Dear Reader,
Just so you know, this is my last column before going in for surgery for my sacral chordoma on Thursday. I may be writing the column again fairly soon, but if it takes a few weeks, that will have to be OK.
Mentally, I'm clearing a space. I'm allowing myself not to be here. It's important to do that. Otherwise, I'll just be concentrating on getting back to work instead of on healing.
So let's say this: I will resume writing the column when my head clears and I have something to say. That could be a week or it could be a month. I'll miss it, and I'll miss you. But I've got to give it time. Right now, I have to let go of attachments and responsibilities and just "turn it over." I have to just heal and let people take care of me.
That's sort of a novel approach for me. You might even say it's a breakthrough.
So it bears repeating: For the next few weeks my only standard is going to be to take one day at a time as I heal. I'm going to try to be a gracious host to my own healing. I'm going to try to make it as easy as possible for this healing to take place.
I'm not going to try to rush the healing process. Healing takes time. I know this. So my impatience will have to wait.
And I'm going to accept whatever the outcome is. I trust the surgeons and doctors who will be treating me. They're dedicated individuals. I've spoken with them and I know the risks.
And if my life changes as a result, if I am impeded in some of my usual activities, if it takes longer to heal than expected, if the disease comes back, if I have to sacrifice some functions that I now take for granted, well, I'm ready for that, too.
So I turn it over. That does not mean I lack will. I feel a fierce determination to heal, to grow strong, to keep the cancer from coming back, and to return to life as a vibrant, energetic, happy, fun-loving individual for many years to come.
My wife, Norma, has volunteered to be a contact person, should you want to know about my condition or how to get in touch with me or visit. You can e-mail her at this address (I'm not going to write the actual address, in a perhaps futile attempt to cut down on spam): normatenn at me.com. (You can put the little "at" sign in.) She will also set up a blog under her name, Norma Tennis, on Open Salon where you can go for updates.
Even with several weeks to prepare, I have left many items unfinished. But they'll have to wait.
This disease is telling me to slow down and focus.
So keep in touch. Norma will be looking after things. The weekly workshops will continue with a wonderful guest leader until I return. And the January getaway has been rescheduled for Feb. 21-24.
Wish me luck! I'll be back!
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Thursday I head into the hospital for surgery on my sacral chordoma at UCSF Medical Center on Parnassus Avenue in San Francisco. I'll stay at UCSF for eight to 10 days before moving to St. Mary's Medical Center on Stanyan Street for a few weeks of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I welcome your cards, letters and visits, though it's not possible to know what condition I'll be in. As soon as I can, I hope to resume writing the daily column.
I was at a meeting Saturday, planning to share my experiences and my feelings about going into the hospital for surgery, when the speaker suggested the topic should be what we get out of sharing our feelings and experiences. This sent me on a brain loop. I got so caught up in thinking about what good it would do me to share about what was going on with me that I found myself hesitant to raise my hand. I was thinking about what I would say about what I would say, and why I would say it and what I would say about why I was saying it, and how what I would say would affect me and whether it was self-indulgent or egotistical to share what was going on, and on, and on. I ended up sitting there mute. Not only that, I also inwardly castigated myself for possibly using my illness as an occasion of drama. It's part of this ongoing battle between the part of me that loves the limelight and the part of me that feels it is unseemly to attract attention. When I am in a balanced frame of mind that is not a problem. If I am off balance or threatened, it comes out. I become afraid of how people will view me.
Having this tumor and facing surgery has thrown me off balance.
It is not often that we can contemplate such an experience and prepare for it. It is like preparing for an auto accident.
A friend once told me that all my letters to him were written as though for posterity. I was writing as I imagined a writer writes letters to friends. It was a show, a demonstration. It is true in a sense: I behave as I imagine myself to be; I present to the world my imagined version of myself. Now, let's not be too hard on ourselves. To some degree, this imagined self is the true self; it is the higher self we would project if we were not afraid; it may be a formal, high-minded self easily ridiculed in our casual, pop-culture world; it may be a perfectionistic, striving self that asks much of others and seems faintly elitist and undemocratic. We may be trying to make this true and ideal self visible by using elevated language; if we are not careful, this elevated language may sound stagy and artificial even though what is behind it is an attempt to show our true self.
