Does This Life Story Make Me Look Fat?

Hello Dear Reader,

My name is Harry, constant striver and layabout. For the last two years, I have been contributing to this newsletter in which Ryan and I manage to say something about a different core value we hold at Flourish Foundation. My contributions tend to be a little contrary or ironic because the truth is my heart is dark. That’s what my Russian stepmother calls the spades in a deck of cards–“Dark Hearts”--which in a Russian accent sounds very cool. It makes sense too! They are just like little black hearts turned upside down. I’ve attached myself to that phrase ever since I heard her say it: I’m Harry, I am a Dark Heart, a Spade!

This is the month where the value we discuss at Flourish is Value 11, which is so-named because it stands for that aspect of our lives that cannot be captured in words. It’s always a difficult month for me to write something because I don’t have a deep relationship to that quality in my life. Perhaps it’s my Spade talking, but I just love words so much! They are the teeth I use to eat the world, and when I look around, I see so much I want to eat. I love it when subtle things get perfectly captured by an explanation, or a peak experience is mirrored in a piece of art. All these mystics working for pure awareness strike me as anorexics, depriving themselves of their appetites for that sweet rush of control. But when you’re a hammer, you see a world of nails. I am a stomach with an appetite for things that can be described in words, so of course I fail to see the abundant opportunities in the world to slip off into ineffable bliss.

There are so many great core values we could include in our year that we just don’t have space for, but if I could substitute one for this month that kind of gets at my own version of Value 11, I would choose Beauty. The experience of Beauty may not be wordless and it may not be without Ego, but it’s the best this wordy ego can do. And it can be criminally underappreciated.

For a long time, I thought of myself as someone who was a little insensitive to beauty. I thought perhaps that growing up among the gorgeous Idaho wilderness had desensitized my eyes so that whenever I was in a place where other people might say “Gosh, look out the window! It’s so beautiful!” I would think, “Been there, done that.” And it’s somewhat true that I don’t care for pretty pictures and horizons the way others do. I also have bad taste and I’m colorblind to good design. I’m much more appreciative of beautiful faces, and I particularly like sounds. But the most reliable source of beauty for me is in stories. I’m a total mark for a beautiful life story. I’m even happy for a stranger to lie to me about their life story just so I can experience it.

I was raised on my mother’s life stories. Even telling one of them would require a much longer post than this. But one day I’ll write it. The one about Charles Manson is my favorite. Some of these stories are amazing love stories, some are swashbuckling adventure tales, but many of them are just awful. Nightmarish. They’re stories that involve the kinds of things you really don’t want a child to even know exist in this life. But I didn’t find them frightening. Because despite how these stories often were about horrible things happening to my mother, she was still here. She was still this beautiful, shining, loving person. It was like her whole story was the result of a study into the question of how much awful pain life can throw at a human being and they can still be standing, still alive and hopeful and compassionate. It made me weirdly appreciative of people’s sad stories, because to me they aren’t stories of things that have happened to you, they’re stories of things you have survived through some combination of resilience, brilliance, love and luck.

This is definitely a major reason I became a therapist. I really enjoy listening to people tell the story of their lives. But if there’s anywhere that the appreciation for Beauty has died, it’s psychology. Ironically, it is our need to label every problem in the human mind that completely flattens the human experience. You take a marvelous dream of a Golden Arrow Shooting Into A  Big Red Apple to your therapist, and you leave with a Father Complex. You take your heartbreak to your psychiatrist, and you may leave with an Adjustment Disorder.

The original meaning of “Psychiatry” is “Care for the Soul.” Psyche is the Greek Goddess of the Soul, but in our modern day we’ve preferred to update the root Psycho to refer to the more secular Mind. But in that transition, we’ve lost the wonder and mystery so easily evoked by the idea of a soul. I think that is part of why psychology has also failed to remember the importance of beauty. The soul is hungry for beauty, and beauty often involves the things that psychology seeks to cure. Life is messy. It contains all these symptoms. And yet, a good story is only ever good with a good villain, a good problem, a good setback. We certainly do need help with our problems, but we shouldn’t forget how important it is for the beauty in our lives to be appreciated before it is solved. We take our life stories to a therapist almost like we’re asking them, “Honey, does this life story make me look fat?” And they respond, “Well, let’s see if what you’re going through meets the diagnostic criteria for fat.” But anyone who’s ever asked that question to someone knows that we’re not asking strictly for clinical evaluation, we’re asking in the hopes that they’ll say, “Yes, and I think you’re outrageously beautiful.”

I’m reminded of a story Ram Dass told of leaving one of his spiritual teachers he’d worked with for many years. He apologized to the man, lamenting that he was ending his study while still filled with so many imperfections. His teacher silently walked around him, examining every part of his body, and then said, “I see no imperfections.”

So for what it’s worth, Striver, I know that life is at times a bloody awful mess and there’s a lot to fix and make up for. But I also want to remind you that despite whatever you don’t like when you look into the mirror of your life, I think you’re outrageously beautiful.

Love,
Dark Heart