self-reflection: the upside-down now of stepping through the looking-glass

I stirred the pot. I churned up the dregs of my existence. And with my insides turning over and over, the agitation brought the past into my present, the fractured pieces of memory back into my ongoing consciousness. I greeted this other me with anguish. I both knew it was impossible to be simultaneous with that past self as I also knew that this other me was crashing down upon my present being like a thunderclap silencing my world and my word.

We do not always make choices we like. Our choices do not always gratify, though sometimes -- with the remoteness of time stretching us farther and farther away and making the consequences clearer -- we can appreciate the decision made. Other times, the ache of decisions is a weight. Or perhaps the weight of decision not made...though, in truth, a non-decision is its own kind of decision, if a passive one. Just as there is no innocent bystander, there is no virtuous suspension of subjectivity while bearing witness to our own lives. We are enmeshed, often painfully so. Even in memory. Especially in memory.

For "all consciousness is self-consciousness" as Kathleen Wider writes in her book on Sartre and consciousness as rooted in the body. Was this where my anguish churned the most? Was it precisely because I could not remove myself to see objective reality -- or indeed any reality -- that this uncalled-for-reflection was tormenting me? I know I wanted to. I wanted to see what they saw: those others who shared that moment with me and now were buried in time's sands. I wanted to understand why what struck me as one thing, struck them as another. People would say I am highly empathetic. I tried to see things from their side. I thought about where they were coming from, what each of us did and said, how it could be perceived...every angle I could think of, I looked into, through, around. But still my darned self blurred the view.

Walter Benjamin knew that memory can evict reality from the rooms of our reflection. In "A Berlin Chronicle," (in Reflections) he writes of his reminiscences of the various spaces of the city that still highlight his memory. With the goal of evoking the form and atmosphere of a city, it is not time with which he is concerned. Time is more properly the structure for an autobiography and here, "I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities." (28) Still, Benjamin appears and disappears from his perceptions of the city because they are just that -- his perceptions -- just as images "constantly detach themselves from things and determine our perception of them." (29) Early in the essay, he speaks of reflection a la Proust as a fan in whose folds one endlessly seeks the truth -- smaller and smaller one dissects as "these microcosms grow ever mightier." (6) Thus, the danger of any exercise of self-reflection lies in the request of memory itself, which is "the capacity for endless interpolations into what has been." (16) And how could this not be? I could not and can not look back with any other than my eyes and thereby into that past, I continually insert (and assert) my new self. Oh, muddy existence.

The use of the third person is an awkward exercise, but perhaps gets one closer to the removal of self from memory. Or does it? Patty tries this approach in her autobiography within the pages of Franzen's novel, Freedom. She uses no "I" and instead speaks only of 'the autobiographer' (her current self) and Patty (her remembered self). Yet, in her attempt at self-removal, her removal of her own eye ("I"), her memories repeat and reaffirm the same insistent labeling voices of those from the original moments: "She was notably Larger than everybody else, also Less Unusual, also measurably Dumber" (29) Patty writes in the second paragraph of the first chapter of her autobiography. She not only recalls the insulting labels with which her family outcast her, they have become a capitalized aspect of her permanent self-definition. In doing so, she names herself as this specific entity (the definition of a capitalized proper noun) or maybe even attributes a Platonic (un)ideal to these qualities which she, once named, sought to embody. Plato's Beauty is changeless and eternal and so perhaps Patty's self-understanding as Less Unusual.