The "common-sense" assumption is that "underneath" we are all just regular joes. The true self may be extraordinary and fine. It is axiomatic that if each of us is unique, our true self will be something the world has never seen before. If we are completely ourselves, we may not be recognized. We hide the true self, fearing rejection by the crowd. So we "dumb down," you might say. We find a million ways to conceal.
One of the tricks I have learned is that by seeming to reveal all we can conceal much. The more we reveal, the more we can hide. What we really wish to conceal lies at the bottom of the heap of revelations. Often what we truly wish to hide is our own weakness, fear and vulnerability. That is how I felt at that meeting -- weak, fearful, vulnerable. Yet I found myself thinking my way through it and not acting. "What, indeed, is the exact effect of speaking to others about our condition?" Blah, blah, blah.
Then the words of a wise mentor came back to me: You can't think your way through this.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Next week I head into the hospital for surgery on my sacral chordoma. This column will run Monday and possibly Tuesday. Surgery happens Thursday at UCSF Medical Center on Parnassus Avenue in San Francisco. I'll stay at UCSF for eight to 10 days before moving to St. Mary's Medical Center on Stanyan Street for a few weeks of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I welcome your cards, letters and visits, though it's not possible to know what condition I'll be in. As soon as I can, I hope to resume writing the daily column.
Dear Cary,
I was asked by a dear friend to be her maid of honor. I was immediately a little worried. I'm not into traditional wedding fanfare. I'm kind of like the stereotypical guy in that respect: Tell me where to go and what to do, and I'll do it. Plus, the wedding has been on a rushed schedule at a time when I have a lot going on in my life too. Add to that the fact that the bride and I have been drifting ever since she met her fiancé, about a year ago. The two are inseparable and not that social; I've just naturally spent more time with other company. Maybe my biggest mistake was not expressing my concerns when I was first asked. But I've been a maid of honor before and it's gone fine, and I imagined this would be the same.
You can see the train wreck coming. Fast-forward to a month before the wedding: I get a scathing e-mail from the groom without the knowledge of my friend (I'm certain she did not know), stating that it's time to "talk to me about my role as maid of honor" and maligning me for my many failures in the role. The e-mail was snide and contemptuous, questioned my values, and accused me of being "irresponsible," "unaccountable," "selfish," of "not caring" and not being true to my "compassionate progressive values." He said I misunderstood or underestimated the role, and that he couldn't understand my lack of involvement or inquiries about the wedding planning. He ended by saying he had no faith that I'd show up for rehearsal and that he didn't care anyway.
It felt like having the wind knocked out of me. So, I responded immediately, cc'ing my friend, basically saying "WTF?" (probably should have waited until I had a cooler head, admittedly). A few more e-mails ensue, I try to defend myself and point out that the groom's e-mail was totally inappropriate and graceless, and my albeit defensive response is construed as a statement that I feel like the wedding is a burden, or that it's all about me, and my friend's whole family and the rest of the wedding party are royally pissed at me because of my response to the groom's e-mail. So, my friend boots me from the wedding party because "others" don't want me in the wedding anymore but says I can still come as a guest. I tried after my initial defensive response to be as apologetic and deferential as possible just to try to salvage things (trying to take the high road), but to no avail.
If the bride and groom's actions sound irrational and extreme, it's because that's exactly how I experienced them.
After all the drama, honestly, my first reaction to being ousted was relief. A couple weeks have gone by, and now I feel totally pissed off. The truth is, I tried. I participated in planning and throwing a shower, and a bachelorette party, I got gifts, tried on dresses, etc., rearranged work responsibilities to make all the events ... by no stretch was I the model maid of honor, but frankly I can't imagine treating anyone close to me the way I'm being treated, especially someone who'd been doing things for me all summer -- even if I found those efforts disappointing. And maybe this sounds like a lame excuse, but she never once expressed any hopes or expectations for what I would do. The missive from the groom was the first word ever uttered to me. I feel totally hung out to dry.
