To Love Strong and Do Right: Or, When I Nearly Peed My Pants

This post feels hard to start. I can't let on to too many details (which is already part of the problem) but I hope to write. I need to write. So let me try.

For the past couple of years I've been thinking and writing about many of the same topics: Academic philosophy. Graduate school. Relationships (that start and end). What I'm doing with my life and what I want to do. Where I'll be when I do it. About a year and a half ago I noticed that the nature of my posts was starting to change. Rather than reflecting on the philosophy that I was reading and writing about how it relates to real life, I started to simply write about real life. This blog went from somewhat academically-informed to pseudo self-help insights from a twenty-something-year-old.  That slow distancing from academic philosophy in my blogging reflected a slow separation from academic philosophy in my personal life.  I stopped reading philosophy because I got bored with reading philosophy. Even the stuff that was aimed at me--as a member of the target audience of academic researchers interested in Nietzsche, rhetoric, and writing styles, for instance--was painful to get through. When I would force myself to go to public talks or conference presentations, I found myself getting frustrated and angry. Even the stuff by feminist philosophers seemed to be too insular, too arrogant, or the comments and questions that followed too self-aggrandizing or too antagonistic (and I lost all hope for other philosophy that didn't even try or pretend to be relevant to life and interests outside of academic philosophy). The summary of my relationship with philosophy over the past year goes something like this: I haven't been feeling very inspired. Like a stale marriage, philosophy, it has seemed, just got too far removed from my life. I'm around it all the time. I force myself to keep working at it. I try to make it exciting and plan fun activities whenever I can. Overall, though, we're probably heading down the path toward a divorce. But that's not the part that's hard to write.

In the past couple of weeks my life has taken an unexpected turn. It's not the kind of turn that would immediately change everything in my life like a terrible car accident, getting married, or winning the lottery. However, it could have been. And nevertheless, this event has changed my life in a different way. On the surface, for those who aren't receiving phone calls from me every few days, it very likely appears as though nothing has changed at all. But for me, something very, very big has occurred that has forced me to look deeply, carefully, and lovingly at my life. I've been taking stock of where I am, what I am doing, where I am going, and where I want to be. Same old, same old, right? Wrong. Because this time it's serious. Rather than just musing about the possibilities in a free-floating kind of way that is kept afloat by a low-level, ever-present anxiety about the unknowns of one's future, this is is a type of reflection that takes priorities, values, needs, goals, and dreams very seriously into account. It's the kind of thinking that functions as if you just realized that you're heading into some rapids and you don't have a raft. You start thinking, "How the hell do I get a raft?" or "I need to get off of this river."

These types of moments call for a real practical kind of reflection. One person referred to it as a moment for "course correction." You realize that you are in a place where you don't want to be and never wanted to be. And you come to the painful realization that instead of boldly walking toward your next goal you have been timidly dancing around in circles like a child who has to pee. My apologies for taking this image too far, but these past couple of weeks have been the metaphorical moment when I nearly pissed my pants. Fortunately, I found a really nasty bathroom. It was unpleasant to say the very least, but I'm lucky I could find a bathroom before it was too late. Again, no one need be the wiser about the fact that I almost peed my pants since I'm not walking around with that embarrassing mess all over me. In the public eye, when things are smoothly humming along, "going to bathroom" is one of those things that we have the privilege of forgetting that everyone does. But my goodness, now I know for sure that the next time I'm dancing around in circles it better be out of joy for putting my skills to good use, following my passion, living each day filled with gratitude, and having confidence that if I ever have to pee that badly again that I've already cleaned up my own bathroom, installed a skylight, and decorated the counters with fresh wildflowers. (Sorry. I've been known to take metaphors to the extreme.)

This delicate little branch has been around my neck for over a week now. In that time, it's taken on a symbolic meaning as a reminder to love strong and do right.

With great surprise, and also an unexpected amount of relief, my recent experiences have reinvigorated a deep appreciation in me for philosophy. After all of my years of doing philosophy while saying that it can be incredibly helpful and therapeutic by providing ways for people to think through their experiences and understand them in new ways, this return to philosophy was almost instinctual. In fact, I might even say it was necessary. I started to talk and process and think about what I was going through in ways that called into question the cultural values that perpetuate a kind of shaming silence about our experiences (and how this silence reinforces politically and ethically problematic structures that also maintain an unfortunate--if not unjust--status quo). Suddenly, I was very grateful that I had the tools within myself to understand my own situation in a philosophical way that helped me see how there are identifiable reasons that would typically seem "unrelated" but that are part of why this has been such a difficult situation. Thankful for my own ability to see a picture that went beyond pitiful-ol'-me-who-unexpectedly-had-to-pee, I was reminded that there are many, many, many important issues that affect lots of people's lives in profound ways. Rather than embracing the notion that "ignorance is bliss" and acting like these things don't affect us or the people we know and love, I remembered just how important it is to raise awareness and encourage a kind of public discourse that empowers, supports, and honestly addresses people in thoughtful and helpful ways. In short, thanks to the difficulty of recent events in my life, I have suddenly felt very much inspired to do philosophy.

