“It is for such reasons and because of such examples—watching people confront the existential catastrophe of life forthrightly and effectively—that I am more optimistic than pessimistic, and that I believe that optimism is, fundamentally, more reliable than pessimism. To come to such a conclusion, and then to find it unshakable, is a good example of how and why it may be necessary to encounter The Darkness before you can see The Light. It is easy to be optimistic and naive. It is easy for optimism to be undermined and demolished, however, if it is naive, and for cynicism to arise in its place. But the act of peering into the darkness as deeply as possible reveals a light that appears unquenchable, and that is a profound surprise, as well as a great relief.
The same holds True for the issue of Gratitude. I do not believe you can be appropriately grateful or thankful for what good you have and for what evil has not befallen you until you have some profound and even terrifying sense of the weight of existence. You cannot properly appreciate What You Have unless you have some sense not only of how terrible things could be, but of how terrible it is likely for things to be, given how easy it is for things to be so.
This is something that is very much worth knowing.
Otherwise you might find yourself tempted to ask, “Why would I ever look into The Darkness?” But we seem positively drawn to Look. We are fascinated by Evil.
We watch dramatic representations of serial killers, psychopaths, and the kings of organised crime, gang members, rapists, contract killers, and spies. We voluntarily frighten and disgust ourselves with thrillers and horror films — and it is more than prurient curiosity. It is the development of some understanding of the essentially moral structure of human existence, of our suspension between the poles of good and evil. The development of that understanding is necessary; it places a down below us and an up above us, and orients us in perception, motivation, and action. It protects us, as well. If you fail to understand evil, then you have laid yourself bare to it. You are susceptible to its effects, or to its will. If you ever encounter someone who is malevolent, they have control over you in precise proportion to the extent that you are unwilling or unable to understand them. Thus, You Look in Dark Places to protect yourself, in case The Darkness ever appears, as well as to find the light. There is real utility in that.
The Mephistophelian Spirit
The great German writer Goethe, who is to Germanic culture what Shakespeare is to English, wrote a famous play, Faust, the story of a man who sells his soul to The Devil for knowledge.2
Mephistopheles is The Devil in Goethe’s play — The Adversary.
The Adversary is a mythical figure; the spirit who eternally works against our positive intent (or, perhaps, against positive intent generally). You can understand that psychologically, as well as metaphysically or religiously. We all see within ourselves the emergence of good intentions and the repeated instructions to ourselves to act accordingly, yet we note distressingly often that we leave undone what we know we should do, and do instead what we know we should not. There is something in all of us that works in counterposition to our voluntarily expressed desires. There are in fact many such somethings—a chorus of demons, so to speak—working at cross-purposes even to each other; many dark and unarticulated motivations and systems of belief, all manifesting themselves as partial personalities (but with all the essential features of personality, despite their partial nature).
To realise this is uncanny. That realisation is the great contribution of the psychoanalysts, who insisted above all, perhaps, that we were inhabited by spirits that were beyond not only our control but even our conscious knowledge. And that realization brings up great and paralyzing questions: If you are not in control of yourself, who or what is? If you are not, a challenge has been posed to the very idea of the centrality, unity, and even reality of the “you” whose existence seems so immediately certain. And what is that who or what that is not you up to? And toward what end is it acting? We all hope we are the sorts of creatures who can tell ourselves what to do, and who will then do exactly that, in accordance with our will. You are you, after all, and you should—virtually by definition—be in control of yourself. But things often do not work that way, and the reason or reasons they do not are deeply mysterious.
Sometimes, of course, it is simply much easier just not to do the things we should. Good actions can be and often are difficult to undertake, and there is danger—exhaustion not the least of it—in difficulty. Inertia is also a powerful reason for stasis and can provide a certain immediate safety. But there is more to the problem. It is not just that you are lazy: it is also that you are bad—and declared so by your own judgment. That is a very unpleasant realization, but there is no hope of becoming good without it. You will upbraid yourself (or your conscience will do so) for your shortcomings. You will treat yourself as if you were or are at least in part an immoral agent. That is all deeply unpleasant too, and you might well be motivated to avoid your own judgment. But no simple rationalizations will allow for your escape.
