37. "… Open thine eyes. I am still here, just older.”
How to Be a Person for Tuesday September 24, 2024. (Parts were originally published Sept. 2023)
In Judith Kerr’s YA novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (based on her escape from Nazi Germany as a child) she writes about how leaving her home and moving to Switzerland, Paris and finally London was a great adventure.
It was not, of course, for her parents. They managed to keep it together under terrible circumstances and shielded their children from much of the horrors of displacement due to war.
This reframing of one’s situation is a worthwhile exercise for us, also. To treat the difficulties like a picnic. Look forward to the challenges life throws you for they are guaranteed and evergreen. Try pursuing hardship instead of happiness for happiness is fleeting. Hardship, not so much. Look for the obstacles. Become good at smiling in the face of adversity. Just try this on for a while. Audition this approach. You can always go back to the way you did things before if it doesn’t serve you.
This idea was reinforced by reading a work of fiction. Novels access a different part of the brain. It is the same part that is responsible for nuance, subtext, sarcasm, irony, and charm. Reading fiction gets you away from arguable things like facts and delve into the truths that make up the human condition. A condition we’d do well to become acquainted with.
The truth is what we’re after. It’s irrefutable. We know a truthful performance when we see one. We might not know why we like it. That’s why we’ll say things like How does Mark Rylance do it? He does it by bearing his soul in public. How does Meryl do it? She does it by practicing listening and connection.
What do we practice day-to-day? Are we out there in the world being honest with one another? Recently I was at Cafe Pamenar in Kensington Market for an evening called Be ME with the Holy Gasp. The ME is an initialism that stands for Meaningfully Encountered and The Holy Gasp is a multi-genre ensemble. I encourage you to check them out online and in-person. This night the Meaningful Experience was founder and trained psychotherapist Benjamin Hackman calling on audience members to come up on stage and receive free talk therapy accompanied by the band. The outcome was a strange mix of the intimate and the performative as the male participants tried desperately to entertain (one fake-cried repeatedly, one threatened to) and the female participant managing to investigate memory construction with the plonking dissonance of a toy piano behind her.
All in all, a great night. One that served as a reminder of how hard it is to show vulnerability especially if you are a man. What cannot be overstated is the difficulties of the world require such behaviour. There is a difference between victimhood and vulnerability though. The former takes away agency and the latter creates it. For it is only within a truthful existence can we establish boundaries, build bridges and forge alliances. We are collaborators but we’re stuck in an individualized society that fetishes He was one man … Against the rest.
For too long we equate strength with a stiff upper lip. But strength is removing your family from Nazi Germany in spite of the fear you feel. And then when you don’t think you can take anymore you do. And you practice falling in love with it. You call it what it is: adventure.
The starting gun has gone off. The runners run. The crowd is cheering. That voice inside your head telling you to stop is fear. Push it down into the mud. You’re older than you think.