I was gracious when she dumped me, and we both tried to spin this as not an indictment of our friendship, but more and more it feels like one. Neither of us have reached out to the other since the "break," and yesterday I reaffirmed my commitment to go to the wedding in an e-mail to see if I'm still welcome (still trying to take the high road) and received no response. It took her three days to write a tepid response that I can still come.
Our mutual friends agree I've been treated badly but think I should suck it up, and for the sake of the friendship put on a smile and go to the wedding. They think she's stressed and under the influence of an overzealous fiancé and family, and that I'll earn respect by showing up for her.
I have valued this friend. But the more I reflect on this situation I feel so angry and misunderstood. I feel I am owed an apology. It deeply offends me that my friend hasn't stuck up for me, hasn't acknowledged anything I actually did do for her, and doesn't empathize with my point of view at all. Even though she blames the discord on the feelings of her family, I believe that they take their cues from her, and she could have stuck up for me as her friend.
How do I go to the wedding in these circumstances? But how do I not go, if I want to preserve a chance to salvage the friendship? Is there anything worth salvaging?
Maid of Honor Never Again
Dear Never Again,
I have long labored under the illusion that when a bride chooses a maid of honor she is expressing her esteem and love for that person, declaring her to be part of her intimate circle of friends and family and pledging, symbolically, to include her in the new life that begins with the ceremony and will continue for years afterward.
I did not realize that choosing a maid of honor was equivalent to hiring an unpaid event planner on a probationary period, pending her demonstrated competency and loyalty to the company, lacking which she could be fired like a janitor from Manpower.
I guess I was wrong, and so were you. You thought you were chosen for who you were, for how she holds you in esteem. It turned out that you were hired provisionally on a trial basis and dismissed when your performance was judged subpar.
Knowing that weddings are pageants of power and status rather than declarations of loyalty and love can perhaps dull the blow. You can say to yourself it's just another bullshit social competition. Also, some of the pain we find in adult friendships and social conflicts can be traced back to childhood. But that does not make the pain go away.
So just exactly what happened here? What was it about this friend that you liked so much? Did she make you feel special in some way? Did you feel when you were with her that you were the most important person in the world to her? Did her loyalty indeed shift suddenly and completely to her husband? Certain people make us feel wonderful when we are the subject of their attention but leave us devastated when, with a guiltless, frictionless, sociopathic cool, their attention shifts to a new object of reflection. Such people do not form deep bonds and cannot empathize; their relations with others are reflections of themselves. When you are giving such a person what she needs, that is, reflecting back to her a suitable image of herself, then you are her favorite and she loves you as she loves herself (ha ha). When you express yourself, however, or deviate from the image of herself she sees in you, then she turns away to find a more suitable reflection of herself.
Perhaps that is what happened. Perhaps you were the victim of a person with narcissistic tendencies. After all, a modern American wedding is a narcissist's dream. Such a wedding ignores the great fact of all rites of passage: that while something is gained, something is lost. It only celebrates and does not mourn.
Rather than accept the reality that not all of her friends are perfect reflections of herself, and not all of her friends exist solely to support her narrow view of who she is, which would have been an adult approach, your friend retreated from reality. The loss she might have accepted she instead transferred to you. She made you lose, rather than face reality.
It is ironic that the one ritual that is supposed to usher us into adulthood is so festooned with pastel fantasies of preadolescence. It is also an indictment of our culture. Covering ourselves in the rituals and symbols of childhood, we blind ourselves to our coldest and most bloody conquering, muttering silly platitudes about God and country while blithely marauding across the planet, conquering and destroying all that is not Disney.
