Being Authentic – An Introduction to Section IV

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Fate is not a punishment.

- Albert Camus


ate may not be a punishment, but it can feel like it oftentimes. Who among us hasn’t lamented, “What did I do to deserve this?” Nor do many of us escape the tendency to exclaim at the unfairness of things – both for ourselves and for others. Indeed, fully a third of our little emoji faces could be described as “whining.” This tendency to wail in the face of Fate doesn’t necessarily indicate a neurotic immaturity on our part, but it probably does reflect a lack of understanding about how our attitude toward Fate can affect our resilience.

This section of the website is not, however, a stiff-upper-lip revival meeting. It is, rather, a grouping of articles describing the various truths that can help us cleanse our relationship with kismet – a relationship that has been sullied by many, many lies. By this I mean, these articles can help you rebut toxic beliefs about how easy it is to accomplish your goals, how success suggests that you’re a good person, how mistakes and symptoms suggest you’re a bad person, and so on. This fatuous cultural mythology that links virtue with victory and that minimizes the role Fate has in every life needs to be replaced with an informed sense of the existential difficulties facing us all – every day, all day. That clarity of thought can release your natural level of emotional stability – the fourth component of resilience – which in turn will empower you to make the difficult choices needed to create a more authentic life for yourself.

Let me unpack that last sentence a bit.

 



Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives

- David Eagleman

The Denial of Death

- Ernest Becker

Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist

- Kathleen Barry

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

- Doris Kearns Goodwin

 

When we compare ourselves to other animals, it can be tempting to consider ourselves minor gods given our ability to anticipate outcomes and thus control our world. But these superhuman potentialities have a huge downside. Almost everything we hear, see, read creates within each of us a sense that we should be flawlessly designing a marvelous life for ourselves, and the media reinforces this myth by showing us many other folks seemingly doing just that. It’s easy. Just do it. We’re all just one bug bite away from superhero status. When we can’t overpower our circumstances – because no one can without a HUGE assist from Fate – we start to fear that we are extraordinarily inept.

If our unrealistic expectations for self-created perfection can be replaced with a balanced and flexible perspective on the role of Fate in the lives of everyone, we can then sidestep this detour into distrusting our abilities. Put another way – we really, really, really need to understand that the successful aren’t better people than the less successful. They are just very, very, very lucky. Once we learn to tolerate the hand we are being dealt daily with grace and curiosity, we will be better suited to move resolutely and resiliently through life. Which is, of course, a good definition of courage – the ability to steadfastly and honestly face the difficulty of being at the whim of Fate.

There’s no doubt that Fate can be punishing, but it’s not a punishment.

Once again, with feeling

Now, please pardon my need to reiterate the message “knowledge equals increased resolve,” but this is the drum that beats true to my way of thinking. Here’s my pitch: When our sense that life is difficult is confirmed, several shifts happen in our thinking. First, of course, comes relief that our sense of reality was correct. Life is difficult. Yep. Next, we recognize that this confirmed orientation links us to all the other humans who have faced this reality with courage. That camaraderie is extremely comforting. Who wouldn't want to be in the ontological company of Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln? Finally, when we realize just how big the problem of facing Fate is, we prepare differently as we ready ourselves to tackle it.

• We can finally recognize that our state of dread is logical and appropriate rather than a sign of weakness or confusion. The problem feels bigger than we are because it is bigger than we are.

• We can recalibrate our definition of success to include the truth that effort always remains sublime.

• We can replace the fallacious thinking of Western culture – unhelpful demands that we rush to success along predetermined routes – with a belief in thoughtful, customized choices and audacious experiments.

• We can enhance our chances for success by seeking help in the form of teachers, mentors, friends and so on.

• We can accept the logic of strategically breaking down these big life problems into more manageable sizes.

• We can upgrade our sense of pride in ourselves because we are, ironically, humbly believing what all wise humans believe – life is difficult!

For the theoretically minded, let me reintroduce the vector with the odd title, Death Vector. This route to better mental health is not, to be sure, an intentional path toward death. Our path toward the end of our life is predominantly in Fate's hands. It describes, rather, a course toward hard-earned wisdom that we can traverse when we practice realistically titrating our emotional responses to life's vicissitudes. In other words, this path moves us away from incapacitating helplessness and toward measured sufferance. When we can achieve that stance, we can access hope – an immensely stabilizing emotion.

