Tending Hope in Tragic Soil

Recently, I finished reading a book written in 1953 by the American psychotherapist Rollo May; Man’s Search for Himself. He writes about the pervasive isolation, fears and unanswered questions of life that plagued those who found their way to him for therapeutic support. As I read, I marvelled at how page after page detailed concerns of our present day society- the unbearable loneliness; the dread of and, paradoxically, the search for personal meaning and freedom; the courage a person needs to be able to mature into their fullest potential; the quality of mind needed to see truth and act in alignment with the knowledge; and the willingness to contend with the apprehension that one’s existence as one knows oneself were under threat. These are all existential anxieties, they relate to deep and persistent concerns around being (existing), or not-being (not-existing). And they are universal.

May explains anxiety as being “the threat of non-being” which is the experience of believing something you value and is essential to your existence is in danger of loss. The fear of death or precarious possibility of non-existence is the most fundamental fear in humanity. We each come into this world born to survive. Our senses, instincts and reflexes are formed and geared towards maximising our chances for survival without our choice in the matter. For example, the alarming cry of a young baby is an instinctive survival call for safety, care and attention, and almost no-one can bear to hear it for long. The cry prompts us to instinctively react and respond, a fine tuning of Mother Nature’s ingenuity. 

While fear of non-being is common and probably unsurprising to you, May goes on to describe a different modern phenomenon- that mid-century American society had lost its sense of the dreadful, an insensitivity to what is tragedy.

May is not merely describing a widespread lacklustre feeling for what we might call sad events, but is speaking to the modern person’s loss of being able to perceive the deeper, intrinsic tragic dimension to the universal human experience. The tragic, the undesired aspect of human existence includes inevitable suffering, conflicts and inherent limits of existence that, if we are fortunate enough to grow beyond infancy, we must contend with. The most final of these undesirables, is that we will all meet death. Our life will come to an end.

In the wake of the news of the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk in the United States, I find myself returning to May’s words of warning about our collective relationship to the tragic. May’s words published in 1953, are a prescient caution for our postmodern, multi-standpoint world. Today, they are an invitation for courage and hope after being witness to a life so callously and publicly taken.

To be human is to seek meaning for our existence and as May agrees, this meaning must be created by the individual for him or her self, it cannot be simply given. It must be self determined, grown into over life time. In ways that are personal to each of us, to be human is to try to navigate our way through life with good reason, to write a coherent storyline that allows for self-belief and a reasonable hope. But if we are anything like mid-century American society, if we are living life in a defended way, we will develop a superficial optimism that functions as a denial or dissociation from the tragic. This defence is protective, but it stifles growth. Instead of contemplating the terrible we encounter in their fullness, we distance it psychologically; this is because our brushes with the dreadful reveal our limits, our vulnerabilities and showing up our illusions of control.

The counter position to this defended-ness is courage. When we authentically contact our feelings about the tragic in life that is all around, we nurture the inner soil of our hearts where a seed of genuine hope can sprout and grow. The beginnings of expectation for a better day must be buried deep within, not dropped superficially on the top soil. Hope grows in direct awareness of the darkness outside and in knowledge of the deep places of our inner person where light fails to reach. This place within is damp and earthy, it is hidden from the world. The seed of a dream of something better emerges from knowledge of the depths within and against logic, must be broken open to begin to sprout and grow towards the light. It cannot remain protected, Mother Nature insists on this. So the inner growth of hope that motivates us up and towards maturity is rooted in our capacity to face with wholeheartedness our knowledge of the tragic. As May wrote over 70 years ago: without grasping the inevitable losses of life, acknowledging the perilous state of our wellbeing, our optimism is nothing but a pleasant but shallow sunbeam in the imagination and it will function as something akin to a wishbone, not a backbone to hold us upright.

If we are unwilling to turn seriously and courageously towards the tragic in the world and in turn in us we will avoid being willing to get our hands dirty. We will put off the necessary toil of working with our inner soil, choosing what seeds we wish to plant. We won’t discover the insight that what reaches upwards is to be found in the grubbiest and lowliest of dark inner places. Instead of recognising the contradiction that beauty can come from dirt, and fullness of flourishing come from confronting the void, the “dread of nothingness” as May put it will draw us further into shallow entertainment that flatten our opinions and quell curiosity for meaning; it will strangle our growth.

Our life, if lived with only a wish and light work will comprise of a series of distractions, obsessions and radicalisations that function to terminate the feeling-thought life within, rather than grow a sense of dignity and felt goodness in the knowledge you exist.

Reference:
May, R. (1953). Man’s search for himself. Norton.