You will see, if you are willing to look, the adversarial force at work within you, working to undermine your best intentions. The exact nature of that force is grounds for endless speculation — philosophical, literary, psychological, and above all, religious or theological. The Christian conception of the great figure of evil — Mephistopheles, Satan, Lucifer, the devil himself — is, for example, a profound imaginative personification of that spirit. But the adversary is not merely something that exists in the imagination—certainly not only in the individual imagination. It is also something that manifests itself through something that is still aptly described as “possession” in the motivation for malevolent actions, as well as in the acts themselves. Everyone who has thought or said something akin to “I do not understand what came over me” after acting in a particularly unseemly manner notes the existence of such possession, even if they cannot or do not articulate that noting. In consequence, we may ask ourselves, in utter dismay, “Why would such a spirit exist? Why would it be part of each of us?”
The answer appears to be partly associated with the powerful sense that each of us shares of our own intrinsic mortal limitations, our subjugation to the suffering inflicted upon us by ourselves, society, and nature. That embitters and produces a certain self-contempt or disgust, inspired by our own weaknesses and inadequacies (and I am not speaking here yet of immorality, merely of our intrinsic and terrible fragility), and also by the apparent unfairness, unpredictability, and arbitrariness of our failings. Given all these disappointing realizations, there is no reason to assume that you are going to be satisfied or happy with yourself, or with Being itself. Such dissatisfaction—such unhappiness—can easily come to reinforce and magnify itself in a vicious circle. With each step you take against yourself or others as a consequence of your unhappiness and resentment, there is more to be ashamed of, and more reason for self-directed antagonism. It is not for nothing that approximately one person in five engages in some form of serious physical self-harm in their lifetime.3 And this does not include the most serious act—suicide itself (or the more common tendency toward suicidal ideation). If you are unhappy with yourself, why would you work in your best interest? Maybe something vengeful would emerge from you, instead; maybe something capable of justifying itself while it metes out hypothetically deserved suffering, designed to interfere with your movement forward. If you conceptually aggregate and unite into a single personality all that opposes you in you, all that opposes your friendships, and all that opposes your wife or husband, the adversary emerges. That is precisely Mephistopheles in Goethe’s play—the devil himself. That is the spirit who works against—and that is exactly how he describes himself: “I am the spirit that denies.”4 Why? Because everything in the world is so limited and imperfect—and causes itself so much trouble and terror because of that—that its annihilation is not only justified but ethically demanded. So goes, at least, the rationalization.
This is no mere lifeless abstraction. People struggle in a deadly fashion with such ideas. Women wrestle with them when they consider having a baby, inquiring of themselves: “Should I really bring an infant into a world like this? Is that an ethical decision?” The followers of the philosophical school of antinatalism, of whom the South African philosopher David Benatar is perhaps the leading advocate,5 would decisively answer no to both of those questions. I debated his views with him a few years back.6 It was not as if I failed to understand his position. There is no doubt that the world is steeped in suffering. A few years later, I debated another philosopher, Slavoj Žižek—known much more widely for his Marxist predilections than his religious convictions. He said something during our discussion that might be theologically debatable, but that I found of great interest. In the Christian tradition, even God Himself, in the form of Christ, despairs of the meaning of life and the goodness of His Father in the agony of His Crucifixion. At the peak of his suffering, just before death, He utters the words “Eli Eli lama sabachthani”7—“My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This appears to strongly imply, in its narrative way, that the burden of life can become so great that even God Himself can lose faith when confronted with the unbearable reality of injustice, betrayal, suffering, and death.
It is hard to imagine a story more sympathetic to mere mortals. If God Himself experiences doubts in the midst of His self-imposed agony, how could we mere-Humans not fall prey to the same failing? And it is possible that it was compassion that was driving the antinatalist Benatar’s position. I saw no evidence that Benatar was malevolent in any obvious manner. He appeared to truly believe—in a manner I found reminiscent of Goethe’s Mephistopheles—that the combination of consciousness, vulnerability, and mortality is so dire that there is simply no moral excuse for its continuance. Now, it is entirely possible that Mephistopheles’s opinion is not to be trusted. Since he is Satan himself, there is no reason to assume that the argument he puts forward to justify his adversarial stance toward Being is valid, or even that he himself truly believes it. And perhaps the same was true of Benatar, who was and is no doubt prey to the frailties that characterize each of us (and that certainly includes me, despite the stance I took in opposition to him). But I believed then and still firmly believe now that the consequences of his self-negating position are simply too dire. It leads directly to an antilife or even an anti-Being nihilism so profound that its manifestation could not help but exaggerate and amplify the destructive consequences of existence that are already the focus of the hypothetically compassionate antinatalists themselves (and I am not being sarcastic or cynical about the existence of that Compassion, misplaced though I believe it to be).