By acting in such a way, the bride turned away from maturity. You, on the other hand, can use this event to grow stronger and wiser.
Painful as this is personally, I hope you will examine in detail what friendship means to you. What traits do you look for in friends? What do you value? Who among your friends is truly your ally? Who would come to your aid in a crisis? Who values you for your uniqueness and cares about your feelings? And who seems to be hanging around you only for what they can get? Who steps forward and offers help when you are in a jam or feeling bad? And who seems to be around only during the good times? Did any of your friends tell the bride what they thought of this action?
As for your own character: Each of us must know our strengths and weaknesses. Next time someone asks you something like this, you have a chance to say, Sorry, I'm not sure that's for me. There's no shame in that.
Lesson: Beware the narcissistic bride. If you displease her, she will inscribe the scarlet F for Fired on your forehead.
Since it's been a few weeks since you wrote me, I include your addendum here:
UPDATE: Dear Cary -- So, I did go to the wedding, sat with our mutual friends, and was basically ignored. This was a few weeks ago, and she and I have had no contact since. I have mulled whether there is anything else I can do, but I think now the ball is in her court, and I fear that this friendship is over.
My friend and her husband are decent, reasonable people. I honestly do not know how they justify between themselves this sustained anger at me. My only suspicion is that the groom is very possessive, and as my friend's closest girlfriend, I wonder if that was threatening to him (subconsciously, as he would never admit that to himself). He does not like her doing things without him. She accommodates this, realizing it's an insecurity but also flattered by the depth of his love and need. I feel that he set this whole thing in motion with his explosive e-mail, and that my friend lacks the perspective right now to look objectively at what he did. I believe she sees his letter as an act of loyalty and love.
I have two rival impulses at this point: I still want to express to my friend my point of view, which I never did for fear of "ruining" her wedding. It also makes me sad to lose her as a friend. But I think this is out of my hands. I actually think the person who holds our fate in his hands at this point is the husband. And that pisses me off and makes me want to walk away. I don't know that anything good would come of trying to talk honestly with my friend. But it feels bad, too, to walk away without an honest conversation.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Appointments, appointments, appointments. You'd think I was the president. Except they don't make the president pull his pants down so much. Do they?
Also getting my money stuff together for when I'm lying around in the hospital for days on end doped up silly. Lucky I have really good help with the money thing (see below). -- ct
Dear Cary,
I have been with my boyfriend for two years. For six months of that, we've been living together. We're grown-ups with enough of life behind us to know what we want from the rest of it. We're in love, compatible, and extremely happy together. Not to say we never have moments of frustration, and the stray medical issue or crappy job situation sometimes dampens the fireworks, but our life together epitomizes everything we've ever wanted in a relationship. I've been thinking I'd like to be with this man for the rest of my life, in that formal, official, traditional way that usually involves a few dozen relatives and friends, cake and quite possibly some dancing.
There's a complicating factor: I'm a relatively recent divorcée from a marriage that was emotionally manipulative, exploitative and draining. About a month ago, my boyfriend started asking questions about my views on and attitudes about marriage, but it didn't lead to anything. I'm concerned that it's because I didn't get my message across that "YES I AM TOTALLY OK WITH MARRIAGE. I'D SAY YES ENTHUSIASTICALLY!!" On me, suppressed anything looks and sounds like a bad case of constipation. Even suppressed joyful hope (or hopeful joy?). So maybe he thinks that I'm not ready.
(Note that I've never been awkward or uncomfortable with him about any other topic. It's just that this is so big!)
For a number of reasons, I don't want to propose to him. He's younger and less experienced in relationships, so I want to give him the chance to set the pace. I also want to be asked, rather than ask, because I enjoy his knack for romantic gestures. I don't want to ask him his intentions directly because I don't want him to feel the pressure of me Waiting For Him To Propose while he makes that kind of decision. As for the indirect route, he'd see right through a dropped hint.
Should I just wait it out? Bite the bullet and ask? Do something terribly clever I haven't thought of? Am I misinterpreting the situation? Let me know what you think the best course of action would be for me in this situation. Thanks!
