Facing the Difficult

This is an idea that I've been wrestling with since my first day in South Africa.

I will not pretend that I am providing a definitive answer though my tone is sweeping at times; this is simply one person's approach to what is an unanswerable problem.


When confronted with tragedy (on a individual or mass scale) there are, as I see it, three basic responses that people can employ: apathy, anger or--as I will call it here--openness.

The first response I think to be the most common despite its very soul-crushing nature. It is not apathy born of intention or purpose but comes from a place of a basic self-preservation. There is just too much pain in the world for us to attempt to bear even a small portion of it. To consider the real, human consequences of famine death in the millions is beyond our abilities. To accept the fate of a child victimized by neglect and abuse is beyond our (entirely reasonable) limits. If we are to get up in the morning, if we are to live lives of love and kindness, if we are to work and strive to be truly content and thankful for all that we have we must wall ourselves off. We must become numb to the pain of others. We must accept that we have limits and stop ourselves there, where we know we are safe, where we know that doing something is doing enough. Though I have my issues with this approach--and I fervently believe it to be detrimental to our well-being in ways that we often do not recognize--I also wholly understand where it comes from. I have undoubtedly been victim to the same mentality, closing myself off, because the opposite was just too difficult.

This leads us to the second possible reaction which, though reasonable, has significant problems of its own. This is not to say that we shouldn't be angry at injustice. Anger is a powerful motivator and I will not try to deny the basic human instinct involved. When those millions die of starvation while their wealthy compatriots feast on imported luxuries who does not feel roiled with righteous anger? When a child is beaten, ignored, and exposed to unforgivable trauma who doesn't want to sucker-punch the offending parties and/or neuter the parents? But as proper as that anger may feel, it doesn't get us anywhere; we will eventually run into our undeniable limits, left with nothing more than bitter impotence (which will finally morph into the apathy described above). Worse than this, anger basically diminishes the humanity of the very person/people we are trying to help. Anger calls us to action, assures us we have answers, but in our pursuit to provide solutions, we turn these victims into passive objects in need of saving instead of human beings capable of participating (and perhaps wishing to participate) in their own salvation.

And so we come to this third approach, that which I have termed openness. This is, I believe, the hardest way to live, the hardest way to confront our hard world, but also, the most essential. Openness asks us to abandon our preconceptions and avail ourselves to the possibility of contradiction, to the inevitability of ambiguity. Openness means development projects that begin as a conversation with a community instead of as a solution for its inhabitants (as obvious as this may sound, it isn't). Openness means asking the victim of child abuse to be a partner in their own healing, to be a participant in their justice (instead of charging in to lock up and indict the offending parties). Openness means practicing patience; recognizing that change must always start small, that perfect solutions don't exist, that the best answers are sometimes the least satisfying. 

And that is perhaps what is most difficult about this third path. It does not appeal to our ideas of justice nor can it be condensed into an elevator pitch. We want to point fingers, to have answers, to make fast work of what seems to us outsiders so obviously cut-and-dried. I will never argue that there are justifications for the mistreatment of a child but I can almost guarantee that its consequences are beyond whatever "solutions" we would jump to implement; regardless of the success of a court system and the justice it administers trauma will always remain. Anger can impel you to that initial ruling but being witness to the damage done will soon result in apathy as the long process of healing--with its fits and starts--begins to settle in. Openness allows you to be a witness to that healing, to process the possibility of failure, and the likelihood of messy, incomplete victories. Openness gives you the strength to believe in your attempts, to have faith in a process that won't always work like you thought it would (or should). Openness gives you the strength to fight another day, to keep returning to the well of boundless optimism unbent by the trials of experience, wiser, perhaps, but far from jaded.