On Idealism

where I wonder about my ideals and the ways they help and hurt me

In a minute I’m going to ask you what it is that you believe about yourself or your world, that maybe needs to change. But we’ll get there.

I don’t think I’ve ever been a “realistic” person. I find the idea of accepting the world as it is to be frankly offensive. Shit could be – and I would argue, should be – a lot better than it is. And when I say “better”, I mean that things (the shape and structure that we’ve given to our world and its systems) should be more life-affirming for human beings and less destructive for the planet and everything in it. IS THAT REALLY ASKING TOO MUCH? It might be.

Like I said, I’m not a realistic person. I think rank realism, or a blase acceptance of jobs we hate, and a system that doesn’t work for most of the people in it, and leaders who don’t give one fluttering fart if you live or die – that’s how we got into this mess in the first place.

I think things could be a lot better. But I also think that the way I think isn’t bulletproof; I’m not infallible. I wish the world was better in a whole host of ways, but I could be missing stuff. I’m mad about our leaders, and most of the time I assume they’re all just greedy old children who want to die having amassed more wealth than God. But it’s also theoretically possible that they really are – despite being flawed, psychologically-damaged human animals, floating alone through the black infinity of the universe – that they really are trying their best.

And it causes me literal, physical pain to try to think that thought. Which probably means it's good exercise.

I think I live in tension with my ideals. Maybe you do, too. On one hand, my ideals kick me in the ass when I’m getting complacent; they lift up my chin when I’m buried too long in shame and cynicism; they pull me forward when I’d rather disappear down a hole and never be heard from again. That I believe in the possibility of a better world made me want to be a pastor. Now it’s made me want to be a therapist. Because maybe the only way to make a better world is to help other people to believe that a better world is within their grasp, really, actually, and personally.

I’ve been taking classes online for just about six months, working towards getting my certification to practice psychotherapy. Recently, I was working through some introductory material regarding the psychotherapeutic theory of one Alfred Adler. All the psych-nerds out there will know who he was, but in short, Adler was one of the founding thinkers in modern psychology.

Anyway, I was reading about the Adlerian concept of the ‘lifestyle’:

“People form maps of their worlds. They then act “as if” those maps were accurate representations of reality…. No map ever can be more important than the terrain itself or survival is at risk. If Jack believes that people are always safe and to be trusted, then most times that may be quite useful. There may be times when such an assumption would put him at risk of being harmed, however, and if he too rigidly clings to his belief and too often acts as if it were true, then he is avoiding reality…. Adlerians tend to analyze how useful people’s maps are given the particulars of their lives. What Adler referred to as the “style of life,” which contemporary Adlerians call the lifestyle, provides clues to the maps individuals act on…”

-Michael P. Maniacci and Laurie Sackett-Maniacci, Adlerian Psychotherapy

It got me wondering about some of the convictions I hold: The idealized vision of myself that I never live up to, the version of the world I never quite see come to fruition. On and on it goes. Now, I meant what I said, about how my ideals help me a lot of the time. But they’re also cruel, in their way. They demand more of me than I know how to give. They demanded more of the church than it was maybe possible for the church, at the time, to give. And, to put it plainly, my ideals sometimes steal my joy.

I’m not willing to try to therapize my ideals away in the name of realism, or even in the name of joy. I don’t know that I even want to be happy in a world that hurts so many people, when the power to make it better than it is has always belonged to us.

But cynicism and misery can be self-defeating, and that’s no good, either. So how do I live in the tension of a world that I want to put my shoulder against and try to push towards something better, and the reality that this is the one life I get to live, and it was not made for me to fill it with angry tears?

I don’t know. But that’s what I’ve been wondering about.

What is it that you believe about yourself, or your world, that maybe needs to change? Or that might at least need to be challenged, nuanced, stretched to better fit the life that you have?

Thanks for reading, friend. Be well. Be kind.