There is something truly satisfying about standing out when we choose it: he got the highest grade, she finished her first marathon, the project was awarded top prize. Aiming at something, achieving that something and having it be recognized as special can be a feeling of accomplishment, satisfaction, motivation to continue. So many things.
And then there are things that we fear make us special, make us stand out amongst our peers: my job loss, my child’s estrangement, my spouse’s death, my illness. There are so many components of these circumstances that make us feel awkward, odd, different in a bad way.
Part of that feeling may lie in the un-chosenness of the thing. Circumstances thrust upon us are sometimes things to celebrate, but often not. They are not due to our efforts, they are not the result of our intention, so even the good things are a fluke, an anomaly, not something we pride ourselves in as making us special.
The unchosen things that we do not celebrate often feel sticky, ever present, as if they announce their existence publicly while we try to shush them into nonexistence. I can’t go to the store during the day while everyone’s working, they’ll know I lost my job; I can’t take a family picture with our middle child missing, they’ll know he didn’t join us for the holidays; I can’t miss out on the late night showing of the movie, they’ll know my treatment fatigue is the reason. And on it goes, the effort to hide the thing we did not choose; the effort to hide the thing we wish wasn’t true.
So we pull, with all of our might, toward what we knew as “normal”. We use our efforts to appear as we were, before the unchosen thing happened – nothing to see here, just regular little old me; because we can see, we can feel, when standing out doesn’t make us feel worth celebrating, it makes us feel separate, alien, other.
The irony is that we don’t all get the highest grade, finish the race, or create something worthy of a top prize, but we do, all of us, live with circumstances we did not chose. Fame, fortune, smarts – none of that protects us from this part of our humanity. Pass the surface of any family or collection of people and you will find it – the addiction, the break up, the lay off. This, the condition of experiencing the unchosen circumstance, the fear or sadness or disappointment or despair of being in the company of that circumstance, that is what we have in common. That is normal.
This is not to say that once we have the intellectual realization of our position as being normal we will instantly reconcile with it. I guess that’s possible, but it seems unlikely. So now what? Well, you may want to cry a little (or a lot). Being a normal human is often a deeply difficult thing. Then, consider what normalcy now looks like, in this version of you, with your unchosen circumstance. If we weren’t pulling so hard trying to get to the old version of who we were, would we take a training to learn a new skill? Take the family photo? Rest more?
The you of Before the Unchosen Thing is still in there, you are still you. Just different now. Can you look at where you are fighting, muscling your way through and soften, just a squinch? Can you open up to a friend, colleague, family member, just a little, about how you doing now? Can you reconcile, a bit, with the idea that you can still be you with this Unchosen Thing?
This writing addresses some of the core components of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), including:
· Acceptance – recognizing what is outside of our control without aggression or struggle.
· Attention – noticing, like an observer, your own feeling state(s) and thinking.
· Self as Context – recognizing that the “you” of today is not wholly the same as the “you” of the past; that while your essence remains, the qualities and characteristics connected to you are always evolving and changing.
If you’d like to learn more about how these practices can guide you in your living, please feel free to get in touch.
