More on Facing into the Anger

From comments and emails I’ve received, I am not alone as I witness an increase in anger in friends, family, and associates, especially when we try to talk about the seriousness of the climatic, economic, energy, and environmental predicament we’re collectively facing.  Some report it as markedly different in the wake of the last six months of calamitous economic unwinding. The inevitability of change is hitting home and people are not happy about it.

How to deal with that anger?  The knee-jerk response for me often is to want to go hide, to admonish myself to just shut up already and protect myself from others’ unprocessed, and often barely conscious hostility.  I don’t want to be branded Cassandra or doomsayer, or to receive accusations that I’m negative and depressive, or even to just be thought badly of.

It all feels so unfair.

Especially to me.  My ego has strongly identified for most of my adulthood with being a “good guy.”  I’ve identified myself as a loving, devoted mom and a steadfast friend and have had a reputation as a warm and caring therapist.  Others reinforce that view of myself.  I’ve held vision and doggedly worked on myself, emotionally and spiritually.  I’m not a downer.  I have energy and enthusiasm for life, art, creativity.  I won’t live in a place without painting the walls in bright, warm, rich colors.  And history tells me that I tend to error way too much on the side of seeing the best, always looking for the unrealized potential in people.

I don’t like having people angry at me.  I had a therapist years ago tell me I had way too thin a skin and needed to toughen up.  There was truth in that.  In fact, much of the above, as I survey it, has been a nice but fancy ego dance to avoid people being angry with me.

So it’s not my cup of tea to be the target of people’s anger.  I’d actually LIKE to sit around in a circle and sing Kum Ba Yah.  Or at least gather with the agreement that we will all try to listen attentively and openly to one another without blaming or hostility.

But perhaps that is not what is called for now.  And in order to move more deeply into meaning and purpose,  I may have to, in Eckart Tolle’s words, allow my ego “to be diminished.”  That would mean I’d let go of the “nice guy” identity.  That would mean I’d face into the possibility of being seen as a Cassandra, negative, etc., and risk some discomfort as I muck about internally in order to get in touch with something deeper and more essential than that ego.  Only then, perhaps, will I step more fully into the ability to become a truth-teller.

Because, honestly, truth-telling is not for sissies.  It means being open to pissing people off.  And perhaps that is part of what is needed for us collectively to move through this stuck place as acculturated humans.  Maybe there is a real need in the world, in our friends and families and communities, for people to speak their truth and acknowledge the anger that then arises in others, without shutting down,  backpedaling, or retaliating with defense or counter-attack.

Indeed I had a remarkable experience at the last screening we attended.  I was gratefully surprised to see that I’d  made some headway on this front.  My response in the moment was pretty skillful, when members of the audience expressed anger and criticism.   I was neither shattered nor defensive.  Some new core of “self” showed up.

Over the past six months or so of the “ego-shredding”  that has happened for me in our dialogue gatherings, I’ve been learning to sit with the discomfort of attack, criticism, or blame, and to not close down, defend or attack in return nearly as reflexively or often.  And at that screening I was able to stay quite open and present.  I was able to respond rather than to react.

It went like this.  In the face of criticism, instead of drowning in a flood of defensive thoughts, I was able to quiet down and breathe.  That brought focus, which allowed me to remember that I could listen very carefully and then paraphrase back what I had heard the person say.  I found that as I did that I even began to feel some genuine understanding and empathy for their experience.  Obviously, that was much more effective at opening  possible lines of communication.  At the very least it was disarming.  That simple, genuine reflection back of what the person was saying, and what his or her concerns were, was enough to allow my gut to relax and for me to feel well and present.

Most people have heard about “reflective listening.”  It is often taught in communications and leadership training, as well as in couple’s and family counseling.  Most of us know, but then forget, that when we don’t listen well it makes the problem worse.  But it’s a big deal to really make the shift, not just using the words as a technique, but to experience the gut level shift, from defense to open-hearted listening.  And it’s extra hard to do when one’s ego identity is being attacked or questioned.

I’ve been consciously working to let go more and more of defending my ego and I think that’s why I was able to stay open and listen, and then to simply respond, in my own words, with what I had heard people were saying.

I was also able to understand that they want something that they don’t have and don’t know how to get.  And instead of taking their frustration on as my fault or responsibility, instead of feeling inadequate or defensive in response, I was able to simply be present with them.

