Andre Dubus, Lies, Laziness

My friend Gina is constantly talking to me about short story writer Andre Dubus, who was horribly injured in a car accident in 1986. Wikipedia narrates the tragedy in this way:


He was driving and stopped to assist two disabled motorists. As Dubus assisted one motorist to the side of the highway, an oncoming car swerved and hit them. One of the disabled motorists was killed instantly; the other survived because Dubus had pushed her out of the way. As a result of the accident, both Dubus's legs were crushed. His left leg had to be amputated above the knee, and Dubus would eventually lose the use of his right leg. Dubus would spend three painful years undergoing a series of operations, and extensive physical therapy. Despite his efforts to walk with a prosthesis, chronic infections confined him to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Dubus continued to battle the physical pains imposed by his condition, and clinical depression. The circumstances were terrible. It may be that the ability to feel anger is what kept them each alive, but his marriage foundered. Over the course of these struggles Dubus's third wife, a newly unemployed editor and young mother who had herself become seriously depressed, was also failing to write. She left him, taking with her their two young daughters, his "babies". Unable to run, to write, to sleep, without his "three girls" he was heartbroken.


So, that's ... not uplifting. Anyway, so then Gina sent me this quotation, written about Dubus:


He consistently describes himself as "crippled," and despises the journalistic cliches that are invariably hauled out to discuss the disabled: "To view human suffering as an abstraction, as a statement about how plucky we all are," he writes in "Song of Pity," "is to blow air through brass while the boys and girls march in parade off to war. Seeing the flesh as only a challenge to the spirit is as false as seeing the spirit as only a challenge to the flesh."








I am not disabled so I don't feel I can speak to how the disabled are discussed by journalists; I think it matters most how disabled persons feel about their representation. But I agree that viewing suffering as an abstraction, "as a statement about how plucky we all are," is false in that abstracting suffering fails to acknowledge the extent of it. I think that if human suffering can be alleviated by discussion and thought that it will come through accepting it for what it is, not giving it a rosy sheen. I know that acknowledging suffering makes some people uncomfortable, but I think that discomfort reflects a desire to deny what is true. I think that suffering  gets better when it is embraced, accepted, confronted. To me, acting like something isn't as bad as it is, "to blow air through brass while the boys and girls march in parade off to war," is refusing to square with reality. It's like telling a lie.


I ran across this quote on the blog of this therapist:


The average person tells 4 lies a day or 1460 a year, a total of 87,600 by the time they get to 60. And the most common lie is: I'm fine. (quote taken from here: http://theangrytherapist.tumblr.com/)


I find that unsurprising and also sad. I think what most people want, certainly what I want, is to find someone(s) to whom they can express their true feelings, be who they are in an authentic way. But most of the time, with most people, we don't do this. I think generally people end up telling lies about feelings and all kinds of other things perhaps out of fear. But doing scary things always makes me feel alive, so why wouldn't I do it all the time? Maybe it's because it feels unsafe. I think really what most people crave is love and security and so maybe being totally honest feels like it can jeopardize one's access to those things. Or maybe it's just because people are lazy.


Here's another quote I ran across on another blog: 


There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practiced in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications of our energy. -- Sogyal Rinpoche (taken from here: http://theessentialman.tumblr.com)



This kind of reminds me of a passage from the novel Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively, in which the caustic narrator complains about her brother Gordon -- who is brilliant and successful -- and his choice to marry Sylvia, someone who she considers insipid and not his intellectual or emotional equal.


There is Gordon, who has mutated from a golden lad to a successful man, shrewd, respected and handsome with it. Women fall for him from Singapore to Standford. And there is Sylvia, whose girlish prettiness has given way to a plump and nondescript maturity, and whose conversation is of climate, the price of things, and children's schooling. I have watched others watch Sylvia trail in Gordon's wake like some stumpy dinghy towed by a yacht, have observed hostesses tuck her safely away at the end of the table, seen the yawn in the eyes of Gordon's high-flying friends. But I may well be the only one to know that Gordon has a deep seminal laziness. Oh, he works. He will work himself into the ground, when it is a matter of the intellect. His laziness is more subtle than that, it is a laziness of the soul, and Sylvia is its manifestation. Gordon needs Sylvia like some people need to spend an hour or two every day simply staring out of the window, or twiddling their fingers. Gordon's intellectual energy is prodigious; his emotional energy is minimal. Those sharp clever women with whom, from time to time, he is seen, would never do as permanencies. Sylvia has always been more secure than perhaps she realizes.


I strive to not have a laziness of the soul. Often, though, I do not succeed in this.  I think maybe I/we/people/one don't always go for the emotionally honest response, don't square with the reality of human suffering, etc., opt to blow through brass as the boys and girls march in parade off to war -- due to an interior laziness. I think of myself as an insightful, introspective person but I know that most of the time I am internally lazy and go for the habitual response, the boilerplate emotional reaction. I go with what feels safe and familiar instead of pushing myself to grow or stretch in a new way. I'd like to be less like this.


That therapist's blog says that emotional honesty (what he calls "complete transparency"), which is part of what I think a non-internally-lazy person embraces, matters because most people internalize their feelings which can turn into resentment, anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behaviors. And that when you let out your feelings relationships improve and you also build self-worth. (Link is here: http://theangrytherapist.tumblr.com/post/529326724/complete-transparency.)  I agree. But, I think living that way is pretty hard to do. 


I like to think that I'm all about facing reality, opening my heart, being honest with myself and others. But often times I feel I'm faced with a choice between buttermilk pancakes -- that which is safe, known, pleasurable -- or pushing myself to think and feel in a new way. And even though I think I'm better than this, often my response is, "I think I'll just have the buttermilk pancakes." Still, in her essay "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying," Adrienne Rich says, "The politics worth having, the relationships worth having, demand that we delve still deeper."