In writing of herself in the third person, Patty succeeds in recalling more than reflecting. "Looking back now, the autobiographer sees her younger self as one of those miserable adolescents so angry at her parents that she needed to join a cult where she could be nicer and friendlier and more generous and subservient than she could bring herself to be at home anymore." (50) She does recognize a different person in the past, but she also describes rather than reflects upon this person attempting to fulfill the desires of her family for herself in any way possible, however extreme. And, it seems, she does little more than recall this frustrated person whose later 'freedoms' may have been illusory. Perhaps because the exercise in self-reflection was requested by her therapist, there is a resistance to introspection that brings new insight. What is undeniable about the autobiography is Patty's sarcasm. Her chapters are titled tongue-in-cheek names like "Agreeable" and "Best Friends" to describe chapters respectively about a rape she was forced by her parents not to prosecute and a mentally unstable friend who stalked her. Her third person usage and her sarcasm appear as both detachment and narcissism. For, we do not really see Patty 'interpolating' her current self into her past or even extrapolating her past self into her present. It is all anger and bitterness and in the waves of witty sarcasm, everything drowns except for Patty's passive-aggressive resentment and her ongoing vulnerability. "Sarcastic people protect themselves by only letting the world see a superficial part of who they are," therapist Steven Stosny is quoted as saying in Psychology Today. Indeed, the Greek origin of the word sarcasm is 'sarkazein' whose literal definition is 'to strip off the flesh.' If Patty is stripping off her own flesh, the interior at which she arrives most nakedly is the self she defined in contradistinction to the dumb, large girl she did not want to be -- negative space with no real freedom in sight.

Personally, I realized that I needed to know why I was reflecting. What was my purpose? Without one, it would be an exercise in futility. Was it to heal past wounds, to measure my growth, to forgive my past self, or to see the past with new eyes? All of the above, I think. Though the more I sunk into reflection, the more I felt my goal was to speak to that past self: to tell her of consequences, of personal changes, of things lost. I wanted to save her from herself. And so, to step through my own looking-glass, I would break through the hindrance of my current self-reflection and maybe find a world flipped inside-out. But the fragments I would find would all be dead and gone, inert and inanimate, everyone real having moved on, my present self greeting that past self as Michelangelo's face on the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew hanging from the altar in the Sistine Chapel.

I cannot find her. I cannot save her. She is not really even lost, but the pain is there. I need to make choices, not all of which should depend on her healing. There must be a balance. Scientists have found that people who reflect upon their decisions have more gray matter in their anterior prefrontal cortex. And yet...the same researchers have found that those who delve too deeply into themselves are prone to depression and, in fact, possess poorer memories. Memory is already such a poor tool. Most of my current choices should depend on the me I have become in the meantime. For too much time in our own memory may diminish our ability to function in the world. As Jane Austen wrote in Mansfield Park, "There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences."

I can recall a me and a time when I was closest to my own soul. Suffering from an eating disorder and terribly unhappy, I simultaneously felt most intimate with my own soul and with the essence of a shared humanity. Everything weighted so heavily upon me, I was practically two-dimensional. Perhaps I was...as a person. The more my own body withered, the more fluid I was with my feelings, my thoughts, my memory. And yet, this very fluidity ironically deadened me. Though it was as if I could experience emotions, for example, the most strongly, I also recall the difficulty I found in anything bringing me to tears. And now, now that I am a mother and, indeed, a most physical being, I cry most easily -- at a moving documentary or when my son puckers his lips and invites me closer with "Kiss, Mama." And so I wonder if some healthy separation from my own interiority, from the interiority of the world, in fact makes me a more empathetic, loving, and generous person in the present.

And so I will look back...and look back without fear...and then take off the veil. And I will hope to step forward with something learned, something understood while dropping the weight of the mirror. Not all reflection is a curse; it is also our singular gift to see with our own unique eyes and to share in the joy that we cannot understand anything as an individual. And that we cannot quite see as anyone else either. Perhaps therein lies the incomprehensibility of the infinite universe and the smallest microcosm.

where comfort lies

She is thirteen years old. She is in great emotional pain. Her small frame shakes under its weight. She walks up to each of the adults who are lined up waiting for her. She cannot contain her tears; her face is twisted with contortions of grief. As she moves from person to person, each of them kisses her cheek. Then the other cheek. Each of them holds her close. Each of them pats her back. Each of them gently pulls her back to look into the pain she cannot mask. They offer a brief smile of understanding, of encouragement, of strength really. Some of them pull her close again, their cheeks touching the wetness on hers, soaking up what she sheds. They comfort her.

