Lament

A while ago, a friend wrote something on social media that I understood as a lament. It didn’t have an answer, it didn’t have a question, there was no nice resolution at the end. It was a cry out to God and whoever would listen that this. shit. sucks. 

So many kind, generous, sweet people wrote things to answer a question that was never posed. I couldn’t help but think- NO- what she needed was someone to stand on the mountaintop with her and hurl obscenities. Not because it would answer the problem – but because that is the primal human response- to yell NO out into the abyss even if you have nothing or no one to yell it to. I guess that is what makes God such a terrific audience for laments… God won’t wither or attempt to answer with something lame and useless. God just fucking absorbs it. Or at least we hope so.

I have no idea what was happening on the emotional or spiritual level inside my friend. I can only attempt to understand from my belief that we are all made of the same ingredients. We are made from the same star dust and loving particles of God-breathed life. With this belief, I understand that though my life is not even remotely the same as my friend, I could join hands with her and understand the basic need to stand and lament. To yell: SHIT! DAMNIT! THIS FUCKING SUCKS! Because I have had my own moments when something happened and I felt powerless, useless, and angry. I know that feeling when I have absolutely nothing to wrap my fingers around to choke out the evil or the sadness or the pain. All I have left is my ability to lament. 

And yet, despite the fact that we all have these moments (what brought us there isn’t the point), we often lament alone. We see lament as a solitary activity, meant to be done behind closed doors, in showers, under bed covers. We feel so, so isolated and alone despite the fact that we are not even remotely alone, not even if we want to be (because really, we don’t wish these feelings on anyone). In our most raw-human space, we retreat, we hide, we feel shame. Why? I mean, I know why I feel that way, but how did we manage to make one of life’s hardest and most relatable experiences one that also feels shameful in need of hiding?

Maybe because we are so focused on solutions. Those well-meaning friends of that Facebook poster, they were trying to fix. Even the ones who wrote benign things like: “I am so sorry, feel better soon,” the idea was “this is bad and I want it to go away for you.” Those are not bad sentiments, not by a long shot! But when you are in those moments, there are some weird gymnastics that your brain tries to finagle. “If I didn’t do XYZ, I wouldn’t feel this.” “If I remembered that XYZ, I would have perspective and feel better.” “I should have known better.” Shit, we want to feel better so the other folks will feel better, we’re just as uncomfortable with their sadness as we are with our own. We feel shame because we think we can think our way out of it, and we just aren’t smart enough, we just haven’t tapped into the right perspective, the right faith, the right zen space.

The truth is that being human requires feeling human. And you can’t enlightenment away emotions. This truth is eternally torturous. If you think about the Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane scene- many folks interpret Jesus’ “Take this cup away from me, if you can” statement to be specifically about being crucified. What if it was about being human? Feeling the full brunt of rejection, failure, isolation, and yeah, physical pain. But the emotional devastation had to be pretty brutal too. I am not into the bloody Jesus imagery – but the feeling of questioning everything you believe in, everything you stand for, everyone you thought loved you- yeah- I can relate to that. Maybe there’s something in that story for everyone to relate to, and for me, it was never the blood and gore.

Why is it so hard for us to feel like humans? Why do we isolate and guard our most common and authentic experiences? The solution part is one piece of it- we think we should be able to out-smart our feelings, outwit our human experience. Even talking about intentionally “feeling our emotions” sometimes morphs into a means-to-an-end conversation. Feel it so you can forget it. Feel it so you can be done with it. Some of us brilliant folks think: well why don’t I skip that step and just not feel it at all? Because every attempt I make to “feel it and forget it” somehow doesn’t work. I feel it, then I feel it some more, then I don’t quite feel it but it still hurts a little and I’m worried because maybe I didn’t feel it enough to make it go completely away, and now I’m circling back to feeling it again. For the love of God will this feeling never end?! So we work on not feeling, because man, this feeling shitty thing is for the BIRDS.

