In Praise of Difficulties and Difficult People

2012-12-07

1 I want to start with a story. Sometime shortly after World War II, there was a retirement center in the outskirts of Paris. Because of its location and the ending of the war, there were a number of elderly expatriates living there from all over Europe. One of these was an aberrant, deviate, and perverse Russian by the name of Dmitri. Dmitri was argumentative with all of the other elderly residents. He was objectionable in all ways. When he was confronted with his irritating mannerisms, Dmitri would get the better of the argument with an aggrieved resident, if for no other reason than he could shout louder than anyone. One day, the director of the center arrived at work one morning. It took him just a short time to notice that something was different at the center. Then he realized it. Dmitri was absent. He went to the attendants and found out Dmitri had left during the night. In a fit of panic, the director jumped back in his car and drove all over the city of Paris. He finally found Dmitri later that day in a Russian pastry shop in the city. He pleaded with Dmitri to return with him to the retirement center. Dmitri declined. Why should I do that? he said. None of the people there like me. In fact, they despise me. I dont want to be in a place where I am unwanted. You dont understand, said the director. Those people at the center need you. You are the only one who challenges them, who smooths out their rough edges by exposing them. You are the one who shows them that it is possible to be better people. At times, we are all just like Dmitri, for someone. You are a difficult person for somebody. We all are, because no one is perfect. And realizing you may be like Dmitri is a step in starting to realize that difficult people and difficulties in general are important for our lives. The other residents at the Paris retirement center were difficult in their own way. Dimitri didnt set out to be difficult when he got there. Something about the place or something about some of the residents made him disagreeable. It can happen in any human community. Dmitri blamed the retirement center residents, but it was about him on the inside. He could go to another such center and soon, he would have had the same difficulties. Why is this so? Carl Jung says it is because life flows. A Chinese proverb says you cannot put your foot into the same stream twice. The water that touches your foot the first time is long gone by the time you put your foot in again. Life is like that too. Jung said that, the flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation. Adaptation is a concept in evolutionary biology and adaptations contribute to the fitness and survival of individuals. Humans need difficulties for
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In Praise of Difficulties and Difficult People

2012-12-07

our health, so that we can learn to adapt to the changing conditions in our environment and in our life. Dmitri was an example of a person unwilling to adapt. Have you ever had a friend or maybe a family member who went from one failed romantic relationship to another, all of them ending in the same way, in disaster? It is the best example I know of a failure to adapt. The wisdom for a person with such a relationship track record is, the common denominator in all of your failed relationships is you, in the hopes that they can learn to adapt and turn things around. A rare habit is attributed to Carl Jung, told by one of biographers. In later life, he would find himself in a social situation in which another person would really upset him. He would withdraw from that situation as soon as possible, within social decorum, and find some solitude that would allow him to reflect on what it was within himself that was disturbed and activated. He assumed that the circumstance indicated something within himself that needed to adapt! Absent was both the blaming of the other person and finding fault with himself. To me, this is such a remarkable story. I have had times in my life when I thought it was everyones fault but my own. I am sure it was sometime in my adolescence, and after all, isnt that pretty much the definition of adolescence? We talk about growing out of adolescence, which is another way to say the adolescent is engaging in the evolutionary biology trait of adapting away from a strategy that is no longer working, if it ever did, toward a trait more harmonious with other people and their differences. Even after adolescence, I think it is common when we get a negative or disturbing reaction from another person to ask, I wonder whats wrong with him? Jungs example turns this assumption upside-down. It is not about right or wrong with the other person, like the two baby alligators always fighting with each other. It is not about what is right or wrong with you either. Its about what has been activated within you, the distress that has been generated there, and what you are going to do to change or adapt to this new situation. The first question to ask when a difficult situation or person shows up is, why am I reacting in this way? In other words, what is the adaptation in my life I need to learn now? It is an internal reflection for the wisdom about what needs to change. We cannot get others to change in order to be more compatible with our idiosyncracies. No one in a committed relationship holds to the illusion they can change the habits or mannerisms of their spouse, at least for very long. A wise rabbi (rabbi means, a master of the Torah, and therefore, a teacher of the Torah)
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In Praise of Difficulties and Difficult People

2012-12-07

once asked his students, Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Finding fault with others may temporarily make us feel superior, but only delays the adaptation we need to undergo. Difficult situations are similar to the difficult people we encounter. The anxiety and distress they produce within us suggest a need for adaptation. To put it another way, it is a new opportunity to grow. Carl Jung wrote, The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. It means that, instead of being in it, one is now above it. By growing, I think Jung means for people to learn to adapt successfully to the present situation in the flow of life and rise above it or transcend it. The idea that we should welcome difficulties, or at least, we should not avoid them, is counterintuitive. An illusion leftover from childhood and reinforced by aspects of our culture is that life, if we can just get beyond the present difficulty, should be some sort of a utopia. Indeed, our culture even tells us that success in the career of our choice should land us on Easy Street. I recall a story I heard long ago of a spiritual master, or teacher, or magician - you pick one! He came to the square in the center of the village and told all of the people, I will return three days after the next new moon. On that day, I will make all of your troubles appear to you as stones. Anyone who wishes may bring those stones in a sack and place them on the wall here in the square. Then, he left the village. A few weeks later, the spiritual master, teacher, or magician returned on the appointed day. He said to those gathered, Each of you has brought your sack full of troubles and placed them on the wall, just as I said. Now, you may leave them on the wall and go home, but so that your troubles do not come back to you, you must take a different sack with you when you go home. The villagers looked at each other for many moments. Then, one by one, they found the sacks that belonged to each of them that they had placed on the wall, picked them up, and went home. And the wall around the village square was empty. Our troubles and our difficulties belong to us. We might avoid them for a season, but at our loss. We cannot tell how they came about, but they are there in our lives for our health. Rilke says, In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. And that is because we are works-in-progress and are not, nor ever will be perfect. Yes, we are concerned with an excessive amount of difficulties, but perhaps that is one more reason for cities, for homes, and for assemblies in the houses of worship, as Ken Patton says. Beautiful people are made this way, those who have been in and crawled out from the depths. They have learned fresh adaptation within the flow of life. This
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In Praise of Difficulties and Difficult People

2012-12-07

may be called a spiritual path or it may be an adaptation brought to us through evolutionary biology. It does not matter, because the result is the same, and that is that you are, and at the same time, you are becoming, beautiful people.