Death Vector: The more emotionally stable we are, the more likely it will be that we can access the courage to relate to significant others authentically enough to forge bonds that can support us as we practice sorting those cards we are daily being dealt. Supportive relationships ease our sense of helplessness in the face of Fate which, happily, enhances our emotional stability.

With reinforced courage relative to Fate comes a heightened ability to face the inevitability of our death. And if we can keep one eye cocked toward that ticking clock, we can push down on the gas pedal a bit in terms of getting our life plans up and running. This is not to say that we need to rush toward success. This is to acknowledge the importance of using our awareness of our earthly time limit to avoid existential eddies caused by excessive procrastination or petulance. We have a life to design that should bring us closer and closer to an existence directed predominantly by our will to power. It feels great to be on that road, and a healthy relationship with death can urge us to get on it.

Section IV overview

The Moxie of Truth is the first article in this section and expands the above argument to include the twin beliefs so exalted by existentialists: humans are definitely created with more than enough mental horsepower to be able to handle difficult truths; and they are much more effective agents in the designing of their lives when they do so.

The title of the second article in this section – Life is Difficult – kind of says it all.

The article entitled Myth, Choice, Truth addresses our need to observe and decipher the myriad stories that were presented to us as "truth" during our formative years. A huge area of overlap between the existential writers and the feminist thinkers is the belief that we all live in toxic cultures. They agree further that we are responsible for uncovering the mythology underlying the current cultural climate and deciding for ourselves which parts make sense to us and which don’t. We will want to function effectively within our world, but not at the cost of our integrity. In other words, when it comes to cultures we need to think globally, act locally because the personal is political!

Another way clients get turned around by life concerns their shame-based relationship with two boogeymen that plague humans: mistakes and symptoms. Both precipitate panic in us causing us to want to distance ourselves from them as quickly as we possibly can. As you can imagine, a wiser way to address these two unavoidable realities is to learn from them.

To Err Really Is Human: What to Make of Mistakes is an article that, quite frankly, tries to hammer home a sentiment that is too often given only lip service in our early years – you are supposed to make mistakes as you progress through life. If you aren’t making mistakes, you are staying too close to the shore.

Symptoms: It’s All Good provides another surprising look at better ways to make effective, lasting changes in your life. It is both reassuring and challenging to realize that using symptoms as data rather than a character indictment will get you much further along in your efforts to both heal and grow.

Foundations of Solid Self-Esteem provides a much-needed outline of all the work that goes into the repair and maintenance of a robust belief in our ability to navigate through life no matter what Fate decides it wants to do with us. This article is a doozy, but who doesn’t want a buff and shiny self-esteem?

Was That Nice? provides the reader with a careful look at how sloppy thinking can create sloppy behavior. To the extent we more completely understand distinct characteristics of psychological constructs, the more easily we can adjust our behavior to align with our deepest values. This article uses the difference between being nice and being kind as a sampling of the power available in clarified thinking.

I’ve always liked the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” The penultimate article in this section, Absent Minded, outlines a number of truths about memory that can help many of us relax our fears around losing our minds. There are behaviors we need to put in place to protect those marvelous brains of ours, but forgetting your sister’s birthday doesn’t necessarily signal the end of your cognitive health. Your mind probably ain’t broke, so no need to fix it.

And, finally, Triumph in the Game of Life presents some options for gathering the external feedback that our world has to offer. It provides a commentary on how winning, losing and being chosen can each contribute to our understanding of how we are doing in life.

We all want to live as authentically as we can even when – or maybe especially when – Fate drops a bomb (good or bad) into our lives. And our death is, of course, the ultimate challenge that Fate presents to us. If we can remember that this fourth dimension of time, death, is an important one to integrate into our daily thinking, we will be much more likely to put some urgency behind making our move. I’ll end this introduction with a stirring quote from the wordsmith Ralph Waldo Emerson:

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.

© Copyright 2024 Jan Iversen. All rights reserved.