A Picture of Strength
I always thought that my strength came from having a solid understanding of the big picture. To me, this meant knowing, in intimate detail, all the little pieces that make up the larger framework of my life. The big picture is made up of many small elements, and if we can know and examine each one of these elements, then we can understand how they fit into the whole. In knowing this, we can see how things connect—and here is the leap: If we can understand how things connect, then we can anticipate how they will connect in the future. This was my concept of strength, this understanding. This ability to make intuitive leaps.
Now, I find that I don’t understand much of anything. I don’t understand how all of my hard work has gotten me to this place, which is a place I don’t really want to be. (Because it involves suffering.) Or I’m afraid because I know what I want, but I don’t see how to get there. (Which is someplace that doesn’t have any suffering.) And I don’t see how to get there because everything is so unpredictable. I can only control my feelings (and barely that), so how can I go about creating my big picture if I can’t see all the pieces?
This unpredictability drains me. It leaves me feeling weak and uncertain. How can I draw up the plans for my life when I don’t know what will happen from one moment to the next? And how can we possibly turn all of this not knowing into a position of strength?
In combat, knowledge is the first and most essential weapon. How can you target the enemy if you don’t know who that enemy is? How can you target them if you don’t know where they are?
This line of thinking implies that “strength” is something we hope to obtain because we are trying to protect ourselves from something. Strength is about fortifying. It is about blocking. It is about withstanding. “Power of resisting force” rather than “vigor of action” or “courage.”
We feel weak when we say we are vulnerable, when we say we are open. Because this vulnerability, this leaving ourselves open, means we are also open to attack. There is an enemy out there somewhere, we think, and if we’re not strong enough, they’ll huff, and puff, and blow down our house.
Some of us (and we know who we are) try to draw our strength by manipulating others. We might belittle them, criticize them, make them feel as if there is something wrong with them. All the while, we’re sucking up their life force like a vampire, fattening ourselves on the fruits of their shortcomings. Other approaches (such as being passive-aggressive) may be more subtle, but the concept is the same. We are, once again, trying to protect ourselves through fortification, through the power of resisting force. We are pushing so we don’t get pushed. We wear our meanness like body armor. We forgo compassion in lieu of self-righteousness.
But there is something more to strength, I think, then all this self-protection and vampirism. The Tao Te Ching says, “The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain.”
Consider a river. It is completely open. It is completely accepting (you can slip in a pebble, a foot, a tree limb, or a rusted-out ’67 Ford pickup). When you look into it, you see only yourself. But it can weather massive boulders down into pebbles. It can displace entire buildings. It can fit itself into the smallest crack. It can find its way around the largest rock, carving a path where no path exists. It refuses nothing. It gives itself completely. That is vigor of action, not power of resisting force.
What if our true strength revealed itself in our ability to open, to accept, to give of ourselves, and to create from the things that come rather than through an act of force? What if we demolished our fortresses? What then? What if we release our desire for a specific outcome, a specific picture?
I feel as if I spend a good deal of my energy trying to force things to take shape. I have a picture in mind of what I want, and so I set about trying to make that picture come to life. But at what cost? Sometimes, no matter what you do, the picture doesn’t come out right. Life is supplying the pieces, but they don’t always fit together in the way you might suppose. Imagine putting together a puzzle where you don’t know what the final image is meant to be. You turn things, right and left, and try to jam pieces together. You’re trying to create the image of a lion because you saw a bit of golden fur, but in the end, what you really have is the Golden Lion Tamarin—which is a monkey.
You can keep trying; you can start over again—and really exert your will this time!—but it might be less painful to simply consider reassessing what it is you’re trying to create from what you’ve been given.
I know how hard this is. We can imagine truly beautiful pictures. We can dream amazing things, and tell ourselves the most wonderful stories. They all have happy endings. They all contain true love and heroism. We are courageous in our stories. We are brave knights, warrior goddesses, or damsels being rescued. Our picture is never crooked, or dark. We’re never imagining the trailer park and the double-wide; we’re picturing the two-story Tudor with a deck. We can chart the course of our life so clearly, and then, when we actually go to travel the path, it turns out completely different. The path in our head didn’t have a fireswamp. There weren’t any man-eating meerkats.
What is strength then, if not powering through? If not wrestling with the path, trying to change its direction? And why should we let go of what we want? Isn’t this giving up? Isn’t this resigning ourselves to our position in life? Feeling as if we can get or deserve no better?
No. This is letting go of trying to force what we want using tools that may no longer be applicable to our circumstance. It seems to me that it takes more strength to let go of the picture in our heads than it does to continue to try to force it to take shape—most likely with pieces that will never fit together.
This hurts, I think. The idea of letting go makes me cringe. I want, so badly, for my happy ending. I want to hang my beautiful picture. I want to puff up with pride and say that my hard work and perseverance made it happen—against all odds. And why shouldn’t I? Books like The Secret try to tell us that we can have whatever we want, if only we imagine it hard enough. If only we draw enough mental pictures, or write ourselves a check for a million dollars and really truly believe that we’re bringing it to us, then there it will be. Magic! So then, if I fail to bring about the picture I want, it is only because I failed in imagining hard enough, the pieces I would need in order to create it. While I think there may be something to this—certainly energy can draw energy—I also think that it is incredibly hard to retract our focus. It is hard to release our expectations of form. Because we still have a specific picture in mind. And this could be the thing that foils us, each and every time. This could be the thing that keeps us suffering.
And we want strength to be the thing we build so that it doesn’t hurt. If I’m strong enough, fortified enough, then that must mean I can keep pain at bay. But I’m strong, and I’m hurting. I have to let it wash over me because that’s all that I can do. Breathe it in, all this pain. I am in the low places. I don’t know what to do anymore, to make my picture a reality. I have come to the place of giving up. I can only let go of this specific picture; I can only see what else I can create from the pieces.
And when we pull back, even further, from our individual life portraits, we see that this is all the BIG PICTURE. We are a part of it, and affecting it, creating with it—but we cannot force a single thing. It is completely fluid, at each moment. It is never fixed. It is never a puzzle with a set number of pieces, nor an image set in stone. Alternatively, the one destination is always many destinations, and many roads. Nothing is static, but our mindset can make it seem static. And when this happens, it can appear that there is nothing but darkness, and failure, and futile efforts to achieve our dreams.
I want to believe that strength is in my arms. It is in embracing the things that come my way—and that has to include the pain and disappointment. Strength is my ability to love, my ability to forgive, and my ability to let go. Strength is in my ability to find beauty in any picture. Even the chaos, where no discernable shape appears, holds a lesson for us.
But I can no longer continue to define my strength as an ability to keep the current image of my life at bay, or to force others to construct the things I think I need. It is not in my need to protect myself from pain. The picture is always changing. The pain and joy is always fluctuating, blending together to create something new.
As I’ve grown up, my prayers have changed. They have gone from, “God please give me breasts” and “God, please give me enough money to pay my quarter of the rent” and “God, please make so-and-so fall madly in love with me,” to things that feel so much more humble.
“God, please help me to let go. Please help me to love. Please help me to be calm and aware. Please give me the strength to accept what comes and to grow.”
If I can make peace with myself, if I can be calm, then the picture transforms again into what it truly Is—and I will finally be free enough to see it clearly: It is my story, and yours. It is exactly as it should be.
(orig. post. July 2009)
