Bitterness and Blessings

 

I’m still learning how to be a happy person. One of my biggest challenges is that I sit in the shadows of my mistakes. I’d like to embrace Ted Lasso’s great advice to “be a goldfish” and forget my mistakes, but sometimes the allure of bitterness is too much for my better nature.  

When I linger in negativity, I put up my defenses and point out to myself all the things that are wrong in the world, deflecting my responsibility. I have a psychic missile defense shield that intercepts any threat,  real or perceived, and eliminates it with a laser of focused psychic energy before it can reach me. Theoretically it brings me protection from outside threats. In reality, it perpetuates violence because in a position of defense, everything begins to look like a threat and must be destroyed. 

Like I said, I’m still learning how to be happy. And how to communicate.

A few months ago my wife began undergoing treatment for cancer and I became even more fully vested in protecting myself mentally and emotionally. I took aim at the world and poured my frustration into a bitter narrative of survival and self preservation. When someone asked how she was doing, outwardly I answered as politely as possible. Inwardly, I swore bitterly at the wanton compassion and cursed their intrusion on my fragile state.

Let me say that again. Differently this time: 

When my wife began undergoing treatment for cancer, I was overwhelmed by the love and support of our friends and community. With each question of concern and each display of support, I found it more and more difficult to appreciate the enormity of grace and kindness that surrounded us. Outwardly, I kept it together, focusing my attention on the small steps of recovery, trying to help my wife move forward and focus on the love. Inwardly, I was paralyzed, with no idea how to mirror that love.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to respond, feel, act, or speak to my coworkers and friends. It was that I felt both bitter and blessed fully and completely to the extent that I frequently felt myself fumbling simple social conventions. It was like the good angel, bad angel on each shoulder. I lived out an internal emotional contradiction, a mental, emotional brake-torque. Meanwhile, my wife was battling cancer. 

I did a pretty good job supporting her, but I also felt the kinetic energy of the contradiction inside me. I was angry at everything related to anything that gave my wife or me stress. I was so grateful for the love and support. I still felt unmoored in my daily interactions and other relationships.

One day I told my students I’d be missing some time at school to care for my wife after her double mastectomy for breast cancer. They looked sympathetic. When a student told the class his uncle had testicular cancer, I realized that he was struggling, too. He made a comment about testicles in front of a classroom because he wanted me to know that he, too, had a loved one with cancer and, equally, because this was a golden opportunity to say “testicle” in class. Both things were very much his reality: sympathy and silliness. And I said “boobs and balls, man” because I both didn’t care about a teacher’s decorum in that moment and because I cared about the student enough to meet him at his own joke. 

And we all laughed. “Boobs and balls, man. Boobs and balls.”

It’s pretty simple, really. We think we should be in charge of our own lives. When we feel powerless, we resist that feeling of powerlessness by building defenses or lashing out. When we just let the powerless feeling happen, we’re in charge again because we give it permission to happen. We allow it. And then it passes. After all, its only a feeling. 

Acceptance is the first step in reclaiming reality and, thereby, claiming my own agency. That is my first step in not falling into the self-inflicted violence of defensiveness and bitterness. That way I can try to cultivate love and gratitude as best I can.

Resistance to cancer is my bitterness. Acceptance is my blessing.