Reframe Refrain

As Spring is almost upon us I’ve been thinking about the idea of turning a new leaf. Of new chapters and new beginnings and how important it can be to update the scriptwriters in our heads. I think a lot about change, the ways in which we all change physically (my knee makes an insane noise when I do squats now), with our time (where does it go?), and energy (the way men sometimes soften in their old age). But also more active change, the change of confrontation, of squaring up to the things that scare you. Confronting your fear of flying to see your grandkids. Confronting the things that are keeping you stuck. The thoughts that don’t offering anything. That fight to keep you off-rhythm and to one side.

I remember in college meeting someone—a crust punk kind of guy who wore women's jeans and had lots of piercings and tattoos who was quite possibly the first vegan I’d encountered in the wild. Someone I respected if not quite understood. He told me that hand sanitizer, while killing 99.9% of bacteria actually aids in the development and evolution of certain bacteria, making superbugs that survive and are evolving to be more resistant.

Instead of taking this information in with wonder, I simply looked at the person saying it to me and thought, well, here you go. This is what “too much” looks like, what “trying too hard” looks like. We've created this hand sanitizer, which helps people stay healthy and save lives, especially in hospitals and places like nursing homes, and here is someone finding the the .1% of the problem and focusing on that. What a silly and unproductive thing to say, and actually that can’t be true. I then told the story of how ridiculous this thing was to anyone who would listen. Can you believe this? What are we talking about? Most people nodded or didn’t have anything to say about it. WE CAN ALL AGREE I DON’T NEED TO LOOK INTO THIS, RIGHT?

Years later, I found out it was true and actually it was a problem, combined with our over-prescription of antibiotics, we really are breeding superbugs. I shot the messenger because the message seemed counterproductive, but if I were to ask what it was counterproductive to, I would have to admit it was only my feelings. Or perhaps more generously, to the storytelling of how I saw the world. And the comfort and security I had that society’s problems are being generally taken care of.

Hand sanitizer is not magic, it’s alcohol in a 60-90% concentration (70% and up is required to be used in hospitals) plus things to keep that alcohol from evaporating and make it less abrasive to your skin. It was invented in the 1960’s but wasn’t popularized until the 90’s. It was never meant to replace washing your hands, but in situations where running water isn’t available and places like hospitals where washing your hands constantly causes a lot of wear people's little fingies.

But when it became a product that you can sell to the American consumer base (“you don’t want your family covered in disgusting bacteria do you?“), and with the government having no interest in becoming involved in regulating products until they are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be causing harm (and often not even then) it became widespread and its convenience and low price made it ubiquitous.

Here’s the thing, I wasn’t wrong to question the importance of this information. But why did I react so negatively to it? Why did I then judge and castigate my acquaintance? Why did I feel so challenged, and also only curious to see what others thought of my story, and not on the fact itself? I didn’t know much about hand sanitizer, obviously. I wasn’t the son of it’s inventor and heir to a sanitizer fortune. Didn’t even own a bottle, barely used the stuff.

Now I find myself in a position where I am someone who often shares facts that upset people. At some point I crossed over the Rubicon of inconvenient truths. Or maybe I should say I crossed DENIAL (it ain’t just a river in Egypt, rim shot). And now I sometimes see myself being perceived as “too much” as “trying too hard” as “missing the point.” I see myself being another shot messenger. And I see how much that language tries to control dissent by painting the critique as childlike, short sighted, uninformed.

Ultimately this instinct, this language is called reactionary sentiment and it is used to shut down discussion. It has always been a popular tool in the American tradition. The reactionary voice lives inside of us all, I think it belongs to one of the many wolves inside us, one that got into some bad food. Either way, the heart-thumping howl to a fact that doesn’t fit with your worldview comes all the same. From a fear of being castigated, or perhaps cast-aside. The book “The Courage to be Disliked,” (about Alderian psychology which is kinda weird, but also interesting) puts it like this:

“…being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual.’”

I think as people begin to wake up to how captured our government is by corporate interest, and how those corporations are creating shareholder value by clipping at the edges of our humanity, people are having a hard time not reacting. How can you blame them, it’s so hard to be a good listener when you don’t feel safe in your body, unsure about the future of the floor you’re standing on. Urged at every avenue to disconnect with those around you, find solace in the new and improved third space, the internet.

When I was in high school I talked to many friends who were being diagnosed with ADHD, and one of my best friends was given medication to treat depression. It was all news to me, but when I asked about it he told me “it makes you feel like a zombie,” and though zombies were en vogue at the time, it wasn’t really an enviable position. I learned a simple rule, if you admit that you are depressed you have to wear a brain helmet. If you get diagnosed with ADHD that means you’re a bad student and maybe a bad kid, you have too much energy, and you annoy everyone’s parents.

But I was a very moody and prone to frenzy kind of teen, like many others. I enjoyed rooting around in my emotional baggage, and it’s where I learned to write and to be excited about reading. But a teenage phase, it was not. Or it became a college phase. And then a post-college phase. And then my New York Era phase, and oh it turns out I was depressed actually. And I got on SSRI’s and I loved them. I felt a little better, not majorly, but the diagnosis, and the drug helped me put a name to it. And now when people talked about depression, I could just listen to what they had to say, and not worry about whether or not it applied to me, because there was no punishment coming. The depression is the punishment.

Depression is just one way of organizing my ideas about myself. And in admitting that I’ve always had depression, I passed a barrier. And was rewarded with a new world of ideas and information that I didn’t have to resist against. And I’ve found when I push past these barriers I am rewarded, again and again, with a wealth of experience. It’s similar to falling in love. In order to do it, you sort of have to relinquish control. You have to stop resisting the endless questions of how and whether and just be a flame, flickering and swelling. And in doing so you get to experience one of the most deep and consuming partnerships imaginable (if it’s really real) and be one fire with two sources.

All this to say I believe in new chapters and changing your mind because while I believe we are individuals with unique expressions of life, I also believe words can only do so much justice to express living. A story can tell you so much, but it leaves out even more, and it’s important to hold space to not speak, to not think, and experience that part of life too.

Stuart Hall, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932, once wrote:

"Identity is not a set of fixed attributes, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact, identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being."

So perhaps it wasn’t wrong to think of depression in chapters, I certainly can’t go back and change any of it. And what value is there in saying it robbed me of anything, when I am so blessed in this life? When my race is not run. When I get more time in this messy, magical human stew. When I get to not just continue being, but continue becoming.