Brain-washed and defensive

In my decades-long navel-gaze, a rustle of truths I've kept under wraps has fluttered to the surface.

I hate being misunderstood—even more, I hate that when I am misunderstood, I join the accusing voices in misunderstanding myself.

Because the still small voice inside is vulnerable to the power of suggestion, I typically pick ideological megaphones to shout things at me so I won't accidentally adopt my self-doubt as truth. I line up, like a chess piece, finding the right square to stand in and make the moves prescribed for me. Frustrating when I think I'm a Queen who can move anywhere on the board, and instead am reminded that unlike all the Queens in this particular bunch, I am merely a Horse, whose moves are not interesting, powerful, or legitimate, as, say the Queens.

Which is shit, because anyone can move anywhere on a board of red and black squares that one pleases, unless one has agreed at the start to play chess, at which point it is perfectly possible that I am a Queen (who else gets to decide that?). Besides, chess isn't the only game in town, nor the best, nor the right one for everybody. And who said that we're playing chess? Maybe I want to play checkers or run through sprinklers or throw the chess board right into a dumpster! (This is an example of me shouting down the megaphone-people—the critics, rule-givers, and brain-washers.)

It happens with intimates too—not just those zany online peer groups or zealous church communities or xenophobic political factions.

The way I manage that craving to be understood is to begin by understanding the other person. It's the old trope—if I do it for you, I'll get it back. Which, incidentally, is not at all how it works, despite the megaphone propaganda to the contrary. Not everyone wants to be understood as a primary, bottomline-ish craving. Some people, apparently, just want a foot rest (as in, doormat for wiping muddy boots), or an example of what not to be—they pick you. Or in this case, me. They want affirmation, not conversation.

Unfortunately, if those I credit with some version of authority misunderstand me, I jump in easily with the critics and spend sleepless hours of the night examining my conscience—did I operate in self-interest or with patient, thoughtful care? Am I defensive (well obviously) or am I wanting to open space for considering another point of view (well obviously!).

Today is President Obama's 2nd inauguration. It happens to land on the national holiday that celebrates radical Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday—the man whose prophetic voice got him assassinated; a man who was both defensive and visionary, who could not make those against him understand him, but who chose to carve out space for his community in spite of that unending, "Wait. Now's not the right time to have this conversation."

Andrew Sullivan made a glorious statement today about the experience of abject failure when we strive to realize our ideals in a lifetime:

Over the years, I've never let go of that understanding of conservatism's core truth - that all politics ends in some version of failure, that we cannot change and should not want to change the whole world over night, that constant failure is integral to human life and action - and the key spur to fleeting success. But I've also come to accept and more firmly believe that the flip-side to that must never be cynicism or retreat or nihilism. It must be to play our part where we can to fight injustice, knowing that our achievement will be partial, knowing that as soon as we have solved problems, new ones will replace them, and knowing that the process never ends. In fact, the true hero is the one who acts even in the knowledge of inevitable failure, who puts the realizable good before the unrealizable perfect. Yes, over the last six years, Obama has helped me understand his method of community organization, of leading from behind. And it is as conservative in its understanding of how society really changes from below as it is liberal in its refusal to relent against injustice.

"Leading from behind" reminds me of Bonhoeffer's "God from below."

Let's get really practical for a moment. I'm about to be both defensive and earnestly hoping to carve out a little space for those like me—equal parts.

In the quest for an ideal family, I've skidded through a slew of philosophies, therapies, and paradigms meant to ensure a happy long-term married outcome. And wound up divorced. My achievement has been partial—to find the peace we craved, I deprived my kids of the long-term in-tact family I championed. I solved one set of problems, ushered in a whole host of new ones.

Yet that doesn't have to mean failure, or the end, or second-class citizen status in the land of families. Does it? Should it? No happiness to be found now? Our experiences not valuable to relate?

To embrace failure as an essential feature of justice-seeking work is a radical proposition. It means that I would rather not pretend the ideal for social approval and will risk personal failure for the sake of modest improvements that lead to a measure of freedom/change/growth. It means that I plead "Bullshit" when someone attempts to point out that 3 steps, or 4 principles, or 1 person, or "true commitment" or the right God are all that are needed to reach the dream-state: utopia.

Moral resolve starts not with official permission to act, but with seizing a moment to describe the contours of personal and collective experience in the face of "shushing" (to challenge the over-arching narrative of the ones who control the dialog of what the ideal is and should be).

"Leading from behind" looks like the gathering together of the powerless to create the moral strength of collective voice—it takes courage. It's easy to feel misunderstood, to wonder if your voice will ever be more than a whisper of personal truth when those with the megaphones shout you down.

Which brings me full circle.

Obama said today in his inaugural address:

Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. 

The key to America's confounding vision is in the last phrase above: "it does not mean that we will all... follow the same precise path to happiness."

I'm worn out by the various prescriptions for happiness being bandied about because there is no one-size-fits-all cure to this thing called life. As Sullivan rightly states:

...constant failure is integral to human life and action...

Any theory of being that doesn't take our human frailty into account will be ill-fitting clothes long term.

In my need to be understood, I'm realizing a little bit each day that part of my growth curve is acknowledging openly, in front of others, just how imperfectly I've made the journey to 51. Crushing for an idealist. As my aunt used to say, "Idealists are shocked a lot in life."

Signed,
Shocked
--born in the same year as our flawed, idealistic, extraordinary, human president