We often see life as a spectrum between two extremes- Lament: “SHIT THIS SUCKS!” and Joy: “HOLY SHIT THIS IS AMAZING!”. We think of the middle as a neutral place, not too hot, not too cold. The sweet spot to rest in. We fantasize, thinking- if we can control our feelings and humanity to just go from neutral to ecstasy and back, we might be able to make it! It’s not emotions that are the problem, it’s just the really bad ones. We can “feel our feelings” but if we’re smart enough, it won’t be the really scary or dark ones. Maybe we can limit our “bad emotions” intake, limit the situations that can lead to them. We spend SO much time and energy (and money) trying to do just that. Our failure to avoid those situations make us feel awful again and again.

But real life isn’t linear or even one-directional. It’s multi-dimensional and we don’t have a clue about most of the dimensions. The pendulum swing we envision as plinking from left to right- bad to good- nope- there’s more depth to a pendulum swing. Real pendulums that have multiple points of engagement (nudges, taps, pushes and prods- aka- life) will go all over the place. Even (and this is important to note) a hanging pendulum with nothing but an initial push, will rotate and move more than just back and forth, simply by existing on planet earth with its gravity and axis angle. (Check it out: Foucault Pendulum) Just like our inevitability of movement is implied simply by existing, our experiences and emotions also move. They don’t just swing left to right, they go up and down, sideways, backwards, they move slowly or quickly. All that movement looks exhausting, and it makes complete sense that we humans would like to just, you know, hang in the middle at neutral for a bit (or always). (Even though, and I think you see where I am going with this- it’s impossible.)

If you think of a real pendulum, the middle is not actually where you want to be- it’s emotionlessness- it’s immobile, it’s actually the most unnatural position to be in, you have to work very hard to stay in that place. This is the emotional place where you gaze through exhausted eyes and think “Whatever.” All your energy goes into holding on to neutral, to the point where nothing matters. You can’t even get to joy from there, because if you loosen control, it’s really hard to get back to neutral. Everything becomes a risk and scary: including happiness.

Back to lament and our avoidance of it (or solitude in it).

At first I thought that lament was a result of worn out hope. I thought, no one (at least not me) can function on the power of hope forever in the face of reality on earth. I thought lament was when we finally gave up holding our hope shield in its protective stance and lowering it, letting the reality surround us until we yell out: “THIS SUCKS!” I thought lament was when we finally let down our guard and cry, because it’s too exhausting to hold on to hope. Sometimes we just can’t do it anymore.

But maybe it’s not hope that is tiresome. Maybe it’s our need to fix the pendulum into place. We think if we can find that neutral spot, or at least control the swing, THEN we’ll be happy. THEN we’ll keep our optimism. We can avoid the bad stuff and sad stuff altogether! So we do what we can to keep our life experiences within that realm, to keep our emotions within that realm. Anything outside our comfort zone is intolerable, literally. We have no stamina for it because we’ve so carefully managed our experiences and emotions to stay within the guidelines of what we want to handle. Of course life does not operate within our comfort zones and it shocks us EVERY TIME we’re forced outside this zone. EVERY. TIME. (I’m talking to myself here too.)

A lame example, but I’m thinking about how some people try to keep that just-right amount of alcohol buzz. It’s basically impossible. They want to feel just the warm-fuzzy of a glass of wine for an entire night. The older you get, the more impossible it becomes. Either the buzz wears off or you get drunk. Usually the game ends in a migraine or ten minutes of your sillier self and the rest of the night you bemoaning the fact that you’re old and can only drink one glass of wine. You focus so much on the balance you’re trying to keep that you miss out on entire conversations.

I think we do that with our emotions and our life experiences. We try to maintain that comfort zone buzz by using all our power and energy to make that pendulum hold still where we want it to, regardless of what is happening around us. That is so fucking tiresome. That is a lot of swimming in place. Life is and has always been more than the comfort zone. So no wonder we’re exhausted, we’re pushing against reality!

