego’s measure of progress involves a spiritual regression as we relegate its call to the recesses of our being.

I have made the point on numerous occasions previously that the human spirit has an actualising quality to it, so when we live in alignment with it, our inclination will be to be more and do more of what it is calling us into, but this process of unfolding our latent potentiality and character is organic, and not forced or driven by the personal desire for gain or recognition. Thus, accepting a promotion can be a very natural course if it is something that we grow into by, for example, demonstrating the virtues of diligence or excellence in our work, integrity in our decision making, or responsibility in leading others. The associated increases in pay or other benefits we may receive are earned in this way, as they should be rather than sought as the primary means to be acquired.

Making Sense of my Muse (Part 1)

Regardless of the form of art that one seeks to create, there is a process that they will follow to open the creative channels for what they want to express, or perhaps more accurately, for that which seeks expression through them. Just the other day, I was asked by a friend about the creative process behind my writing and after giving it some thought, my mind turned to the principal role that my source of creativity (what is sometimes referred to as a or the muse) plays in enabling my writing. Given that I am currently in the process of researching for my second book, with my writing on it to commence next year, his probing provided a pertinent opportunity to reflect on how I go about the task, and perhaps refine my writing routine. When it comes to my writing, I am not one who has really ever thought about strategies to optimise the process because that has never been my focus, but the process itself does interest me very deeply, hence me wanting to explore it here and perhaps draw out some useful insights.

The more that I have partaken in writing over the years, the more I have experienced it as a calling that is central to my life purpose. At no stage have I ever felt that I chose it as something to pursue for either intrinsic or extrinsic rewards, and a more accurate characterisation of how I came to engage with it is that it chose me as a dance partner. The labels that could be given to the source of this vocation, or the one who calls to us or chooses us to find life in a particular domain, are numerous, and I think that God, our spirit or the universal life force are all apt descriptors of it. A fundamental feature of that source energy is its creative capacity. To be animated by it is to be endowed with the ability to create, or act upon the world in ways that are unique to our disposition, talents, native interests and the moment in time that we are born into. Here, it is worth appreciating that being by its essence, necessitates or mandates doing, for without a purpose for being that determined and meaningful action gives expression to, there is no reason for its existence.  

Through no effort or conscious desire of my own, I am drawn to writing, I love it, and there is no other outlet, other than perhaps speaking about the things I write about, that gives me the feeling that I am manifesting my greatest possible contribution to the world of which I am a part. Of all the potential things that I could have possibly been drawn to, or have a natural capacity for, it is this art that weaves together who I am with the need that the world has for my being. While some may just reduce this integral association down to randomness, I think that what that perspective misses is the intentionality and purpose that is so clearly present from having an internal orienting force that moves one towards something in a meaningful way. Were it just something I inherited from my parents DNA, like their physical features or personality traits, it would be unsurprising, yet, there is very little in my family history to suggest that I would grow up to be a writer.

Over the course of my life journey, there have been numerous instances of being prompted by forces external to myself that I didn’t understand at the time towards a union with my spirit from which this calling could be more clearly heard. Whether those forces are referred to as serendipity or grace, the effect of their intervention was a clarity around the very nature of things that I was given life to explore and decipher truth about. As an example, before I could write about what distinguishes a job from a career or a calling, I had to experience these divergent paths for myself. For another person whose path doesn’t involve writing but some other field of endeavour, the journey that led them there would be very different and particularised for the time and place that they occupied. Just as each of us has been created for a specific purpose, so has the world been created to accommodate the enactment of that purpose. When we come to connect with our calling and find this niche in which can flourish, we learn that this fit is not random but coincidental, in the sense of the word that sees things come together as they were meant to. Just as the three sides of a triangle come together to form that shape, so does the shape of our life cohere and make sense when we honour the providential nature of life that blesses us not only with the gifts to make our novel contribution, but with a place to belong as that offering is made. A large part of why we feel so unfulfilled as we eschew our spiritual nature to partake in a job or career that doesn’t have this deep resonance with who we are or what we have been called to do is that in the domains where that job or career is worked, we don’t feel that we belong there. How that is experienced is as an unhospitable and jarring dissonance that lays waste to the means of our authentic service and thriving.