What is it that people want?  They want the world to be fixed, and they want it done without a lot of pain or loss.  They want everyone to wake up.  Like twenty years ago.  Before the permafrost started burping methane.  Before it was too late.  They want reality to be different.  They are clinging to the hope that having everyone wake up, right now, will make that happen.

Tim and I have talked about this a lot.  People want our movie to create a mass consciousness change.  And it doesn’t.  It is not part of popular culture.  It is not entertainment.  To the contrary, it is hard and it is long.  Many people advise us to make the movie easier and shorter in hopes that masses of people will wake up and make monumental changes at every level.  They want that because they want someone,  something,  to  “save the world.”  And sadly, I think what most people really mean by “to save the world” is “to save the humans.”

What’s hard to look at is that it doesn’t appear that many humans are really up for facing what it might take to save ourselves, if that is even possible, even if huge numbers of us did it at this late date.

That is really hard to look at.

I was able, at that post-screening discussion, to make some space for people to express their anger, conscious or not, that nobody seems to be fixing the world.  In the space that was created as a result a woman asked a really great question.   And that was this:  “How do you and Tim, in your own lives, get people to wake up?”

It was an wonderful question in its simplicity and directness.  That question gave me an opportunity to tell the truth of our experience in a very candid and quiet way.

I said that Tim and I have given up on trying to get people to wake up.  Originally, when we embarked on making the movie, we longed to see our movie become just one log on a huge fire fed by many thoughtful writers, movie-makers, activists, organizers.  And that the fire that blazed from all of that good intention would ignite the hearts and minds and imaginations of the masses.  We hoped that such a collective fire would make a miraculous transformation in all of humanity that would ultimately forestall most of the destruction of the planet.

It has been tremendously sad and sobering to see that what we so longed for is not happening.  We do see people waking up.  But it is only a very tiny number.  And we are coming to surmise that, if the destruction of the planet is to be forestalled, it will have to come about by something other than merely human effort.  It’s just too late.  And maybe it was actually too late, unbeknownst to all of us, quite sometime back.

Many, even the sober and measured voice of Richard Heinberg, are saying it is too late.  Here’s what he said recently:

But here’s the crux of the matter: unlike the situation the world faced in the 1970s, there is no prospect for another cheap-energy bounce this time. It’s too late to muddle. We have run out the clock on proactive adaptation. From now on, collective survival will hinge on the strategies we adopt for emergency response. Some strategies will make matters worse, while others will lay the groundwork for better times to come.  This is what it has come to. One doesn’t wish to sound shrill, but there it is.  It is too late for mitigation.  Preparation to adapt to a radically different planet is what is called for at this point.

Having let go of the struggle to wake people up, Tim and I have come to appreciate how much our work means to the people who have been waking up for some time but have felt alone and sometimes a little crazy and alienated because there were so few people, if any, that they could really talk to.  So what we’ve come to is that we made the movie, largely, as a love offering for those people.

I said that to the woman in the audience who asked that simple and direct question.  I said that we’ve given up the struggle to wake people up and that we’ve found it incredibly gratifying to simply connect with, and support, the people who are awake or awakening.

That answer was very helpful to her.  She had been struggling a lot I think with trying to get people to wake up.  The fact that Tim and I were no longer struggling to awaken people was helpful to her.  She was one of those people helped by our movie and then by our presence.  She no longer felt so alone.

Cesar A. Cruz wrote a poem about this, and we grabbed part of the title because it worked so well, “We are here to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable.”

We have enjoyed comforting the disturbed.  And now we are asking ourselves, “Is it on our cosmic dance card to do another screening tour and put ourselves out there, with this new atmosphere of anger and criticism amongst the comfortable?”  We’re asking if it important to step more fully into disturbing the comfortable, including ourselves?   It might be helpful to support the anger that is brewing rather than hiding from it, even if it initially gets directed at us and our work.  And there might be a huge amount of growth for us personally in stepping into an even deeper commitment to show up and tell the truth regardless of the consequences.

For me it was actually pretty exhilarating to be able to stand in front of an audience with an atmosphere of palpable anger and to not shut down, not defend, and not go on the attack in response.  It’s new freedom to step into: that I don’t have to hide in the face of anger.  I can just be there and listen, not agreeing, not defending, just listening with openness.  And when the time is right, when a question is asked in a very genuine and direct way, I will respond with more of my truth and my experience, and that feels pretty good.

There is more to say about this.  It has to do with the spirit of dialogue which has all but been lost in this culture.  But that will have to wait for another time.