Last updated on 8 December 2020
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“People who have only good experiences aren’t very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren’t very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well–it’s easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is necessarily simple. But I don’t think you’re going to have a life like that, and I think you’ll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. You must not let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift–a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
It is rare for me that a movie is better than the novel which inspires it. Occasionally it happens with a science fiction film, probably because I am such a sucker for the wizardry of special effects. Pitch Black with Vin Diesel and recently, Oblivion with Morgan Freeman and Tom Cruise, are examples of not-so-good movies from good novels whose stories were improved by special effects.
A movie we watched the other night is another good example. Though Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, wasn’t nearly as great as its title, there are some things useful in the story, an adaptation of a book by Peter Cameron which I haven’t read. The premise is this: pain in the present is temporary and instructive for living our lives going forward. How we make use of our challenges today can teach us to live better in the future.
Sometimes our troubles feel like a a long trip to see an ornery grandfather on a bumpy road full of potholes. It doesn’t matter how you drive. The ride will still suck and there is no reward at the end. Despite this, it has become my mission to mine every unfortunate circumstance and bad feeling for its valuable message. Some experiences are harder than others. For example, I was fired from a good job less than two months ago, my step-kids lost their father last month and my oldest daughter has mostly wanted nothing to do with me for nearly three years. In fact, I am always aware how my relationships with my daughters feel fragile as glass.
It would not be unreasonable to be sad in the face of these circumstances. In fact, sometimes they take away all my perspective, turning me away from the better things in my life. I ruminate about how the choices I thought I made to make things feel better about my life dramatically affected others, specifically my daughters. You might see how this thinking could lead right to a downward spiral, my sense about one circumstance and the pain it causes leads to feeling badly about a completely different experience and then another and another. Though parents are supposed to be rejected by children as they go through the process of differentiating and maturing, this rejection by my daughter hurts and leads to guilt over the pain I’ve caused her. The guilt builds to feeling responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened not only in her life but for my other kids as well. The sense of responsibility leads to hating myself for all of my stupid choices. I could keep going. Maybe you get the idea.
Sometimes our troubles feel like a a long trip on a bumpy road full of potholes to see an ornery grandfather. It doesn’t matter how you drive. The ride will still suck and there is no reward at the end.
I wonder why anyone would do this to themselves. The interesting thing about my experiences is what they have have taught me about the differences between depression and sadness. It is a commonly held myth that the different tribes of Eskimos have an unusually large number of words to describe the subtle differences between types of snow. Snow has a spectrum, from heavy, wet and dense, to tiny, delicate ice crystals laid one atop the other. The same is true for me regarding sadness and depression. It has to do with how I make use of pain.
Depression is a kind of lethargy. It is a sense that things won’t and can’t ever feel better. It’s so much easier just to roll over and go back to sleep. Or hang out in front of the TV and stare at movies. I’ve tried to explain to my wife what depression feels like: Everything is gray. Everything is weighed down and it becomes hard to move. Depression is a room empty of air and joy.
Sadness, on the other hand, even massive sadness, is temporary and circumstantial. It is a reaction to a recent event, a kind of disappointment that sticks in your throat. In depression, you might want to cry all the time or not at all. With sadness you want to cry and cry hard, get it all out. Often, once we cry, it’s as if a burden is lifted and we can feel better. This awareness, gained over years of mistakes, has a reward for me–where I once was depressed I can now honestly and authentically feel sadness instead. I can pass through sadness. The difference is night and day.
It is no secret to my wife and those who know me how my sense of self is deeply tied to my identity as a dad. Whenever it feels like my relationships with my daughters are threatened I have the potential to drop into a depression spiral. Throw in the loss of a job and trying to be a “dad” to my step kids who’ve lost their real father and taking complete responsibility for every thing that has ever gone wrong in my life and I am ripe for a fall.
What the movie reminded me is that sadness over some distinct, unfortunate circumstances doesn’t have to become depression. Seeing sad feelings for what they are, that is, notions based on assumptions and scripts created in my head, allows me to see they are no more permanent than a cut on my finger from slicing bread. I can change those scripts and make use of my sadness, my pain. This not-so-good movie at an opportune moment refreshed my understanding that pain in life is inevitable. The wisdom in the experiences causing the pain is a choice.
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