That’s a lyric from David Bowie’s song “Changes.” It’s about noticing what’s happening, no matter what, without actively fighting it. It’s really what this book is about: Know what’s true. And, if you can, love what’s true. But the first step is knowing what’s true—all of it. Even the parts that make you uncomfortable. It is perhaps the most potent “active ingredient” in mindfulness.18
Sometimes you’ll hear this experience described as “acceptance,” as in discussions of certain aspects of Buddhist meditation practice. We don’t prefer that word, because it carries an unintended connotation of helplessness—as in “Just accept that this is true…and therefore abandon any hope that you can change it.”
So instead we use the term “observational distance.”
Most people are not naturally good at it, but it’s a learnable skill.
We’ll illustrate this with a comparatively benign example. Homeowners in our part of the world (western Massachusetts) receive monthly letters from the power company, comparing our energy usage to our neighbors’. This kind of peer comparison information has been shown to reduce energy usage, which saves people money and reduces our carbon footprint.19 In an ideal world, the information would simply remind us to ask ourselves, “Is there more I can be doing?” even if the answer stays, “I’m already doing all I can.”
But people hate it when the letter says their energy use is higher than their neighbors’. They feel shamed by the utility company; they think the numbers are bogus; they think it’s a scam (which is weird—what could the utility company have to gain by making people feel bad for using a lot of their product?). We heard one woman call it “a witch hunt.”
So what’s going on, to provoke this reaction of shame and rage?
When we’re told that our energy usage is higher than our neighbors’, the madwoman is activated by the difference between who we are, in terms of our energy usage, and who we are expected to be—super-efficient, yurt-dwelling models of green living. And the madwoman has only two choices: either we’re wrong or the power company is. Either we’re terrible people for burning all that fossil fuel, in which case our madwoman goes on a rampage of shaming self-criticism, or else the power company is a lying asshole for telling us we’re burning all that fossil fuel and our madwoman starts ranting and raving about the stupid power company sending us a stupid letter, trying to make us feel bad.
Sometimes the world is lying. And sometimes you do fall short of your best.
But when your madwoman flips out in ragey panic, that’s your cue to “turn and face the strange.” That is, you create observational distance. You calmly and neutrally explore what’s actually creating this apparent chasm between you and expected-you. In the case of the power company’s letter, what might cause your utility usage to be higher than “average”? Do you live in an old house? Do you work from home, have kids, or charge an electric car? Is your energy use high because you cook at home a lot, which prevents the higher environmental impact of fast-food consumption? Are there a lot of small apartments in your neighborhood, which will definitely require less energy to heat, which will lower the local “average”?
“Is there more I can be doing?” you ask yourself. And maybe the answer is, “I’m already doing all I can,” but maybe sometimes the answer is, “I could do a little more.” And you don’t have to beat yourself up for not having done that little bit more before; before, you were doing all you could. You know that, because you checked in with yourself. You turned and faced the strange.
Everyone’s life is different, and we are all doing our best. “Our best” today may not be “the best there is,” but it’s the best we can do today. Which is strange. And yet true. And could draw us down into helplessness and isolation if we don’t stay anchored. And the way we stay anchored is with gratitude.
FACE THE STRANGE, CHANGE THE WORLD
James Baldwin famously said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Less famously, right before he said that, he said, “And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage: You [white people] never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me.”
Turning to look at the uncomfortable truths, turning to face the strange, is the terrifying advantage. People on the receiving end of oppression or violence or the impacts of climate change don’t have a choice about it. People with some degree of power, privilege, or opportunity have to choose it, the fearful advantage of knowing what is true—all of what is true. Even the parts that highlight the difference between us and expected-us.
The madwoman can’t help it. She will flip out whenever she learns about another way in which the world demands more from us than we’re giving, and she will try to make it someone’s fault—our own or the world’s. But look what happens:
Suppose you’re a white person, and a person of color points out something you did that was, ya know, kind of racist. Your madwoman flips out, since the world is calling you racist, which is terrible, and you’re a good person who would never discriminate against anyone. If your madwoman overreacts and declares the world (that is, the person of color who confronted you) a lying asshole and insists nothing is wrong, then you can’t participate in changing the world to make it a better, fairer place. Your reaction is likely to be something like “That’s not what happened! I’m not a racist!”
If, on the other hand, she overidentifies with the criticism and starts whipping you for being no better than the Klan, calling you a failure and a fraud, then you’re too impaired by this self-inflicted suffering to be able to engage productively. Your reaction may be something equally unproductive, like “ALL MY WHITE FEELINGS ARE HURT PLEASE HELP ME BROWN PERSON!”
The madwoman’s reactive panic is unhelpful as a motivation to do anything, but it is great information. First, it tells you you’re being confronted with a difference between you and expected-you. Second, it tells you that that difference matters to you. So an assessment with observational distance might be, “It matters to me that I treat everyone fairly, and it sounds like that’s not what happened. I’m always trying to do better.”
It’s really strange, the experience of “That is not what I meant to do, and yet that is what happened, as far as this new information is concerned.” It’s really strange when we’re doing our best, and our best falls short of what the world expects from us. When we can turn toward that strangeness with observational distance, then we are best enabled to be the change we want to see in the world.
How to Grow Mighty, Part 3: Gratitude (*Sigh*)
It’s not a self-help book for women without the injunction to “practice gratitude,” right? You already know “gratitude” is good for you. And every time someone reminds you to be grateful, maybe there’s a little piece of you that beats yourself up for forgetting to be grateful.
Gratitude practices really are good for you, but before we discuss them, let’s mention one caveat: Being grateful for good things doesn’t erase the difficult things. Women have spent centuries being told to be grateful for how much better we have it now than we did before. This “gratitude for what you have” has been used as a weapon against us, to silence our struggle and shame us for our suffering. Gratitude is not about ignoring problems. If anything, gratitude works by providing tools for the struggle, for further progress. It is positive reappraisal, concentrated and distilled to its purest essence.20
And forgetting to be grateful is completely normal (because: headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry), which is why we all need to be reminded.
So how do we do it?