A few weeks ago, a good friend and entrepreneur (in the business of serving, guiding and healing) had penned her thoughts about clarity on her social media page; her words carried warmth, curiosity, and honesty in her exploration of what it means to seek clarity. My takeaway from her musings was that clarity is never quite an end goal, but rather a journey - fleeting and muddled at times, clear and razor sharp at others.
And I know that for me personally, the practice of seeking clarity can offer moments of grace as well as moments of reckoning.
The idea of clarity has weighed heavy with me of late, where our world is awash in its apparent opposite - uncertainty. Uncertainty abounds in our time. Pandemic, financial insecurity, sociopolitical upheaval, and climate change are intertwined in creating this gargantuan mushroom cloud of uncertainty.
It has literally darkened our skies.
It has shifted today's zeitgeist to one where dogma is absolute in its urgent demand to be worshipped as a salve to uncertainty. Where critical thinking (which would shred dogma into mincemeat) is vilified by dogma due to the intrinsic insecurity at dogma's foundation.
The net result: anxiety and depression are at an all time high, with some studies indicating a 3x increase in anxiety and depressive disorders nationwide, as compared to a year ago.
So...what do we do with this? How do we cope? And how do we, perhaps, find moments of clarity within crisis?
In my time spent living authentically in my passion of being a psychotherapist, I've learned that there are some basic tenets to the human condition that are universal truths:
We all seek validation.
We all seek to be heard, to be understood, to be cared for, to be loved.
And it is the hope that with the help of therapy, we can find these things that we seek.
Validation.
Listening.
Understanding.
Care.
Love.
Interestingly enough, some of us might actually resist it initially, feeling unworthy of that which we seek. But with time and with good, necessary therapeutic work, we learn that it's ok to accept love. That then opens the door to our individual and intimate journey of true healing and pursuit of the best possible version of ourselves. We know ourselves better, are more comfortable in our own skin. And with that, our emotional struggles that clouded our thinking tend to dissipate, thus allowing for greater capacity for clarity.
And this doesn't just apply to our individual selves, but to our communities, to our nation, to our world. The capacity to heal at the individual, communal, and global level is ever present, even if it's obscured and tamped down...out of sight.
The capacity to heal exists.
It always has.
We, in fact, come to recognize that the doorway to the space of healing is inherent within ourselves...that we actually didn't have to look that far.
So be it at the micro level of our individual work towards greater emotional health, or at the macro level of societal healing and growth that allows for clarity of purpose as a common people - the healing is the same. The pursuit of clarity is the same.
Conversely, when authentic validation, listening, understanding, care, and love are not provided, another door opens - one of darkness, absolutism, dogma, and hate.
I believe that at its core lies fear. Fear obscures clarity.
From a communal and societal perspective, when voices speak loudly to the seductive appeal of fear, it can trigger something primal in us (part of that is the fight/flight/freeze response). We then get stuck in the fetid miasma of self centeredness, malignant narcissism, constriction, depletion, confusion, and hate. For some of us, we can't help but breathe more of it in, until we lose ourselves in this darkness.
But there's another way.
Give validation and you will, eventually, receive validation.
Give listening, understanding, care and love, and you will, eventually, receive listening, understanding, care and love.
And from a societal perspective, this doesn't mean that we don't also embrace thoughtful and righteous outrage at the atrocities inflicted upon others and ourselves - but that we respond with mindful action rather than primitive reaction. That we embrace the teachings of authentic leaders, where we come to understand that we are all to each other the following:
Sister.
Brother.
Mother.
Father.
Daughter.
Son.
In the end, I guess the Golden Rule really does apply: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Luke 6:31
But perhaps the verse in Leviticus is more apt: "Whatever is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow man."
These verses were highlighted in a recent Daily News article by Jennifer Anne Moses, where she identified that the difference between the two is that the first implies a state of reciprocity, whereas the second more directly focuses on our unilaterally kind action towards others.
Ms. Moses goes on to talk about how coming from a position of love is imperative, but that it's ultimately not sustainable. It needs something else. That something else is justice. And specifically, justice influenced and guided by love:
"Justice, however, is a different matter: the ultimate criterion, love made into law,
something you have to do whether you feel like it or not.
Love institutionalized - in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - is the foundation
of American democracy."
Justice influenced and guided by love; that strikes me as a rock steady framework to follow.
Because, ultimately...
Love is more powerful than hate.
Hope is more powerful than fear.
Light is more powerful than darkness.
Justice is more powerful than dogma.
And there can be Clarity within Crisis.
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