I felt myself getting all worked up recently during two separate conversations with two different friends about the same essay in the New York Times. The author wrote about a time — two decades into her marriage — when her husband told her, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.” But the piece is not about her personal pain, or about divorce (he doesn’t move out) — it’s about how she didn’t buy into his words and subsequent unreliable behavior, but rather cooly gave him the “distance” he needed (for six months) while she explained to their kids, ““Daddy’s having a hard time as adults often do.”
I got worked up just now as I re-read the essay several times, and even more now that I am writing about it. Why? Because (and let me steal the words she used to deflect her husband’s hateful words): I don’t buy it.
“How could she remain so cool?” I asked both of my friends.
One friend: “Maybe she’s a Buddhist.”
Me: “Yeah, maybe she’s the Dalai Lama.”
(I think I just scared the other friend with how upset this essay made me. I haven’t heard from him since.)
I have no doubt the writer has studied Buddhism. She writes, “You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to ‘The End of Suffering.’ I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take
responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.” By writing the essay she wants to help, “People who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their temporary feelings are permanent.”
All good and true words. But in this piece she paints herself as a living saint, with boundless commitment and patience. Yes, to the “The End of Suffering.” Yes, to the understanding that all feelings are transient. But good lord woman, humans commit to “understanding” this all the time—and then they waver, and they suffer, and they act out in destructive ways, and then, with grace, they get back on track—only to waver again. And sometimes they get the urge to just smack their partners! Yikes.
I’m not sure if it’s plain old me or writer me that is so upset by this essay. Since she doesn’t show us any of feelings or struggle, I don’t quite believe her story. (Surely she cried herself to sleep some nights or wanted to kick the cat. Surely her marriage crisis was not all off-balance hubby and perfectly-balanced wife.) I don’t think enlightened behavior comes as easily as this writer has made it out to be. That’s what ticked me off. She made it look easy. Consciously or unconsciously she doesn’t seem to be honest with us—or, I suspect, with herself.
More than being impressed with her self-reported Dalai Lama level of enlightenment, I am suspect. All I know is that every time I declare “I’ve got it now!” and commit to a “non-negotiable understanding with myself” and “The End of Suffering” and “managed to
exile the voices in my head” (and this has happened numerous times) something comes along to knock me right off my personal pedestal. Whoa, girlie, the universe says. You think you’ve got it, well let’s see how you handle this! Life is pain, suffering. There is no end to it for most, if not all, of us. And I am much better off, much happier, more in touch, if I don’t expect myself to have perfect knowledge or take perfect action, and if I understand I am always, always, always deluded. On the path, but far from arriving. I relate more to her husband—the one in their relationship who is a mess. And I feel as though she condescends to him from her enlightened pedestal. But maybe (probably) that and the extreme level of my upsetness as I write this says more about me than it does about this article.