We are Complex; We Contain Multitudes

I know. The last two essays I published were wildly at odds with one another.  One announced, even celebrated my discontent.  Not just discontent with the moment but as a state of being and as a motivational base.  The world, I suggested, is often not just.  Consequently, discontent with the world as is—and the need to repair it—is the only position that makes sense to me.  So, too, my relationship to myself, which has required a lifetime of regular improvement. 

The second essay portrayed a new stage of life, a stage beyond the urge or the need to change, in which calm, quiet, and love are the figural emotions on my emotional and philosophical stage. 

As I published the first, I worried that readers would think that discontent was, alone, at my core, and no peace found its way into my heart. When I published the second, I worried that readers might dismiss it because it so contradicted the one on discontent.  How could someone be both discontent and peaceful? 

But I haven’t tried to reconcile the two.  Each essay presents an honest statement of where I was at the time of writing—and where I often find myself.  Each represents a powerful force within me, a voice that I’m familiar with.  In other words, neither represents me in my entirety.  I vacillate.  And not just between two poles.  I have several, relatively coherent streams of thought and feelings that, at times, leap from the background to become figural. 

And that’s okay with me.  I have quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson to the effect that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and I find that to be true.  But Walt Whitman offers a view that I find even more accurate and resonant: “I contain multitudes,” he proclaimed.  I do, too.  So do we all.

I have long observed critics castigate politicians for changing their minds.  Why not?  Can’t they learn something new?  Reevaluate situations?  Isn’t that what a thinking person does?  In my mind, there’s way too little room for our public selves to revise, shift gears, or even to apologize for slipshod thinking and move on. 

We humans are not innately or only drawn to consistency.  Our minds wander.  Thoughts, images, impressions, and urges vary with our moods, with the time of day, the food we eat, the exercise we do—or don’t do.  Our opinions, generally associated with rational thought, can fluctuate along a longer time frame, and depending partly on the social circles we inhabit and the political and cultural trends of the moment. 

I remember a time, not too long ago, when we optimistically expected Trump to be caught in one illegal activity or another, then banished.  The optimism calmed us.  But the cultural mood these days has grown more cynical.  He seems to weasel out of almost every infraction—and with that realization, we grow cynical.  And not just about Trump but about the entire political scene. It’s as though a vast dark cloud has momentarily covered the sun. 

Throughout our lives, or even our days, there are periods of optimism and pessimism.  And this varies, person to person.  Some of us have sunnier dispositions than others.  I have friends who see what I see, evaluate situations as I do, yet remain cheerful in their everyday activity and in their long-term expectations.  Others tend to the dark side.  I often vary, from dark to sunny and back, sometimes in a single day.

From the time we are very young, we are urged and we are taught to be consistent.  “Make up your mind,” they say.  “Do you want to sign up for this activity?  And, if you do, will you stay with it?”  If you stay with it, that is a sign of virtue.  If you don’t, there is something wrong with you.  You’ll never build skills, friendships, character, they say.  A consistent person is a trustworthy person. To say that you know your mind is a compliment.  To waver with any frequency, to contradict yourself—that is seen as weakness.    

In school, we are taught to make clear and consistent statements.  In every essay assignment, we must gather and analyze information to arrive at narrative with internal consistency—that’s the goal.  The airtight case, in which all the facts advance the central argument, is most persuasive.  Anything else is considered weak, perhaps stupid.  If some facts don’t fit, we are asked to make them fit or, at least, to explain away their deviance.  This is a little like turning our minds into little totalitarian governments.  And, believe me, I know this argumentative mode.  I have been there far too much.

Once we learn to become orderly—meaning rational—thinkers our character is said to show forth.  People can identify us.  This is who she or he is.  Even if we are inconsistent, friends and colleagues will try to remedy the situation.  “He may seem wishy washy or all over the place, but underneath it all, s/he believes this.”  We all have a stake in consistency.

