If what you’re looking for is a story of incredible overcoming, then I have faith that Google can deliver those goods in an instant.
Surviving an incredible tragedy, some painful event – a loss, a moment of unfathomable pain – and then emerging a better person because of it… those stories make amazing headlines. We eat them up. They give us hope.
Parents who’ve lost children setting up foundations in their names, people who’ve survived incredible accidents and ultimately achieved feats of athletic near-impossibility, people who have come from nothing, or abuse or torture or disadvantage of any kind and made something incredible of themselves… I could read these stories all day.
I look at people who have lived through such pain and I marvel at their stories of overcoming, of achievement, of glory.
The thread weaving all of these aforementioned stories together is some brand or version of pain – objective, seeable pain. Whether in the form of loss, tragedy, discrimination, disadvantage – watching the overcoming inspires us. It draws us in. It makes us believe; want to be better people ourselves.
Which brings me… to me.
My deepest, darkest secret is this: I am a white, well-educated woman with a middle-class upbringing. I have a lovely home in a wonderful community, and the beautiful family I always dreamed of having.
There. I’ve said it.
And yet prior to my setting out on this journey toward gentler, I felt a yearning for something more; a sense that something was missing.
Seriously? Did you read my darkest secret? What could possibly be missing? Didn’t I have it all?
For years this is what I told myself. I’d push down my sense of wanting, yearning, wondering. I’d seek out the stories of the disadvantaged overcoming, reminding myself I had no such hardship to overcome.
And I felt shame for feeling pain.
Then, during the summer of
What an incredible tragedy.
And as I reflected on the holes both personalities left, I realized that pain, wanting and suffering don’t discriminate. They avail themselves to all of us.
Now granted, there is a difference between feeling pain and sadness and feeling self-pity.
I realized I had no case for self-pity. But I could indeed be a privileged white woman who could look her privilege in the face, appreciate it, and also feel a more-shaped hold. (And here I honor the promise I made in this previous post to acknowledge my privilege).
It’s what brought me to the TED talk by Ash Beckham in which she makes the claim that we are all hiding something we need to let go of. Because hard isn’t relative. Hard is hard.
It’s possible – even OK – to be both privileged and feel like life is feeling hard.
I needed her permission to tell myself this.
Neither Kate nor Anthony – may they rest in peace – intended (I presume) to teach us a lesson with their choices. And yet I did manage to extract my own.
I owe it to myself and to my privilege
I can want and strive and have and be grateful.
These are all essential components of the journey I’m on.