A Brick and Fog

For all my trumpeting about thought over emotion; for all my belief that even the lowest lows can be reasoned through if one has prepared himself enough as a thinker to deal with them, I am afraid there is little defense against the surprise collapse of what has always seemed a given truth in one's life.

I suppose this can apply as early as that moment when we get the true story behind various holiday-associated supernaturalities and then into our more mature years when previously dear beliefs give way to circumstances. For example, that job we have dreamt of since the age of twelve turns out to be nothing like we imagined; or, our faith beliefs are shattered by some event; or, what we thought about people, in general -- say, the belief that most people are kind at heart -- gets proven (at least for us, personally) wrong.

These are big examples. But the more insidious shift happens on a smaller, more "viral" level. In these cases, we are not talking about a tectonic drift in philosophical belief or of theological understanding, but in a tiny thing that the thinker has never even though to doubt; it has just been a brick in the foundation of his life, down there, under the house of his body and soul, doing its job, silently, even invisibly. A small, but integral part of that which defines his existence. 

If circumstances, then, wind up exposing that brick and if a good dusting-off of the brick shows all is not as it seemed, the impact of this is one that is not expected. Maybe the brick gets put back into its place, but it is replaced in the consciousness by the nagging idea that it is cracked. Not enough to bring the house down, but enough to raise questions as to whether the house is what it has always seemed to be. 

All of this vague metaphor calls for a real example. Imagine you have a best friend who has, for years, supported you and encouraged your abilities as, say, a real-estate agent, but then you find out that he really believes you are not very good at what you do. It's not the fact that he doesn't think you are good that is the problem; it's the fact that what you thought was a brick in the foundation of your relationship -- maybe for decades -- is not quite what it seemed. If what you saw as mutual respect was an unconscious element of your relationship's definition, now, you are face with the fact that you have been wrong -- maybe for a day, but maybe for decades. 

We can't be ready for the fall of something that has seemed to be such a surety that we have never really consciously marked it. Afterward, the revised knowledge becomes like a fly buzzing around our heads and it can bring us down.Sure, we still can (and have to) think our way out of the dark, but, an element is added: we need to pick ourselves up because the unexpected nature of this tiny revelation has knocked us off of our feet. We need to get our balance again before reason can intervene. 

Going into work, for example, we expect that we may have the most awful day ever, and we can be ready to peer over the treetops of the dark forest of our day and say: "There is my home. I'll be there, soon, and this day will be behind me." We are ready to defend against that kind of bad mood. But the new idea we never see coming? Bam. Next thing you know, you're sitting up in the gloom and trying to shake the fuzz out of your head. And until that fuzz is gone, the real reasoning; the real navigation out of the fog cannot begin. It can be really hard to shake off that kind of a fog. 

Compass and Storm

A week-or-so ago (and I write this with full permission), I found myself angrier at my wife than I have been in years. It was in the top three of all the times I have ever been angry in my life, for sure.

I'm not going to tell the details, because that is not what this is about. This is not about what happened outside of me, but what happened inside. It's not about whether I was right or wrong, but about the weather inside of me (and in all of us) when the storm of emotion becomes a hurricane. 

Let it suffice to say, the thing happened and we exchanged words and I was livid. We sat, for a very long time, in silence. We were on a long trip, sitting next to each other. Neither of us was driving. 

Cliche or not, my teeth were grinding and I believe my nostrils were actually flaring. I felt Karen next to me, but was so angry I didn't even want to brush an elbow against her. It's not as if thinking stopped and emotion kicked in, but thinking happened in firework trajectories, all bursts and blasts and lightning flashes -- every line of reasoning electrified with currents of emotional persecution. I would glance over at her face, completely aware of how much I loved it, but love had become temporarily irrelevant. Not gone, by any stretch: just irrelevant.

Minutes passed and then twenty minutes and then an hour and the feeling remained, gripping like the soul's version of a kidney stone. Then I heard my own recurring theme, somewhere behind the wind and hail and the gut-squeezing anger: think. Everything can be handled with logic. Get out of yourself for a minute -- what is she thinking? What will fix this?

You might think she's wrong, but she probably thinks you are "giving her the silent treatment." Are you? No -- it's deeper than that. "The silent treatment" is not a valid way to solve a problem; you're too smart for that nonsense. You're not talking because you can't. Speaking is impossible right now. This is not a conscious choice. But if you think she is wrong, you have made that clear. What's on the inside is invisible to her. Now you are just torturing her -- being quiet. Giving her the worst thing in a relationship: nothing. You have to find a logical compass out of this storm because however angry you are, she does not deserve this. She knows you well, but she doesn't know how deep the strings she plucked are; she's innocent to that...

But there was no sign of a compass anywhere in the wind and deluge. I was aware of the struggle; of the difficulty in finding my way out of this. I could not open my mouth without being cruel. I knew it. 

We stopped to rest; we ordered food almost in silence; we sat and ate at an outdoor table, in thick heat, in silence. Then, she asked if we were going to spend the rest of the trip without talking. Now I spoke; now I said, more calmly, what I wanted to say. But it was like chewing on sand. It wasn't a moment of mending; it wasn't an "A-ha: all you have to do is talk about it and all is better." It was very difficult...

...but it was possible, in a way it had not been an hour before. It was, at least, within my capability. It was no longer dangerous to speak, even if speaking felt very much like growling.  

Nothing's simple. There's no "answer" in a situation like that. There's no clever sunset-picture meme or magic spell or self-help concept to get us through such anger. There's just control and a basic will to think one's self through and not make things worse than they need to be. 

She'd said she was sorry. Twice. The first time, it really hadn't mattered to me at all. The second time, I wanted to say it was okay (and I think I might even have grumbled that it was) but it was not -- not in the storm going on in my chest. Nothing was okay, then. She could have shared the most joyous news, ever, and it would have meant nothing. My heart, for a short while, was Teflon. 

Back on the road, the sun went deep and low. Our hands -- at some point -- found each other and it was done. Maybe that was the only real compass to find. But by that time, the storm was over. 

To Hug an Electron (My Week of Insignificance)

I had a pretty weird experience over the course of this past week. My wife went away on a much deserved vacation to Aruba. Circumstances meant that I could not go, but she went with a few of her friends.

Owing to the ridiculousness of charges for cell phone communication across the waves, we knew our interaction had to be limited. We texted once or twice, but that was about it. For the rest, I had to rely on seeing her Facebook posts.

I can only find two words to describe this experience: surreal and enlightening.

The surreal part: Watching a visual and a verbal record of the most important person in your life having a good time without you and being turned into just one of the multitude of people with whom she is sharing her experience. Very strange, when you are used to being her go-to guy.

Did I expect or want her to have a horrible time without me? Of course not. But, until this point in recent human history, time apart from one's lover and best friend amounted to phone calls that ended in: "I miss you. I love you. See you soon." The rest was up to the imagination -- I wonder what she is doing now...

In the Facebook era, "I can't wait to tell you all about it" has become "Just look at the pictures with everyone else."