In other words, people depend on ‘knowing’ us, something they don’t think they can do unless they see the clear, straight line of our thinking. 

I want to argue, instead, for the value, not of inconsistency, per se, but of multiplicity.  We are of many opinions, many moods.  Compressing them altogether may feel like the right thing to do but I think it robs us of the power, the excitement, the clarity of thinking at any given time.  Having to be consistent is like putting your mind in prison.  It negates our messy, multidimensional, internal experience.

There is freedom and delight in permitting your mind to take a tangent, like exploring a new land.  There is learning when you allow your self to wander, when you entertain new thoughts, observe the world differently, when you put together thoughts and observations in novel ways. 

Each morning, in the privacy of my journal, I follow a thread of thought much further than I normally do during the day.  I am often surprised at what I find.  Sometimes these pathways are disconcerting and I want to halt my journey or instantly reconcile my discoveries with other thoughts.  In other words, develop a consistent narrative.  But, if the reconciliation comes early on, if I cut off the journey of discovery before it has yielded its fruit, then my thoughts are ordinary and stale.  If I let my thoughts wander far enough, then, with new insights, I can better consider how they fit with other thoughts.  And a richer brew emerges.

It is hard to bring together the extended threads of our thinking into a coherent—or consistent—picture. The big picture is complex and dynamic.  But I think it is truer and more honest than the consistent pictures and arguments that most of society generally demands of us. 

And deeper challenge is not so much to bring everything together as to live well with complexity and contradictions. 

Of course, each of us should enjoy the comfort of consistent aspects of our lives—that morning cup of coffee, the political conversations with those whose range is near our own, the belief in God.  But with others and at other times, we could also grant ourselves the luxury of embracing indecision, changing our minds, and reveling in multiplicity.  Both courses are so very human. 

Crossing the Great River

On this side of the river, I’ve lived a long life of perseverance, adventure, and good luck.  I remember having to make new friends as my parents moved us from the Bronx to Levittown to Franklin Square, Long Island, and from there, on my own, to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Along the way, I strove to make baseball, basketball, and football teams.  During my sophomore year of high school, I was too small to make the varsity teams but determined to make them by junior year.  And I did.  

This was my pathway.  Leaping into the fray and trusting that, somehow, I’d find a way to succeed. I never anticipated getting into Harvard, for instance, and, for the first two years, I wondered if I belonged. But eventually it felt like I did.  When it was time to get a job or apply for graduate school, I hadn’t a clue what I wanted “to do with my life,” but I liked reading about history and put the big questions aside long enough to complete a PhD program.  Even if I didn’t know why, I worked hard and did well enough. 

At the same time, I began studying group and family therapy, a professional activity that captured my imagination.  When I felt myself ready, I abruptly left Harvard and set up a practice.  As usual, I was poorly prepared but pretty sure I could make a go of it.

At the same time, I tried my hand at marriage.  Why?  Why, at 21, didn’t I just date or settle down with a girlfriend for a couple of years?  I don’t know.  It didn’t appeal to me.  As I said, I like to jump into things and assume that I will make them work.  As one of Franny’s friend’s mothers correctly observed, “Well, I guess  he’s just the marrying kind.  It took me three times, but I eventually got it right.  Franny and I have been very well and lovingly matched for 45 years now. The third jump paid off.

So it was with parenting.  My second marriage was filled with bile and recriminations but with one, great reward: my daughter.  And, though I never anticipated being the main caretaker for a baby, that’s what happened.  And, crazy as it might seem, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t figure out how to do it well.  For the first few years, I worked much harder in this role than in any other.  But, if you’d ask my daughter—and my son, for that matter—I’d hope they’d say it worked out. 

One of my skills is strategic planning, in which you determine a goal, assess your resources, and rationally, carefully figure out how best to get from here to there.  I have helped countless individuals and organizations work in this way. But, if I’m honest with myself, there are very few things that I’ve done in this manner. 