And yet, they are the ones who carry the pain. They are all survivors of the Holocaust who have just shared their stories with a roomful of students who have been studying the tragedy. What I have just described is a scene from the moving documentary "Paper Clips" about a Tennessee middle school that tries to grapple with the magnitude of deaths in and the legacy of pain wrought by the Holocaust by collecting paper clips, each one representing a single life lost.

Sam, one of the survivors tells of his arrival at the concentration camp: "Future generations," he begins, "will have to learn about the Holocaust from textbooks. We are the eyewitnesses that can, to a certain degree, tell you what took place. I was with my brother. My brother was three years old at the time." Sam explains how they went to see the 'doctor' whose job it was to decide in which direction each person would be sent. His mother and brother were sent to the left, he to the right. After they went through the showers, he found a guard. "...and I asked him, 'please tell me...we arrived last night. I arrived with my mother and brother. Where are they? What happened to them?' and that man showed me smoke coming out of a chimney. I did not understand what that means. Until I found out that the chimney is from a crematorium." The still air begins to shake with the quiver in his voice. He speaks with an eerie certainly of the inexplicable. Everything in that room breaks...forever. Things break open and in and through. Things break inside the listeners. And what struck me is that it ends up being the survivors who do the comforting and the comfortable listeners who need and accept the comfort.

Comfort is a strange beast. Often when we need it -- and need it from others -- we find a space in which to be alone. Often those who give it are the ones in the most pain -- the ones who, we would think, would be in the most need.

I remember going to the wake for the mother of a close childhood friend of mine. Her mother had died unexpectedly and suddenly, far far too young, hit by a car while out for an afternoon walk on a beautiful spring day. As the sun descended slowly and held its light to lengthen the day, highlighting the world with slants of brilliance, it simultaneously blinded a driver who did not see the women walking on the side of the road. Her death was an event that you didn't know what to do with because it shouldn't have happened. And even though we know and understand that the world is not fair and does not proceed by 'shoulds' or logic, the sense of injustice was so strong that it was overwhelming.

As I waited in line at the wake, I shook with fear. I was terrified of seeing my friend. In my head, I went over and over various things I could potentially say to her. "I am so sorry." Too trite. "I was so shocked and saddened to hear of your mother's passing." Too focused on me. "Everything happens for a reason." No way! I didn't believe that at all. Why would I even think of saying such a thing to someone else. Finally I settled upon: "Your mom was a beautiful person and she will be deeply missed. I am here if you want to talk or just have company." At least, I think that is what I decided to say. I honestly do not remember - that is how scared I was and how much is blocked out in my memory because of the preeminence of my own emotional experience. What I do remember is my friend holding me close and saying "Thank you so much for coming. It means so much to me." I remember that she looked tired and shaken, but not weak. She looked strong. And her strength was a comfort.

My aunt died in her early thirties. Similar to my friend's mother, the event was a shock. She was in a mountain biking accident. During the mourning period, and long after, my grandmother kept an article posted on her fridge. It was a list of what not to say to those who are grieving. I looked at it and read it, but thereafter I tried to skirt by it without acknowledgement. It was uncomfortable for me to see it there. It felt as though I would never be able to comfort my grandmother, that I was completely incapable, that everyone was. And that was painful. When I think about it though, it was probably true. There was no comfort or reassurance to give to her. And it was not what she wanted anyway.

We speak of comfort like a drug. There is comfort food. Each of us has his own comfort zone. Sometimes we desire to be comfortably numb. Is comfort just the absence of anxiety and pain? Roger Waters, who wrote the lyrics for the Pink Floyd song, might say so. One interpretation of the song is that it depicts his experience of being sick with high fever as a child. In that state (one which he is able to revisit through memory or perhaps other means as an adult), he becomes 'comfortably numb.' Yet "I can't explain; you would not understand. This is not how I am." For him, a state of comfort is diametrically opposed to his experience of life and to who he is. It cannot be shared. Life is not comfortable, but delirium can bring us there -- to that place where you can't hear anyone, are not even sure if they are there, and where the pain is eased. I can't recall who said it now, but I recently read or heard someone say that happiness is not so much a state of being as it is one of absence. Happiness is the absence of pain. Similarly, Buddhist thought posits that life is pain and that the goal of life is the attainment of nirvana. (And yes, I realize that this is an utterly simplistic reading of Buddhism.) Thus, I finally realized, after many years of reading Buddhist texts and considering the philosophy, that nirvana is the absence of pain. That makes so much sense to me. Our moments of ease coincide with an ability to breathe deeply. Deep breath only comes to a body relaxed, unrestricted, and open. And to be open, to be able to receive, one must be free of pain. For pain locks us in our own physicality, in our own lives, in our own selves. Pain, though so very real, is -- in that way -- an illusion. An illusion of life wherein the self exists divorced from our connection to others.

