Yountville
and
Cowboy Cottage,
East Napa
California, USA
February 24 and March 3, 2022
"There won't be an earthquake because I say there
won't be an earthquake. And if I change my mind, you'll know
because
you'll hear the
rumble."
...
"Courage is not the absence of
fear,
but rather the assessment that something else is more important than
fear."
... President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
This essay,
Facing The Unspeakable: Malala, Greta, Nelson,
is the companion piece to
War Stories.
It was written at the same time as
War Stories
(working title).
We human beings expect certainty. That said, life doesn't promise and
has never promised certainty. What's certain about life is that it's
uncertain. And when events occur which disrupt our expectation of
certainty, they disrupt our lives. Yet look back, and you'll see that
long before any and all disruptive events produced uncertainty, life
was always uncertain. We've known this forever. We just don't focus on
it ie it's out of sight until something happens that disrupts our
expectation of certainty, a disruption that speaks eloquently to how
much we expect certainty, never mind the fact that life doesn't promise
and has never promised certainty.
So: life is uncertain, yet we expect certainty, and in the face of
uncertainty, our lives are disrupted. That's the way it happens.
Question:
could it be that the disruption results from us mis-conceptualizing the
certainty of what's so / what happens, more than it results from what's
so / what happens itself directly?
We also expect predictability. But look: nothing none of
the paperwork in the packages our lives came in, promised or guaranteed
predictability. Yet we expect it. We've set up our lives as if only for
assumed-to-be-predictable events. And when unpredictable events occur,
our lives are disrupted. So again
the question:
are we disrupted more by the unpredictable events themselves, or by the
thwarting of our expectations that events should be certain,
predictable, and above all, humane?
When our lives are disrupted by uncertainty and unpredictable events to
the point where we can't talk about them, we say the
unspeakable has occurred. That's the ordinary view. But
look: it may not be so. What may be so ie the extraordinary view, is
that because we don't grant being to uncertainty and unpredictability
and the unspeakable, our lives are disrupted when they happen. Yet they
were never off
the cards
to begin with. Hey, ask the dinosaurs about life's certainty /
predictability!
Granting being to life's uncertainty, unpredictability, even its
inhumaneness, doesn't condone unspeakable events. Rather it's a stand
that neither consoles nor justifies the unspeakable. Instead it creates
a stone-cold, flat-footed platform on which to stand, from which to
choose who we're going to be in the face of the
unspeakable. Uncertain and disruptive circumstances are what's so, over
which we have limited if no choice at all. We do however have choice
over who we'll be in the face of them. And
that is arguably
our only access
to what's discontiguously possible ie arguably
our only access
to
what makes a difference
in the face of the unspeakable.
Malala Yousafzai Malik was shot in the face by a would-be Taliban
assassin for her "crime" of being a woman and a voice for women's
rights, education (especially the education of women and children), and
humanitarian causes. It was what she did after she recovered that
demonstrates
how extraordinary she is, retaining her choice over who she would
be in the face of the unspeakable, becoming who some have
called "the most famous teenager in the world", a Nobel Prize
laureate,
and arguably Pakistan's most prominent citizen. That's neither a
certain nor a predictable outcome given her circumstances. Rather it's
an outcome that's only possible in the realm of who we choose to create
ourselves to be in the face of the unspeakable.
Greta Thunberg was a young teenager when she took on climate-change
skeptics and deniers three and four times her age, choosing to speak
for / be a demand for the future sustainability of our planet. As
global events go, climate-change will have serious if not catastrophic
consequences which, for the most part, will happen with or without our
consent. What makes Greta unique is the stand she is ie who she creates
herself to be in the face of climate-change: a powerful spokesperson
rather than merely just
another guy in a diner
with an opinion. Opinions may contribute to the climate-change debate
yet they make no difference at all in the long term. It's who we
are ie who we create ourselves to be, which
makes a difference
beyond opinion. In the face of unspeakable catastrophic climate change,
making a powerful impact starts with who we choose to be in the face of
the unspeakable. Our opinions, our
fear,
and even knowing better make no difference whatsoever.
Nelson Mandela
was dubbed
"Troublemaker"
by his primary school teacher which, for the white
South African
racist regime, proved to be extraordinarily apt. Look: how do you
make a difference
when you're black in a white, racist
South Africa
where all opposition
leaders
are jailed if not summarily executed? How do you survive thirty years
of imprisonment, most of it in solitary confinement, and not come to
resent your captors? How do you take on
Life itself
in the face of such disruption?
Nelson
stood apart from many who took on the uncertainty and unpredictability
of the circumstances, and instead chose to be the end of
apartheid in the face of the unspeakable. His being was
(and I'm paraphrasing here) "Apartheid will end because I say
so.". Did that work? Moreover: can it work? Well ...
look what happened.
It's not altering the circumstances, as unspeakable, as uncertain, and
as unpredictable as they may be, which restores power to our lives,
even when there's no doubt that the unspeakable should be
altered. It's taking a stand for who we'll be in the face of the
unspeakable, the uncertain, the unpredictable that empowers us.
Circumstances are what they are, whatever they are. Some
shouldn't happen ... and they do; some should be different
... and they aren't; we should do something about all of them before
it's too late ... yet we don't. What robs us of our power is our
thwarted expectation of
already always
certain, predictable, humane, fair circumstances. In the face of the
unspeakable, the only thing over which we have any power (and it
just so happens that it's the
gamechanger)
is choosing who we'll be in the face of what's so, in the face of the
circumstances, even and especially in the face of the unspeakable, the
horrific, the uncertain.
