"Out of sorts"...searching for grace

Has anyone else encountered the predictable, almost inevitable, link between feeling ‘out of sorts’, not sick not necessarily in pain, not showing any other symptoms other than “out of sorts” and the accompanying “what does it all mean?” vibrations in the body, in the mind, in the heart and in the spirit?

The experience of being ‘out of sorts’ is not a medical condition, not a psychiatric condition, not an employment condition, not a legal condition, not a financial condition, not an intellectual or even a moral or ethical condition. It simply does not qualify for any of the many chosen categories of labeling, or even of investigation. Is being ‘out of sorts’ a spiritual, or a religious sensation? Is there an element of guilt, shame, unworthiness, incompleteness, impermanence, and even mortality echoing in the body’s groaning and moaning? Perhaps, given that much of what we do not understand is either shoved off into that category, or left to those with enough free time and space and opportunity to ‘think’ about such ‘silly’ things. Or are they really silly after all?

We all laugh whenever we learn about scientific research, laboratory-based and government funded that critically examines the methods, frequency and consequences of the sex life of a tsetse fly. We consider such research to be frivolous, unnecessary in a world seemingly gone mad in so many ways that need critical examination. So, in that light, reflecting on being ‘out of sorts’ would seem to qualify as another of those irrelevant, redundant, superfluous, superficial and extraneous things that no one should or would be crazy enough even to contemplate.

Being ‘out of sorts’ may be, or may not be, different at different times and in different circumstances in one’s life. However, from experience, I have similar memories, pictures, of being ‘out of sorts’ in various scenes throughout the past several decades. And they all seem to be wrapped in a restlessness, perhaps provoked by a decision to or not to, perhaps evoked by a vision of a decision that might be troublesome. Perhaps being ‘out of sorts’ follows a rather lengthy list of pictures of humanity’s inhumanity to humanity, resurrecting a feeling of hopelessness, especially given that we all know the ugly truth that war, famine, poverty, pestilence, racism, sexism, ageism, indifference and all of the various faces of human depravity are never going to cease, or even be ameliorated, certainly in our lifetime.

In the Satanic verses, Salman Rushdie writes: From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

Bertrand Russell has another ‘take’ on this question of the cruelty of humans:

Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.

Perhaps feeling ‘out of sorts’ has the real and inescapable potential to bring one face to face with one’s responsibility both for the cruelty one has inflicted and for whatever steps one can take as a way of remediating, relieving, or merely moderating this inevitable, hard-wired trait that lives in every town, village, school, church, business organization, social service agency, law enforcement detachment, military battalion, court house, seminar room, and all parks, forests, oceans, rivers, canyons and mountains. It lives right here in this study behind the fingers tapping these keys. Men for centuries have tried to parse the difference between the cruelty in nature and the cruelty inflicted by men on other men and women. Some argue that only men ‘eat’ or kill their own kind. And yet, men continue to exert pain, punishment, vengeance, reprisals, assaults, insurrections, violent and lethal arrests, unannounced break-ins by law enforcement, betrayals, deceptions, denials, avoidances and especially indifference to those whose paths cross our’s in ways that we find unacceptable.

Whether it might be a mere slight of a raised eye brow, a promise of a phone call never delivered, a perception of a pattern of something termed a ‘lack of respect’ by another, or a mean-spirited name calling, or an outright declaration of hatred for a whole race (Hamas’s open and avowed claim to wipe Israel off the map!)….we are all engaged in some web of both inflicting pain and receiving pain in a manner some would consider ‘the way it is and has to be’. Conflict, tension, competition, and the innate and inherent human drives to will, to power, to dominance, to freedom, to succeed, to be noticed especially by a select group of others, to fill an inner vacuum of unworthiness….all of these acts, while on one level, totally justified, tolerated, accepted and even lauded, invariably bring about pain to others. Deliberate and committed dedication to the pursuit of a specific “power” whether as a solo ‘flight’ or with others, will require bumping into others who might have a similar or precisely the same desire. It may require abandoning loved ones, and the ‘wake’ of that tsunami in their lives may never have been even contemplated. We often inflict pain through our failure to show up, just as we often inflict pain by showing up in a belligerent manner, individually, in gangs, in combat teams, and in flotillas.

Innocence, ignorance, selfishness, insecurity and even impatience are just some of the drivers that need our careful, sensitive and mature management in our personal, professional, public and international affairs. Paradoxically, self-conscious awareness, and truth-telling to oneself is no guarantee that one will not inflict significant cruelty, even death. Of course, paying attention almost exclusively to goal and the necessary means to achieve that goal, (think Putin trying to destabilize the democracies in western nations, especially the United States) could even create a self-imposed immunity from shame and guilt, if one is able to base both the design of the goal and the means needed to achieve it on what seems a reasonable, justified, and especially justifiable (at least to the perpetrator(s) themselves.