As part of my effort to build up a better bathroom for myself and others, I'm refocusing my energy on what I'm good at, what I value most, and how I can best use the skill set that I have been gifted through my experiences. (Did I say I would quit with the metaphor? No. Is it confusing if you don't know what I'm talking about? Probably. Here's a hint: "bathroom" refers to a number of things so don't think about it too hard. Just keep reading...I'm almost done anyway.) I don't know if this means that I will be doing professional academic philosophy. But I really want it to mean that I find a way to help people think about their experiences in ways that inform practical ways of living that are empowering, therapeutic, and transformative on social, political, and personal levels. In other words, my goal is find a way to keep doing philosophy that remains true to the real reasons why I got into it in the first place. That way may be known by a different name but I want philifesophy to be at the heart of it.

A few weeks of my philifesophy

The past few weeks have been marked by a unique kind of bubbling deep in my belly. It's a nervousness, or perhaps a growing awareness, and something that has resisted being put into writing. So this is my attempt. And I am taking it on in the hopes of a catharsis, or a relief, or if nothing else, part of the process of working through some thoughts and feelings.

Here is the situation:

In my professional life, I'm currently reading a list of over 40 books this semester in preparation for my comprehensive exams. Fortunately for me, my tests will be on two fascinating subjects, Feminist Philosophy and 20th Century Continental Philosophy. I've tailored my lists to materials that speak directly to issues of affect, embodiment, corporeality, materiality, sexuality, neurobiology, psychology, ethics, and philosophy.

In my personal life, I've been traversing familiar yet seemingly new ground with respect to my relationships with others and with myself. My reading lists have been incredibly illuminating of my personal process to the point where I've had to quickly summarize for my therapist parts of Nietzsche's philosophy on health and vitality, ideas about the transmission of affect, notions of corporeal generosity, and Beauvoir's incredible classic, The Second Sex. I figure, she has to hear about what I am reading in order to understand from where I am coming. But more unusually, I also took time this week to explain to my advisor (the director of my committee) what sort of things I have been addressing in therapy. She knows what I am reading, but she doesn't know the extent of my involvement with these books and how they are affecting me day after day as I pass through the pages. So, in order for her to understand how I am reading Beauvoir and Nietzsche, commentary on embodiment and values, I told her about my own personal efforts in managing healthy boundaries with people, giving more of my space and my self to my partners, and working on integrating love, trust, vulnerability, and risk in my relationships with myself and others in ways that might finally help me kick this 10 month long cough.

I've spent hours over these weeks thinking about the profound and often unsettling connections that are occurring between my personal life and my philosophy. For instance, when I asked what sort of changes might occur if we follow Spinoza's and Nietzsche's idea of creating values out of a certain affective disposition (for example, joy rather than sadness), my advisor responded by saying something like,
"It's not something that we can really specifically imagine, but I do think it would change our relationships: with institutions, with others, and even with ourselves." She likened it to an example of the creation of gods. Imagine those who were so filled with gratitude, joy, and celebration that they created gods in order to have a place toward which these feelings could be directed. And compare that to a God that is created out of fear, threat, and insecurity.

This conversation occurred just a few days after I really acknowledged something important: I have high expectations. This is not news, for I have always known that I could not allow myself to be anything but responsible, mature, successful. I expect for myself to be able to take care of myself and to be independent. There are of course reasons for why I have been been made (i.e., created, sculpted) to be this way, but more importantly, it has led to a kind of inflexibility, irritability, and demanding level of expectation within myself that gets directed to those around me, and particularly toward my partners. This, too, is not news, for I have already been learning how to "lighten up" with others. In fact, it is easier to do that with others because I do it out of compassion, kindness, and love for others. But I hadn't yet paid attention to the root of the problem, which is that I could also "lighten up" on myself. Like the example of the creation of gods, imagine, I told myself, how even my closest relationships with others might be different if I could allow myself more room to be affected by others, to be less independent, to make stupid mistakes...(Of course, it would be naive at best to think that I have not already been completely affected by others, dependent on others, and made lots of silly, stupid mistakes. I get it on a cognitive level. I'm seeing what it means to internalize it on an emotional one.)

