Revisiting…

This is a repost of a piece I wrote last year, that was given a hiatus from this blog. It’s published below as it appeared originally, despite dated nouns and verbs. Original title:

Nothing Else Matters

 

I work in a residential transitional therapy program with young adults. By now they’ve come to know me as the disproportionately optimistic yoga teacher who comes in to make them hold warriors and meditate, who dances (badly, often to no music) in the kitchen and reminds them of their chores in a singsong voice, who opts for gentle, deliberate discussion over anger and frustration and yelling. I’m sure this can sometimes make me seem a little soft, in comparison to other staff members who perhaps are more comfortable with confrontation and stern scolding and consequence, but at the same time I love that they know me as the one to go to when they need a little extra encouragement. I like to think that I provide a dose of radical compassion, that I’m willing to pour kindness rather than gasoline on a conflict, and if the fact that I’m usually met with a willingness to talk openly is an indication of how this affects them, I’m happy that this is how I’m regarded there.

To clarify, this is a transitional program – residents come to us from some sort of primary treatment experience, be it wilderness therapy or a therapeutic boarding school or something like that, and ours is meant to be the last step between residential treatment and independent living. Many head (or return) to college after completing. They come for a variety of reasons, but none are permanently debilitated by whatever brought them here. Our role is to help them sharpen skills, build on strengths, and basically just get out of their own way so they can get back to their own lives, a bit more self-aware and equipped to field in a healthy way whatever may come. All in all, they’re excellent souls and hearts of gold, despite whatever emotional and sometimes psychological clutter might be getting in their way.

I’ve gotten to know one resident in particular rather well, a young guy named Jamie.* An artist, a thoughtful and keenly observant mind, a sensitive heart that carries a tumultuous and hurtful past and wears it heavily, but quietly. A long history of bullying, and a feeling of rootless solitude in that experience (even at home, which should have been the one place in the world where he felt safe, encouraged, and understood), has left him with a degree of PTSD that nobody, including and especially him, knew was buried in there. Now that it’s known, though, and being brought into the light and named for what it really is, Jamie is working to find a new footing in his life. He’s working to see himself a little differently, and really coming to face how deep his self-judgment runs. His work lies in learning to change his definition of himself, and learning to trust and connect where he’s always stayed a locked, rigid island unto himself. Of course he’s justified in the ways he’s built walls to keep safe what’s always felt vulnerable and targeted, but now he’s facing the challenge of softening these barriers, of opening doors that he’d assumed were long-sealed and forgotten.

*Naturally this isn’t his real name.

One of my favorite things about my days with them are my talks with Jamie. He’s a person of great depth, of sharp wit, capable of tremendous empathy and introspection. Opening up in conversation, answering deep and personal questions and letting someone else into his experience in a real and vulnerable way, is very new for him, and he’s working to find ease within it. Watching him explore and discover this within himself is both fun and beautiful, and to be granted insight into his previously boarded-up heart is nothing shy of a gift. As the boards come down, I’m not sure he yet realizes how bright and warm the light behind them is as it starts to shine through.

A few nights ago, he and I were talking about how hard he works to suppress his trauma, how his paranoia and anxiety manifest, how hard it is for him to trust and let guards down, to let people in and to connect. His natural state is repressed, on edge, pessimistic, resigned, and he steeps himself in a steady flow of amped, cathartic, sensory-charging metal lyrics that feel familiar to him. The roughness and perhaps belligerence of this kind of music might seem anathema to his palpably gentle nature, but it definitely speaks to what in his experience has shaped him the most. He feels relaxed and at home in a mosh pit. The tattoo on his ribcage is a subtle homage to Marilyn Manson. He quotes Metallica lyrics when I ask how he’s feeling that day. In response I give him Simon and Garfunkel to listen to. He gives me Slipknot. I give him Jason Mraz. He gives me Nine Inch Nails.

