Handling What Cannot Be Handled

I awoke the other morning with a poignant clarity. For a moment, I don’t know how long it lasted, I knew why I was alive, what I’m doing here, how to proceed, and what I had chosen to be up against. During that blessed moment I thought of something I want to use this forum to explore.  I knew that when I felt most alive, absorbed, and meaningfully engaged, was when I was trying to handle what I could not handle. In other words, when I was overwhelmed by what I faced, I was more than I usually was.  This method of engagement, has not been the way I have wanted to live, but strangely enough, it has been when I am most alive. What follows is my intrigued inquiry into this phenomenon.

To be clear, what I am interested in, is the fact that the things that have made me feel incompetent, over my head, defeated, have drawn out of me competencies, awareness, and the discovery of new life. How can this be? This is entirely counter-intuitive. It is also just the opposite of what makes me a good, predictable, reliable, commercial entity. Through some kind of paradox the very thing that renders me capable, is the same thing that makes me feel incompetent!

I am realizing at an advanced age, almost too late (and it fills me with regret), that what really enlivens me, isn’t necessarily what I have chosen, but what has come along, chosen, and overwhelmed me. I have grown, been stretched more, not by the challenges I have taken on, but by the inescapable challenges that have made me cringe, shake, and feel uncertain. These moments, which I would have largely chosen to avoid, have been my greatest benefactors.

This is a scary realization. Whereas I thought I was choosing to grow myself, like a good, responsible seeker, instead I’m finding that I have actually preferred to take on what I thought I could handle, to consolidate and comfort myself, to feel some mastery, rather than feel the vulnerability of real growth. This realization is, for me, one that generates a complex reaction. I am amazed by the recognition that despite my preferences I have been met by the challenges that have grown me. Something is helping me! At the same moment I realize that I am being helped without my explicit consent. I am suffering from such help! I wonder am I handling my life or is this life handling me?

I don’t know the answer to such questions. I only know that had I the capacity to refuse, I might very well have avoided the very things that made me what I am. Left to myself, I might not be myself.  I thank God I wasn’t left to myself, or do I? I tell myself I like to stretch. But, do I like to be stretched? Am I free to exercise volition or not? Would I be, who I would like to believe I am, without going through some things I wouldn’t have chosen, some things, notably hardships, that have shaped me? The truth I am coming to, is that I am only partly mine, that I am defined as much by the difficulties that have shaped me, as I am of some shape I have chosen.

Why is this important to me? Life seems to be serving up just the hardships I need to grow. Isn’t that awareness enough? No, not really. My tendency to avoid what seems too hard, threatens my growth and development. There isn’t alignment between what grows me and my own proclivities. That seems to me to be a recipe for the worst kind of suffering. And, it makes growth look like being victimized. I want to at least be the co-captain of my own ship.

If that is the truth, if I want to exercise some real responsibility for my life, then I have got to develop a different attitude. Instead of avoiding what is hard, thinking something is wrong, I have got to lean into what is difficult, and be glad to be thus challenged. To go beyond myself, I’ve got to greet what reveals my incompetence and carries me beyond myself. Developing this attitude almost seems un-American. It doesn’t look like pursuing happiness. Or, does it? Real happiness and security, it now seems to me, lies in knowing I can do the difficult and grow and be more.

With this understanding, I recall a poem by Rilke, where he draws upon an Old Testament image of a prophet wrestling with an angel. In it he states, “This is the way he grows, by being defeated by bigger and bigger angels.” I’ve read that line and understood it to be about growth but I’ve never focused so much attention upon being defeated. Taking on what is bigger, and being ultimately defeated by it, won’t get me on the news, but apparently it will grow me. Handling what I cannot handle introduces me to a new me. How amazing!

There is one more thing. Life is a gift. This isn’t my life. It is one of the bigger angels. It kicks my ass around the block, corners me, pierces my heart, breaks me down, disables me, and keeps teaching me. It is, in Ram Das’s words,  “fierce grace.” I am being grown, despite myself. As Rilke said, ”What we fight with is so small (meaning my pedestrian human concerns). What fights with us is so big (meaning the angel that delivers me).” I cannot handle what holds me here. I have learned this much. I am a child of God, and like Jesus, I will be put to death, because I have been blessed by Life, an angel sent to shape me. Knowing this much, even as I am being reduced/enlarged, makes me Lucky. 

l/d