Please Insert Clever Acronym Here
Dear PICAH (is that clever?),
You know what I suggest? I suggest that you continue to talk about marriage in an open-ended, non-threatening way, with the understanding that nobody's proposing anything and nobody's declining anything. You're just sharing thoughts and feelings. Maybe the conversation would go something like this:
Remember a month or so ago when we sort of talked about marriage?
Yeah.
Well, could we talk about it some more?
Sure.
OK.
Well?
Well, I just wanted to talk about it some more.
OK, he says.
Well, you say, I want us both to be happy. Don't you?
Sure, he says. I want us both to be happy.
So it would be great if we both wanted the same thing.
Oh, yeah. That would be great.
But it would be sad if we wanted different things, you say.
Yes, he agrees, that would be sad.
So I'm scared, you say.
What are you scared of?
I'm scared that we might not want the same thing.
Aw, baby, he says.
Or maybe he doesn't say "Aw, baby." Maybe that's not his style. But he acknowledges that you have expressed a feeling and doesn't freak out about it.
Basically, you don't have to decide on a big thing like marriage right away. Instead, you have the courage to admit your fears and explore your wishes. You just explore and share.
So then he might say,
Well, what do you want?
What do I really want?
Yes. What do you really want?
What if I say what I want and it's not what you want?
That's OK, he says. We couldn't want all of the same things.
Maybe he's trying to get you to say what you want first. Maybe you want more couscous. Does he want more couscous? What about sleeping? Do you both like to sleep the same amount of time? What kind of pillow do you like? Have you been mildly unhappy with your pillow? What about his pillow? Sometimes when you just in together you don't talk about which pillow you like. Sometimes you end up with his pillow or he ends up with yours. Maybe he wants a new pillow. That would be good to find out. Asking, Do you want to get ... a new pillow? is easier than asking, Do you want to get ... married?
Keep it open-ended, talk about concrete things in the here and now. Take your time. As you explore these questions, ask yourself, what would marriage do for us? What would it require of us? How would it change things? What expectations would we bring to it? What were the marriages of our parents like?
Maybe some of that will work its way into the pillow talk.
Also, if you're talking about marriage, you're talking about money. So you could also talk about money. No pressure. Just sharing feelings. How do you feel about money? Do you hate money? Are you afraid of money? Do you hoard? Do you binge?
As far as that goes, I found a good person to help me with this money thing -- my friend and mentor Elizabeth Husserl, inventor of Inner Economics. She has a private practice in Berkeley where she works with people one-on-one, either face-to-face or via phone consultation, about their relationship with money. She also offers workshops. periodically (the latest one was last week!). I have learned a lot from her. I'll let you know when her next workshop is.
So ... Let's talk about money too, you say.
What about money? he says.
Well, money scares the shit out of me!
Me too, he says. Let's talk about rugs instead. Things will become clear.
Maybe, you say.
I think so, he says.
Bit by bit, you say.
Bit by bit, he says. Plus, I could understand if you were a little gun-shy.
Well, it would have to be the right person, you say.
Even so, he says. After what you've been through.
But with the right person ...
Even with the right person, he says.
You're sweet, you say.
I try, he says.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
This is going to have to be quick. When it has to be quick I try to make it just true. One way is to just write once through. I tried that last time I had to take painkillers. It worked OK. So I'll do that again. It's not that I'm on strong painkillers now. I just have more doctors appointments.
There is something to be said for writing a piece straight through. There's no going back. We writers, aided by the ease with which one can move text around using a computer, very well may revise too much. But that's an argument for another day. All I'm saying is that I have very little time so I'm going to write this straight through without revising.
I wanted to say more about forgiveness. I mentioned yesterday that one has to go through an internal process to arrive at a moment of letting go. This process can be quickened by having a scare. My recent cancer diagnosis was just such a scare.