Some years ago, I wrote a paper that better characterizes my style.  It’s called “Ready, Fire, Aim.”  I see something I’d like to do—become a clinician, an organizational development consultant, an executive coach, a writer—and I leap into the work and, for that matter, into the identity that goes with the work.  I become a clinician, coach, and consultant.  I try my best to do it well, trying this and that and observing where my efforts fail and where they yield good results.  Then I do more of what succeeds.  Eventually I arrive at a method that I can believe in.  I usually begin by teaching that method, then write papers and books about it.  After a time, I become an “expert.” 

In the course of almost 50 years, I started five organizations, one professional journal, four books, and one house on 30 acres of land in Southern New Hampshire, while living in a tent.  Each project delighted me during the building stage.  Eventually I tired of the current project and left to build again. 

I have always loved the building stage.  My head buzzes with ideas.  My body vibrates with energy.  I speak to many people about my new project and gather their ideas—and their enthusiasm.  Connecting with people at this intellectual and emotional level has always felt more satisfying than even completing the final product.  I prefer the wild, rollicking, passionate times when I believe in the outcome even while uncertain that I’d get there.  Wallace Stevens understood people like me: “Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall?” I am most alive when I have an eye to the future, a new idea, a new project.

But here’s the thing: I don’t expect to find that kind of life on the other side of the river.  I imagine that I’ll have to relinquish much my exuberant energy rapt attention, and focus on the future when I get there.  I’d expect to matter less and to search less for meaning beyond what I am doing at a given time.  I see myself letting go of my long time life and style in exchange for peace and rest, and possibly for a sense of completion. 

The most enduring and optimistic vision I have is of the old men in Yeats’ poem, Lapis Lazuli.  The image of old men, “whose ancient, glittering eyes are gay,” seated comfortably on a mountain top, no longer fearful of criticism or failure or even of the possibility that they will find no inherent meaning in life—that image has often served me as a great light at the end of a tunnel when I am feeling overwhelmed by life. 

I know.  I’ve just portrayed my life on this side of the river as filled with adventure and so alive with possibilities.  But part of the adventure has also required me to hide from or to overcome my fear that I won’t matter in life as much as I’d like.  As another of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman, once wrote: “Do I contradict myself?  So be it.”  Maybe accepting the contradiction is the light on the peer on the other side.    

Some of my closest friends have crossed the river in a simple and far less dramatic way.  They are relieved by relinquishing the responsibilities of the past—and the anxieties that accompanied both their responsibilities and their great successes.  They relish lives of reading and gardening and dining with friends and family.  They seem to have reached a point of comfort without agendas.  They are done with achievement, done with having to be anyone but the smaller human beings that we all are.  They are at peace on the planet.  And, for a while now, I’ve been jealous of them. 

Their ways aren’t entirely mysterious to me, though.  I have also been willing to let many things go.  I am no longer the center of anything.  Not my family.  Not an organization.  I am no longer accorded automatic respect as I stroll through my diminishing world.  But—and here’s the hope—as I gaze across the river, I am beginning to grow comfortable with that person, that speck of sand in the great universe.  I feel a little naked but less and less embarrassed by the absent indicators of status.  That’s the key, I’ve learned, to living on the other side.

I am even beginning to let go of my lifelong attachment to change, to the necessity of remedying any ill that besets me.  In fact, I call that other shore “a point beyond change.”  And although I’m sure that I will change as I grow very old, it won’t happen as a strategic effort to right my ship.

I’ve had a mundane but extraordinary experience lately.  Knee replacement surgery has renewed my pleasure in movement.  A low carb, high protein diet has renewed my energy, physical and mental.  For reasons beyond my understanding, I have almost stopped fearing death.  I feel alive and well, even exuberant some of the time, but this time, with no goal in mind.  Just living. 

It feels like I’ve stepped off the boat and, seeing that I’m on the other side of the river, find myself increasingly calm, oddly young, happy to be quiet by myself, pleased to be with those I love.  This is enough.