The Weakening

businessman-kettle-head-steam-pulled-out-lid-vector-hand-drawn-pop-art-illustration-70388152I watched this in Mr. Mercedes series (Season 2, episode one) last night. Bill Hodges speaking at a funeral of his long-time friend and police partner who died from a heart attack: “He hasn’t talked of his weaknesses and his heart problems. He was all police. At this job we are trained to not show weakness. So, we don’t talk about it. If we did, maybe some of us were still alive.”

There is a strong connection in the idea of that segment to something I saw once on the mental health unit I worked on:

“What was the bravest thing you’ve asked for?”

“Help.”

There is even stronger connection in that idea to what I’ve recently been reading about grief and loss. One of the main ideas in the book (Grief Recovery Handbook by J.W. James and R. Friedman) is that people in the western society are constantly misinformed about grieving and letting go of loss they’ve experienced. Major myths that humans learn over and over through generations is that you grieve alone, and if it doesn’t help, you replace pain with something else and you don’t cry around others. Asking for help, therefore, is not welcomed. People progress through life carrying their pain, not knowing how to deal with it, collecting more pain and loss on their path, leading a life of a kettle that is constantly on fire while there is no way to let steam out.

I’ve met a lot of them kettle people when I worked in the recovery houses and overnight shelters. They wouldn’t talk of their issues that brought them that low, because they were taught not to bother others, not to show their weaknesses, not to cry in front of others, not to deal with emotions. Imagine their kettles going into overdrive and beyond!

In a society where you are taught not to ask for help, showing vulnerability seems to be considered a crime. In a reality full of subjective ideas, myths, and prejudices, asking for help is indeed the bravest thing a person can do. In the same glorious reality, to follow up with finding out more what’s behind those cold eyes and world of hurt can probably earn you your own crest and a Viking funeral.

Yet we are not there yet.


the image was copied from https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/kettle-head.html thank you.

Veiled Opportunities

notexitThere are all these signs. On the walls, on buses, on TV, in the papers. Some good ones, some better ones, some crappy and misleading. And many deep ones, many that make you think and wonder. I saw a new one at the work place weeks back.

“Things don’t happen to you. Things happen for you.”

Talk about deep ones, hey. How does that wise vase work?

Crap happens. Loss takes over. Tragedies crawl in and linger. Abuse of all that feels good and/or should stand strong and untouched breaks through and demoralizes. The dark suffocates the light and there seems to be either no end of misery or no sense of why would it ever happen, whether to the good people, or to the people in general.

Really, why? Well, hell knows, someone would say. Shit just happens. Or…

One very smart, but not very happy German said once “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Then a fictional villain extraordinaire paraphrased: “what doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger.” But whoever posted the “happen for you” sign was way ahead of these two, or simply learned from them. Isn’t it more smart to be positive about things that wallow in infinite grieving and self-pity? Yes, grieving is important, but to keep swimming in the black lake, never allowing yourself to come on shore? I don’t think so.

So… things don’t happen to you. OK, I understand that some things do happen to you, disasters and death of loves ones, that seems too much and too great to see anything positive in, but still… things happen for you. To overcome. To learn something. Maybe not right away, because the pain is too much. Yet still, you and I and them, we learn how not to give up, how to stay on and not exit, how to cope, and a mass of time may pass and then we look back…

Yes, we look back and we see the wisdom, sometimes harsh truth, but if we take it for what we saw it before, that sharp punch of doom that knows no mercy, then we will learn nothing but that gods hate us. And if we did try to overcome, if we wanted it, and we looked for a better time, if we (important word) allowed us to have a better time for ourselves, then we will see the things for what they are, the possibly veiled opportunity to benefit from. And we will learn even better. From a mistake, or from a tragedy that wasn’t caused by us, or from a strange event that made no sense, and we will move on. And we may get way better. The crap that happened has done so for our good. I know you don’t like that perspective. I used to dislike it a lot, and who knows what else is coming my way. And yet, it is usually all good. I just have to give it time to see it in a different light.


the front image was copied from https://www.homedepot.com/p/12-in-X-8-in-Plastic-Not-An-Exit-Sign-PSE-0091/206873504 and altered by me. thank you