The Chosen Suffering
“I say to people that I’m not an optimist, because that, in a sense, is something that depends on feelings more than the actual reality. We feel optimistic, or we feel pessimistic. Now, hope is different in that it is based not on the ephemerality of feelings but on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very, very close to unshakable. It’s in the pit of your tummy. It’s not in your head. It’s all here,” he said, pointing to his abdomen.”
Today, September the 10th, is National Suicide Prevention Day.
As it happens, I'd forgotten this when I woke up this morning, and it wasn't until I checked Twitter and saw the flood of tweets with support and resources from so many people that I was reminded of the importance of today. I won't beat around the bush - I myself have had a struggle with suicide. My freshmen year of college was brutal, to say the least. I endured not only depression and anxiety, but verbal and physical abuse at the hands of lesser men who - because they didn't understand or accept me for who I was/am - decided to express their fear of the unknown through violence and hate.
It brought me low, y'all. Really low. The experiences from that year sent me spiraling for quite some time afterward. I dealt with even deeper depression, alcoholism, reckless decision making, and suicidal thoughts. Those boys had made me feel worthless, insignificant, and small. For a few years after that harrowing period of my life, it took an intense conviction to not only live, but to live FOR something, for me to start opening up to people again; to be vulnerable and honest in my life and allow people the ability to see me for who I truly am. And I know for sure that one of the things that exacerbated my depression was the fact that I could not stop comparing my life to other peoples'. Social media was certainly a tool by which I was able to tighten the screws around my own forehead. But honestly I've always been prone to comparison: comparing myself to my overachieving older brother when I was younger, comparing myself to the 'popular' kids in middle and high school, comparing myself to my friends' talents and abilities throughout college, and now as an adult I oftentimes catch myself comparing my health to the health of other people who don't have CLD, or my life to the lives of other professional creatives out here in LA (see post 'I Feel Pretty').
For anyone on social media who ever catches themselves acting similarly (and nowadays I think it's safe to admit that we all do it now and again), you know that doing this is anxiety inducing, exhausting, and even depressing. We forget that people don't post the dark side, the dirty side - the sloppy, sweatpants wearing, no-make-up, bills to pay, hot mess side of life we ALL have. In the years since social media invaded my life, and especially during my freshmen year of college (where my only escape was the internet), comparison - as good ole Teddy Roosevelt famously said - was the thief of my joy because I didn't know how to process what I was seeing with regards to my own mental health. I get it though, I do. We can't completely stop comparing ourselves to others. We're human. We have hubris, we have ego. We exist within a world of competition and comparison is impossible to shut it out completely. But the only way to keep from bringing ourselves low, and to keep from giving into a state of mind that only serves to keep us unhappy, is through GRATITUDE.
I've written about this on the Byting Back blog before in terms of my struggle with CLD. Gratitude, as I gradually have realized in growing older (and, in part, in learning to live with CLD), is the key to finding some lasting happiness. If comparison is the thief of joy, gratitude is the healer and remedy that reminds us of all we have, and all we have yet to achieve/do/see/love. One of my favorite books I've read in the past year is THE BOOK OF JOY, by Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV. The book covers a week the two great men spent together in India, talking about everything and anything you'd imagine two truly holy men could discuss. The entire book completely floored me and made me realize just how toxic my mindset was, but this passage in particular concerning gratitude stuck with me:
“When you are grateful you are not fearful, and when you are not fearful, you are not violent. When you are grateful, you act out of a sense of ‘enough’ and not out of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people and respectful to all people. The grateful world is a world of joyful people. Grateful people are joyful people. A grateful world is a happy world.”
The Book of Joy rings true. For so long I was unable to practice gratitude because I couldn't stop focusing on my own suffering, which made fear grow in my head and heart. The fear that my life wasn't going to amount to anything. The fear that I was a disappointment to my friends and family. The fear that I truly was small and insignificant like those boys had led me to believe. When that fear grew, I truly was violent... towards myself. Not physically - mentally. Emotionally. I beat myself up and allowed fear to hijack my life. I refused to let love (and self-love) in because my fears had taken over and convinced me that, because my life seemed so lacking in comparison to others, I was worthless.
Now, in retrospect, the line from the above quote that reverberates with me is: "...If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people...". In other words, you see that post on Instagram of your friend landing the big promotion, or getting engaged, or buying the house, or on vacation in some exotic land. And rather than noticing the lack of that thing/event/place in your own life, you send a little love to them and share in the happiness they are sharing with you - the happiness of love, of travel, of personal growth, of success - and (most importantly) you give a little love to yourself too. You give yourself a reminder of just how far you yourself have come, of all you've gotten through and endured. And when that little speck of fear says to you "but why can't we have what they have? why can't our life be like that?". You tell that little bit of fear (as my classmate Ruthie once said to me): "Different strokes for different folks. Their path is theirs to follow, and ours is ours. Our path has joy and happiness we can't even imagine, and it will be so sweet to taste. All it's going to take for us to get there is to remember that it will happen as long as we keep going."
So today, September 10th, even if you're not feeling down, or depressed, or anxious, or suicidal, send yourself a little love. Give yourself some room to breathe. Allow yourself to take a break from the rest of the world. Remind yourself of the things in your life that bring you joy and happiness, no matter how big or small, no matter how strange or unpopular or quirky. And, especially today, pass that reminder to love yourself on to others, particularly those who are struggling to find joy or develop gratitude.
Here's a few more quotes from THE BOOK OF JOY I find helpful:
“According to Lyubomirsky, the three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”
“Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others. When you show compassion, when you show caring, when you show love to others, do things for others, in a wonderful way you have a deep joy that you can get in no other way. You can’t buy it with money. You can be the richest person on Earth, but if you care only about yourself, I can bet my bottom dollar you will not be happy and joyful. But when you are caring, compassionate, more concerned about the welfare of others than about your own, wonderfully, wonderfully, you suddenly feel a warm glow in your heart, because you have, in fact, wiped the tears from the eyes of another.”
“What the Dalai Lama and I are offering is a way of handling your worries: thinking about others. You can think about others who are in a similar situation or perhaps even in a worse situation, but who have survived, even thrived. It does help quite a lot to see yourself as part of a greater whole.” Once again, the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.”
“Adversity, illness, and death are real and inevitable. We chose whether to add to these unavoidable facts of life with the suffering that we create in our own minds and hearts... the chosen suffering. The more we make a different choice, to heal our own suffering, the more we can turn to others and help to address their suffering with the laughter-filled, tear-stained eyes of the heart. And the more we turn away from our self-regard to wipe the tears from the eyes of another, the more- incredibly- we are able to hear, to heal, and to transcend our own suffering. This is the true secret to joy.”
Onward and upward everyone. Spread love, spread gratitude...
...and spread some Nutella on top of all of it. <3