Pain is likewise debilitating. I recently read a New Yorker article about the over-prescribing of opiods, especially at medical centers in rural, socio-economically struggling communities. The doctor, who was ultimately jailed for what was deemed to be reckless and irresponsible behavior and unlawful distribution of controlled substances, seems alternately lost and naive. It turns out that many of his patients were misusing and abusing the drugs he prescribed. However, he does not come across as inherently immoral or malicious. With the possibility of being released, Schneider (the doctor) and his wife decide to become missionaries. The desire echoes the mission he felt he had in his previous life. Indeed, the author writes that "Schneider missed his conviction that he was alleviating people's suffering." And, in his own words, he tells her: "It was gratifying to help those people who really needed me -- people who I thought needed my help," he said, correcting myself. "I probably needed them more than they needed me. What a humbling experience." His ability to comfort was an integral aspect of his own identity.

He found comfort in helping (comforting) others. Indeed, recent findings have suggested that volunteering may do more for the volunteer than the recipients (e.g. increased happiness, 20% lower risk of death). Yet, in the above case, the doctor's own sense of comfort was, as the article is titled, a "Prescription for Disaster." And his own demise. So where does comfort lie? Perhaps it lies in the hands of others. Though we may seek solace alone, true comfort may arise from another's heart. It may lie in the 'true love and brotherhood' announced in 'tidings of comfort and joy'. It is only with the guidance of others that we will no longer go astray. I am not religious and yet the sentiment rings true.

And so I return to Sam and the middle school girl who listened to his story, who -- perhaps for the first time -- bore witness to the reality of evil in the world. In this, her sense of safety was threatened. In this, her secure self was somehow violated. Just as when I was first broken by the world -- when the 1990 Gulf War was announced on television and I fell apart, wracked by the knowledge that brutality was to exist in my world and in my future, not just in the past or in a textbook.

A mother who attended the event with the Holocaust survivors in the documentary spoke of her reaction: "As a mother, I kept trying to imagine what that would be like to have my kids taken away from me like that. And just not to know where they were. I think that struck me about as hard as anything." The violence of the world does strike us. It hits us with unimaginable blows. Some of us remain more sheltered, just by chance. But in the presence of those who have suffered and also in the presence of those who have suffered and endured, the world can crack and open -- frighteningly so -- and yet, there is comfort to be found. Another survivor, Joe, spoke of the importance of personal connection in the face of darkness: "I will tell you one thing. Every survivor had a story. And there is not enough paper in the whole world, and not enough pens, to write down what each survivor went through." No, never. We can never understand. But we can find comfort in the strength that remains and perseveres.

The Holocaust survivors in the documentary came to visit the children's school to see their project. More of them spoke that day. One of them spoke of the day the Americans came to the camp and how he was a free person thereafter. "I'm still here," he emphasized persistence and survival. "That's the main thing. I want you to know. I came here to the United States in 1948 and I've been the happiest ever." At this moment in the documentary, he begins to break down. He can hardly finish speaking, but he manages to say, "I want you to know happiness makes me cry more than anything else."

Happiness is the absence of pain, though pain never quite leaves. The pain strikes a stark contrast, painting the rest of one's life in shades measured against the darkness. The pain never leaves, but it can be shared. And perhaps this is where comfort lies. Not in the absence of anything, but in the sharing of pain. To counteract despair, we remain in the light of hope. And the giving of comfort may simply lie in the presence of others. And in listening to their stories.