There have been numerous other experiences like this as I've been going through my philosophy, including the shocking dis-ease that occurred as I read the Second Sex and felt as though Beauvoir was narrating my life (which I have since heard is a common response), and these experiences are coupled by intense personal memories of old relationships, friendships, and family experiences. In particular, I've been appreciating the unconditional generosity of certain friends, family members, "adopted" family members, and mentors of mine over the years. As I hope to more fully grasp the fact that we are already constituted by an openness to the Other and practice that by means of concrete moments of pure generosity, I am grateful for the examples of this that I have already encountered. I have been remembering what it felt like to receive an unquestioned, unwavering, and unconditional love from one of the most influential people in my life during my most formative years...and appreciating the commitment and dedication that was expressed in that love. In a very simple sense, I am touching on what it means to love. And at the same time, I am reading carefully about Simone de Beauvoir's notion of genuine love and Merleau-Ponty's notions of intercorporeality, expressed through Rosalyn Diprose's writing on generosity: "The body at risk is a generous body, a body that is opened to the other. And this erotic generosity is creative in transforming the other's embodied situation, and hence existence, through a self-metamorphosis that...does not reduce the other to the self. Becoming flesh is a project directed toward and beyond the other, a giving without calculation that nevertheless gets something in return through the future possibilities it opens" (Corporeal Generosity, 86). More simply: "For Merleau-Ponty, this lending to and borrowing from the bodies of others is a generosity lying not just at the core of the erotic encounter but at the heart of existence itself" (89).

In spite of the often ineffable moments that reading book after book of this stuff can generate, I've had some brief conversations about my worries of being so personally involved in my work. Is there, or should there be, a strong separation between psychology and philosophy, that is, the personal work that I do in therapy and the philosophical work I do for comprehensive exams? Is there a danger in being too personally invested in the work that if others disapprove of the content or the method, I might be setting myself up for hardship when I go on the job market? Rather than writing this on a public blog for others to see, should I be pouring myself into journal publications? Is all of this stuff on relationships and personal growth just not philosophical enough for you, whoever you are?!? I've written about my struggles with these questions before. And I've recently gotten some feedback from others. My advisor said something like this (and I have always wholly agreed with this point): "If nothing else, it's good for life to approach it philosophically. And it's good for philosophy to keep it grounded in relevant issues that involve our lives." I say, what good is philosophy if it doesn't speak directly to our experiences? This semester has already been an unanticipated challenge and growing experience precisely because the books have been speaking directly to me!

And I am not alone. In fact, my favorite philosopher has stepped up to the front of the line of my next stack of books to read. Within the Introduction of Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, Arthur Danto writes:

"Nietzsche was always defined through divided intentions. He did not want at any time to give up his critique of the human, all too human, as he continued all the while to build the great philosophical account of human nature that in less gifted hands would have been a treatise, an essay, an enquiry, a dissertation. He tried to practice philosophy in the way he thought of history as being practiced when in the service of life rather than in the production of academic scholars. His divided intentions very nearly queered his philosophical reputation, inasmuch as philosophers since his time have pretty largely just been academic philosophers, trained by codes of expressions Neitzsche fails to follow, whereas we might now see in him a model for how to do philosophy when we want to be taken seriously in the academy and at the same time effective in life" (xix).

And I've also been quite open about the fact that I do philosophy in a particular way because I find the true philosophical significance in its application to life, growth, and flourishing, rather than for a service within institutions. This is not an original position. In talking about Nietzsche's decision to leave the academy, Marion Faber explains, "It was not only his health, however, but also his conviction that academic life was stifling and a hindrance to a true philosopher which prompted his departure. As he had already written,...a philosopher must strive not merely to be a thinker, but primarily to be a human being; this latter goal would be better realized outside the confines of a scholarly existence" (xxii). And indeed, Nietzsche did not turn away from psychology but rather towards psychology for his explanation of things like gratitude and moral valuations. Furthermore, "We can at least speculate that such a psychology of gratitude may be partially attributed to Nietzsche's own conception of his life as struggle--with himself, his illness, and the outside world" (xxx).

So as I happily turn to the small stack of Nietzsche's books again, quite aware of the risky openness and vulnerability of my own personal feelings and the likelihood that they will be affected once more (and more!) by the pages that I read, I find a sense of comfort in the possibility that I am doing something right because I am open to and aware of this relationship between my life and philosophy. In Section 6 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes, "Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown. Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim?"

For me, I put emphasis on becoming healthier, stronger, new, and different from what I have already been, to live a life of happiness, gaiety, creativity, and vitality. All of this, is a practice in self-overcoming.