We have all endured unjustified, mean-spiritedly inflicted and often highly embarrassing injury. That wound has left an indelible scar somewhere on our psyche. We know it will not ever go away. And we also know that, if we were to embrace a pattern of self-indulgent ‘hot-tub’ soothing of that pain, we would literally and metaphorically ‘shrivel up’ in the heat of our own self-pity. That is not to say, however, that a pity-party is the only negative, or possible approach to dealing with our psychic pain.

We lost something, a dream to which we had committed considerable time and effort. Or we were blind-sided by someone we fully believed we could trust. We were misled and betrayed by someone or some group in whom we previously had complete confidence. Like Leonard Cohen, we could have been robbed by a trusted accountant, and had to return to the stage to perform in order to merely get out of debt. The earlier and the more traumatic the event, or even a similar pattern, the deeper and the longer lasting are the reverberations of that trauma and the longer and harder we have to ‘fight’ to ‘get thee behind me’ not as an eradication from memory, but as a psychic broken leg that demands both a crutch and the limp for the rest of our lives.

What invariably is lost when one experiences severe trauma is trust, the trust that one had placed in a figure, (perhaps a parent, a teacher, a clergy, a coach, a mentor, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, or even a brother or a sister). That loss of trust, however, is not restricted to that single person, in the eyes and the attitude of the ‘victim’. It extends far beyond, especially if the original trauma occurred at a young age, or was repeated for an extended period of time. Once again, this stuff is not rocket science; it is well known and documented in the biographies of many men and women who in the middle to later years are attempting to ‘come to terms’ with those aspects of their lives still unpacked, and still haunting their daily lives.

Even if the vibrations of feeling ‘out of sorts’ has no other magnetic or electric energy that a single event, like radioactive iodine, that energy has a very long life, depending on how the trauma was initially dealt with. If it were covered, denied, pasted over with a dedicated commitment to public performance, accompanied by a vaulted secrecy about the events in a past life, then the explosion of its later eruption can be serious. Or, if repressed, that negative energy, however it might be framed in the mind of the victim, could continue to play out in what musical composers call “repeats”….actions of self-sabotage that continue to replay those earlier disasters, without anyone, including the original victim, being aware of the energy source, the ‘motive’ or the explanation behind the apparent self-sabotage.

However, our early lives impact our later lives, no matter how unique or how alone or how we did or did not seek help, there is no doubt there is a profound, inescapable and inevitable connection of the dots between youth and adulthood. So evident and agreed upon is this reality now accepted that cliches like “the hurt are those who inflict hurt” has risen to the surface of public vernacular.

As one raised in a culture worshipping a stern, perhaps even relentlessly demanding god, offering one of two bipolar choices, salvation or damnation, I found that ‘theology’ unacceptable, even intolerable. Protestants hating Catholics never seemed to ‘fit’ with any god worthy of the name or the worship. As one raised in a home where a similar bi-polarity reigned: total submission to the ‘rod’ or eviction from favour….another kind of sternness, gracelessness abounded.

Lots of people have endured far worse forces, multiplied many time over. My little story, however, is just that, my little story. And the grace that was missing in the early years is something profound that I first witnessed in a grade twelve French teacher. Of course there were other teachers who were kind, who were supportive, who were encouraging and motivating, even sometimes using reverse psychology. It was this middle-aged woman, reticent, droll, highly intelligent, extremely devout religiously in a disciplined, yet private manner and attitude, never boastful, never given either to exuberance or to depression, never detached without ever imposing. There was/is a saintly truth deeply infused in her faith and identity, and if she were alive to read these words, she would turn deep red in embarrassment and likely in disbelief.

How would I paint her portrait, if I were able? While her wardrobe consisted mainly of dark olive and tan tweeds, and her voice had a quiet authoritarian rumble, I would have to find colours, setting, sky, birds, clouds and grassy fields in which to embed her gracefully seated at the base of an oak reading one of her many books. And if I were given the opportunity to title this portrait, it would take only one word, “GRACE!”

That was not her name. Grace was her identity. Of all the men and women whose lives have crossed mine, (and there have been many whom I really treasured, this woman embodied what has come to me to be the crowning quality of human aspiration, human inspiration, human ideation and the human search for god and for meaning, in whatever ways those two strivings intersect.

She did not do heroic acts. She ran no home for the homeless. She did not discover insulin. She did not write any books (so far as I know). She simply and eloquently and effectively taught young minds about a second language in a town not favourably disposed to a different language and culture. Her faith, obviously in a kindly god, seemed to impel her in and out of class; and over the ensuing seven decades (in memory) as one to be admired, to be emulated and to be revered. However she had discovered and incarnated ‘grace’ is something I wish she had lived long enough to reveal.

Heather King has a reflection on grace that seems fitting:

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

My French teacher was clearly not afraid of or resistant to the grace that painfully changes.

Would that we could all mature in a manner emulating her!