One thought such a scare elicits is that we have been living all wrong. We've been stressed, angry, hurried, not taking good care of ourselves. We think, "Perhaps that led to this disease." We also think, "I've been wasting time worrying when I could have been enjoying life more." And we sometimes think, "I've been holding on to resentments that are doing no one any good."
As we see how our attention has been wasted regretting the past and fearing the future, we pay more attention to the here and now. As a result, we trust our intuition more. This leads to a greater incidence of synchronicity, or apparently positive coincidence.
So it was that the other night I found myself attending a meeting. It was not terribly unusual for me to be there, but I could have skipped it. I followed my instincts. There it turned out was someone with whom I had had a strong friendship followed by a falling out. It had been years. I had been stuck believing that this person owed me something. I had been insisting that I would not budge in my poor opinion of this person until the imagined debt was repaid. I felt put-upon, ignored, dissed, even disgraced if you want to know the childish truth of it.
I have a side that is not very adult. Call it what you will. We must take care of this side, most of us, because it never grows up. Sometimes when the things we most care about are involved, this side is most present. So it was in this case.
When I saw this person, my first conscious response was dread. I groaned inwardly. But that was a protective response I had learned to project in public. My true response, my inner response, was gratitude and excitement. I was actually happy to see this person. Having been through two weeks of extreme fear, regret and uncertainty, I welcomed the chance to see this person from my past. During the meeting, it is true that I entertained various uncharitable thoughts about this person. But it was as though this childish side of me were fighting its one last battle to maintain its sick ascendancy. I was done with the old feelings. The old resentments lifted.
Afterward, this person sat near me and I was able to say with complete honesty that all that old resentment had lifted. It was gone. And it truly is.
Did I have to get cancer to experience this? Let's hope not. How can we come to cherish life and get our priorities straight? Sometimes it does take a shock of this kind. Perhaps we can get such shocks in other ways. Perhaps we can engineer our lives so that similar shocks of recognition are not so hard to come by.
It is true that I express my emotions through my body, often through illness. This has been true since I was a child. I resist knowing this and saying this but experience shows it to be true.
So the logical thing to do is to seek out peak experiences that can bring us to such brinks. One such recent moment, I must say, was the experience I had at the Sun magazine Into the Fire conference at Esalen. Did I tell you about that?
Perhaps I will tell you about that tomorrow. Right now I have to go have a conference with a surgeon.
Surgeon rhymes with sturgeon. If I get scared looking at the surgeon, I'm going to think of sturgeon.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Well, I finally found time in between medical appointments to write answers to your questions. I am an advice columnist, after all!
Meanwhile, nothing new to report on the medical front. I'll keep you informed. -- ct
Dear Cary,
I would love to get some advice on dealing with anger when you can't address the person you are angry with directly.
I spent a few weeks with my sister and her family as well as my mother this past summer for a much-anticipated reunion of sorts. My sister moved to Singapore last year, I live in Germany, and meeting up on Cape Cod was something I really looked forward to. Particularly because I work long hours for the Army and most of my leave is spent flying home to visit my parents. My father has dementia and is in a nursing home. Travel has been exchanged for family priorities over the past few years and for the most part I'm fine with that.
Still, during the two weeks at the beach house, during which I had a great time with my little niece and nephew, I noticed that my sister and her husband were fighting a lot more than normal. There was so much tension between them that I finally asked my sister what the deal was.
Turns out he cheated on her with two different colleagues and both affairs occurred at the same time their children, now 4 and 1, were conceived.
I listened to her talk about how angry she was, and am the only person she has shared this with. She said she would never tell my brother-in-law that I knew.
So here's the deal. It's been two months and I am incredibly angry.
