Something the Social Worker Said…

Stamina; courage; there are so many words whose meanings I know, until I start to think about them three dimensionally. Then I find there’s much more to them than I ever realized. And just when I need them most, they float around in a taunting limbo. Language astronauts in a weightless environment, they won’t let me catch hold of them long enough to tie them down. I “know” they have plenty of heft on their own to keep them anchored, yet something lifts them out of my reach. Where is the gravity I need to moor them now that I have so many other distractions pulling me away? I may not find the magnetic tug today, but I think I can discover enough significance to tether them. It was something the social worker said:

“You have to find some of what makes you feel yourself. Not necessarily anything anyone else would deem significant, but what you believe makes you who you are.” That prophetic statement was offered in a gentle, caring, matter-of-fact tone, and I knew instantly it was the vital prescription I’d come for, delivered in a few short seconds. Even with the indices that make it more complex, the fact that we don’t always know who we are and don’t want to, I understood that the truth of it lay in the phrase, ‘what you believe’; for we do make up our own narratives in order to pretend we’re who we’d like to be rather than who we are. After a long life of practicing the art of self-deception or its opposite, agonizing self-analysis, the critical point of life-threatening change turns on that ‘belief’, regardless of its truth.

So there I sat with the honesty of the hospital social worker’s statement ringing in my ears, and I realized it’s just as true for the care-giver as it is for the patient. Unless one’s chosen profession is to provide service to the chronically ill, a layperson thrown into the role will quickly lose his or her identity and get hopelessly lost, no matter how much they ‘care’ or how ‘giving’ they are. And this is where stamina and courage come into play.

I quickly realized neither one was what I expected it to be. I’d understood stamina to be a physical property carrying one forward when exhaustion threatens annihilation.  And courage, well that, too, was something almost tangible that would hold up the walls of a personal citadel in the face of all frightening and painful threats. Yet as I sat down to write for the first time in months since I’d had to face my own personal challenges, I felt both courage and stamina floating away from me when I needed them most. Why was that? As unfair as it seemed, the fact that I could benefit from understanding both meanings better didn’t escape me.

Dictionary definitions of courage focus almost entirely on the threat precipitating the call to bravery. That’s pretty much how I’d defined it myself until I needed something more. Now I see its origin lies at the heart of who we are. True courage comes from self-knowledge. Once we’ve dug deep for that treasure nothing else is as frightening or horrifying.  And stamina doesn’t come from building up physical endurance. It comes from denying the urge to look away when we have to face something about ourselves. The more often we keep our gaze steady, the stronger we get. Strength and endurance both come from digging deep, but it was that something the social worker said that helped me understand.

What a difference it would make if the horrifying work of knowing ourselves were done early in life and continued at a healthy pace. I have a feeling that self-knowledge gives us so much more sustenance when we’re starving for strength than believing we’re someone we’re not could ever do—empty calories when we need nourishment is a cruel trick to play. We need the courage and stamina to make more of both…and all this from something a social worker said.