He’s made me think a lot about how our thoughts form habits, how we live what we think and how we receive from others and from the universe what we offer. His story reminds me of studies I’ve read about neuropathways in the brain, how our experiences and our choice of thoughts physically carve out and mold the flow of synapses, how we hardwire ourselves with the way we choose to view the world. Naturally this is an oversimplified paraphrasing, but as Jamie and I sat together and talked about his learned, habitual guarding and my insistent, cultivated optimism, I couldn’t help but wonder what his neuropathways would look like if we could read them like a roadmap.

In one of my more Kumbaya moments, I got to thinking about what subtle things he might try to start to change the formula for himself. If he’s been soaking in worry and fear and solitude, dosing himself with music that wails the sound of his anger and self-criticism and loneliness, well, I thought, what if that could shift a bit? What if he could counter the anxiety with optimism? What if he could craft a positive environment, if only within his own mind?

I suggested he try to go at each day with an eye to where he might help somehow, where he might do something randomly kind for someone, however small the act. Maybe instead of walking into a room and immediately scanning for what might be unsafe and trying to avoid it, he could look for where he could be of service. Instead of leaving the house armed with earbuds and a gripped, impervious gaze, he could instead smile, say hello, and see if this effort is met and returned. I challenged him to plant seeds of kindness and positivity to start combatting the emotional weeds that have been choking him for so many years. I laid this out for him delicately, almost apologetically, asking if it was too hippy-dippy and strange, expecting a tolerant but distinct eye roll. Instead, he met me with thoughtful, considerate eye contact, and a subtle nod.

“I don’t know,” he said in a measured, curious tone. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not sure I’d know how.”

The suggestion was beyond his comfort zone, and I knew that, but we talked about how that’s what makes this a practice, not a switch to be flipped. If nothing more than an experiment in countering his own paranoia and anxiety, at the very least it allows him to come away knowing that he only left behind goodness in his wake. The peace of mind that comes with that, and the stillness of conscience, is nothing to be taken for granted.

“Maybe,” he said to me as he considered how this could play out. “I’ll keep an open mind to it and see how it feels.”

I left that day thinking about this concept, about the conscious choice to find a place for intentional acts of goodness. I thought about how often I pause to hold a door for someone, or to smile as I come to the counter at a café and first say hello and ask how the person’s day is going before I order my tea. I also thought about all of the times that I may not do this, that I let myself move so quickly that these little efforts and acknowledgements get skipped. I thought about how easy it is to stay stuck in the rhythm of my isolated mind, and how quickly I start to feel clumsy in my connections, and in myself. I’m constantly reminding myself to pause, to breathe, to look around and find something that could make me laugh, could be appreciated, could be engaged with. As an introverted bookworm it’s easy to settle into the outskirts to observe without participating, but from there it’s a short trip to disengaged, and from there it’s a dangerous route to disinterested, to isolated, to lost. For Jamie, the progression of guarded to walled-off to impenetrable is natural, and it’s born of fear. We talked about these little acts of kindness and engagement as a means of reprogramming his impulses towards seclusion, and bracing himself for the worst. In a way, they’re also a tether to community and connection, to the very things that make us most human.

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don’t just say
And nothing else matters

He gave me “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica, with the assurance that I would actually be able to understand the lyrics of this one. I looked them up anyway, but they came through clearly.

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

The greatest and most awe-inspiring thing we have as humans is our ability and our desire to connect, to find strength in community rather than remaining alone unto ourselves, to bind together in love, in all its infinite and mysterious forms. The optimist in me, who dances to no music and meets stories of abuse and misery with folk music and open arms, believes in this side of humanity above all things. That’s the side of me that believes in acts of kindness as a path to changing our brains for the better. That optimist makes conversation even when the reluctance and shyness in me says hide, says don’t. Sometimes these impulses are fine. Other times they need to be challenged and closely examined for what lies behind them, pushing the buttons, holding the reins. Otherwise I risk closing off. In a way I think we all run that risk from time to time, and we flirt with the line, sometimes dangerously. That’s when we need this kind of intention the most, I think.

I’m not sure if Jamie’s done anything yet in the name of his random acts, and I’m going to keep subtly reminding him until he one day comes to me with a story of one. I’m holding out for the day he says that it shifted something in him, taking him entirely by surprise and making him a believer. For that, I’ll sit in optimistic patience.

Because nothing else matters.