Part of that might be because I don't have the opportunity to say, Hey, pal, that thing you did? Not so great. Or just a simple "I know." Instead we're looking at years of family trips where I'm going to stifle my thoughts and feelings and just play nice. My brother-in-law is a very sensitive guy who always is emoting about everything. He is a highly educated (Ph.D.), ponytailed poet who is highly critical of others. His opinions about other family members' choices are always freely given, which is why I can foresee this being difficult. He doesn't deal with illness very well either, can hardly bring himself to visit my father, and I was already angry about that. Angry about a lot of things, actually, that I just have swallowed because I believe in the high road. Suffice it to say that I'm flabbergasted by how judgmental he is of others when all the while he was doing this.
But now ... I saw my sister's pain. I am worried about the future of my little niece and nephew. Trips planned to see them in Asia? I have lost interest now because I can't see myself not having "the talk" at some point.
I need advice. Assuming we're a family for life, I need to know how I can constructively deal with this. I can see myself at 90 finally telling someone and, yuck, I don't want to carry this. That sounds self-absorbed, I realize, and this isn't about me. But still ...
Angry
Dear Angry,
Forgiving him does not mean that you approve of what he did. It means that you unlock the boundless human compassion that lives within you. It means you come to see him as just one more imperfect human doing his best to get what he needs and find wholeness.
It means you let go of the urge to throw him out of a moving car.
Surely it would be gratifying to throw him out of a moving car. Feel free to meditate on that. It may have some brief therapeutic benefit. After all, you can tell yourself, it's not his body tumbling with sickening flips and thuds along the gravelly shoulder of a freeway at 70 miles per hour. It's the body of his tragic incompleteness. It's the body of our shared human flaws.
But going down that road is a lost cause. For as you meditate on this image, your boundless human compassion will kick in, you will empathize with that body being torn and broken by the impact of the highway, and you will have a millisecond of revulsion.
Then you'll feel all dirty inside. He's your sister's husband and the father of your niece and nephew, after all.
So. We all have such thoughts. We move beyond them. You have to find your way into a moment of forgiveness in which this resentment rises into the air and disappears. You have to experience this. It might happen in a conversation with your brother-in-law. That may or may not be the best course of action. (If you decide to do that, however, I caution you to talk it over with your sister first. She may be concerned about how he will react if he learns that she told you.) No matter what overt action you take, the letting go has to happen within you. And it won't come through understanding what happened. That's not how it works. We arrive at forgiveness through a somewhat mysterious process. We pray, we meditate, we play rugby about it. It can take years. One day it lifts. If we practice, we can shorten these intervals. We can inoculate ourselves against these things by remaining in a state of constant awareness of our own flawed nature. But it remains a mystery and comes upon us unexpectedly.
My recent cancer diagnosis caused me to let go of certain resentments. I was thrown into situations where my resentment lifted; I seized moments, too, under this pressure, to resolve certain long-standing issues.
You may be prevented from letting go of this because of unshakable moral conviction. Surely he violated his marriage vows. Surely his actions caused pain to others. But they flow from something we all share: our hunger and incompleteness, our tragic fragmentation of the spirit. If you can come to see that, then you can see these reprehensible acts as expressions of his flawed nature rather than as acts against your sister.
Without knowing exactly how this is going to play out, I suggest you treat it with seriousness and urgency. Seek fervently for release. Throw yourself into the effort. Face this with the desperation of a man who knows it's a life-or-death situation. You have already imagined what a shame that would be to carry this with you until you are 90. So begin now.
Start with what you know. Whatever you have done in the past to move on, to cleanse yourself of attachments and beliefs that no longer serve you, turn to that practice now. It may be religion or exercise, martial arts, philosophical meditation and thought, hiking, sailing, scuba diving, music.
Whatever practices you have, turn to them urgently, for resentment can be deadly. It can poison relationships, ruin families, catalyze addictive behaviors and deaden us to our own innocence. Throw yourself into this. Find its root in your own spirit and tear it out. Let it go. Let it rise into the air and disappear.
Somehow, eventually, you must forgive this man his weakness and move on.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
Since You Asked is on hiatus, but we expect Cary Tennis back in the very near future. In the meantime, he is posting occasional updates to his Open Salon blog.
(March 10, 2010)
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