OMG- I’m sorry but I thought of another lame example. If you know the Harry Potter stories, there’s a scene with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, the main characters who find themselves in death-defying situations far more often than feasibly believable for even teenagers. This scene has all three characters plopped into a giant pile of a thick-rooted plant that twists and twirls around them. The harder they resist, the tighter it squeezes. Hermione, the brilliant one of the group, remembers that the way out (through) is to relax. She and Harry are able to do this long enough to get deposited safely on the floor below. Ron (the idiot of the group) does not find a way to relax and continues thrashing and struggling until finally Hermione remembers that the plant also hates light and shoots a stream of light, saving Ron’s anxious ass.

We’re all the Ron idiot. I mean- maybe you aren’t, but I am 100% Ron, relax through the struggle? What kind of bullshit is that?! The fight/flight/or freeze response kicks in for many of us as a response to situations that are actually not deadly, but it feels like it is. We get so narrow in our comfort zone that everything becomes a survival-level-threat and our brains just go: “Oh man, here we go again…FIGHT! RUN! FREEZE!…. dammit- ok…. FIGHT! RUN! FREEZE!…… seriously though?! Ok… FIGHT! RUN! FREEZE!” Til it wears itself completely out and says: you know what? I think we should just be dead, this world is scary AF and I’m getting nothing for my efforts.

But we humans, we have a pretty solid survival instinct, so we pick the next best option: apathy.

Perhaps the exhaustion of staying comfortable (not the exhaustion of being hopeful) is why so many of us choose apathy. No buzz, but no sorrow either. Also no joy. You don’t move… it’s a listless existence. You are no longer holding the boundaries of your comfort zone in place because nothing really matters anymore. You’re just lying there, untethered to the life force completely. Apathy is not angry and cynical like lament and it is easier to maintain than joy. But the result is… meh. Meh is the price some of us are willing to pay to save ourselves from the exhaustion of trying to control the swinging pendulum, or experiencing the highs and lows of life that feel raw and vulnerable… It’s our third way out of the pain of human existence. Sometimes our brains choose it for us (or we give it no other option).

Spoiler alert: meh really sucks. It’s not living.

So I come full circle back to my friend’s lament. She was IN IT, it was HARD, but she was not meh. I see it now. Lament is a gift. Ugh, I hate that I just wrote that, but I’ll say it again: CARING, GRIEVING, it’s all a fucking gift that we try to return if we can, but life doesn’t let us. Hell, even Jesus tried to skip this part, and if Jesus wanted to opt out on parts of the human experience, then I think we can give ourselves a little space and grace when we’re like: NO THANKS.

But sometimes just for the sake of real rest, we have to allow ourselves to let go and be swung into lament. To give up control of the pendulum long enough and then yell our heart out. Maybe that is the deeper rest that we crave. To let go of control. If we really let go… then the pendulum keeps swinging, and life also has joy. We may not trust that (I may not always trust that), but meh has nothing better to offer, so it’s worth a shot.

Lament is a result of real life. Sometimes the pendulum swings all the way out there and we need to just yell. But in that scream, we’re alive. If we can see lament as the gift that it is, maybe we can get better at communal lament. Maybe we can start celebrating the fact that if something sucks so fucking much, that surely it means the opposite is also true. Surely it means that my existence is full. Maybe at least by lamenting together, we can have some support, some tethers to goodness hiding in the webs that connect us. We don’t need to see them or even name them, it’s the time of lament. We just need to have them exist at the same time. We need to see the evidence of the multi-dimensional world of experience is embedded in every moment.

Life is a hurricane force gale, whipping our cute little pendulums all over the damn place. Somehow we’re supposed to let go and feel and move. We’re all a bit shitty at that. But maybe it’s the way through, the way to live (fully?).

So when you see someone lament- don’t try to bring them into your comfort zone. That’s unsustainable and a kick in the nards. Don’t try to push their pendulum to joy. Let them scream. Scream with them. They’re trying to live.

And when the joy comes, as it always does, let’s have a huge fucking party.