Benatar’s hypothesis was that life is so rife with suffering that it is, actually, a sin—for all intents and purposes—to bring any new conscious beings into existence, and that the most appropriate ethical action for human beings to take would be to simply stop doing so: to render ourselves voluntarily extinct. Such a viewpoint is more widespread, in my opinion, than you might think, although perhaps rarely held for long. Whenever you are cut off at the knees by one of life’s many catastrophes, whenever a dream collapses, or someone close to you is hurt in some fundamental way—especially a child or another loved one—then you can easily find yourself thinking, “Perhaps it would be better if the whole mess was just brought to a halt.”
That is certainly what people think when they contemplate suicide. Such thoughts are generated in their most extreme variant by the serial killers, by high school shooters, by all generally homicidal and genocidal actors. They are acting out the adversarial attitude as fully as they might. They are truly possessed, in a manner that exceeds the merely metaphorical. They have decided not only that life is unbearable and the malevolence of existence is inexcusable, but that everything should be punished for the mere sin of its Being. If we want to have any hope of dealing with the existence of evil, and working toward its minimization, we must understand these sorts of impulses. It is in no small part the consciousness of suffering and malevolence that embitters people. And it is toward this embitterment that I believe the antinatalist position would, if widely adopted, inevitably drift. First, it might be the mere refusal to reproduce. But I cannot believe that it would be long until that impulse to cease production of new life was transformed into a similar impulse to destroy life that currently exists, in consequence of the “compassionate” judgment that some lives are so terrible that it is merciful to bring them to an end. That philosophy emerged relatively early in the Nazi era, for example, when individuals judged unbearably damaged by life were euthanized for purposes deemed “morally merciful.” The question this line of thinking leads to is where does such “mercy” stop? How sick, old, intellectually impaired, crippled, unhappy, unproductive, or politically inappropriate do you have to be before dispensing with you is a moral imperative? And why would you believe, once the eradication or even merely the limitation of life became your guiding star, that you would not continue down that road to its hellish end?
I found the Columbine High School killers’ writings particularly instructive in that regard. They are scrawled out, and are careless, incoherent, and narcissistic, but there is definitely a philosophy at the base of them: that things deserve to suffer for the crime of their existence. The consequence of that belief is the creative elaboration and extension of that suffering. One of the killers wrote that he considered himself the judge of all that exists—a judge that found Being, particularly of the human form, wanting—and that it would be better if the entire human race was eradicated. That defined the scope of his horrific vision. He and his partner shot their classmates in their local high school, but that was only a tiny fraction of what they were planning. They had incendiary devices laid out across the community, and had fantasized together about trying to take out the entire city. Such plans are just a step on the way to the ultimate genocidal vision.
You do not have those sorts of visions unless you are deeply possessed by something very much resembling the adversarial spirit. That is Mephistopheles, whose essential viewpoint might be paraphrased as follows: “Life is so terrible, because of its limitations and malevolence, that it would be better if it did not exist at all.” That is the central doctrine of the spirit that works at counterpurposes to you. It is an arguable case and not surprising that it should emerge, and it seems terribly credible at moments of crisis, even though I believe it is deeply wrong. I think the reason that it is wrong, in part, is because, when it is realized, all it does is exacerbate an already admittedly bad situation. If you set about making things worse, they are likely, in fact, to get worse. I cannot see how this constitutes an improvement, if your original objection was motivated by the essential terror of our existential situation itself. It does not seem to be a pathway that a conscious creature, with a bit of gratitude, might walk down. There is an incoherency to it that is logically untenable, and that therefore seems to make the argument fundamentally specious, and cannot help but make the listener think, “There are things going on here behind the scenes that are both unspoken and unspeakable, despite the surface logic.”
The failings in the adversary’s logic do not mean that constructing an unshakable viewpoint to counter it is a simple matter. In the most straightforward sense, identifying that vision of objection and vengefulness is useful, in the way that negative space in a painting is useful: it defines the positive, by contrast. Good can be conceptualized—however vaguely in its initial formulation—as the opposite of whatever constitutes evil, which is usually more readily identifiable in the world than goodness. I have been trying to find touchstones on that pathway of opposition to evil, so that people can identify what that good might be. Some of these are very practical, if difficult. I have been suggesting to my viewers and listeners,8 for example—particularly those currently burdened by the mortal illness of a parent—that it is useful to consciously take on the task of being the most reliable person in the aftermath of the death, during the grief-stricken preparations for the funeral and the funeral itself, and for the care of family members during and after the catastrophe. There is a call to your potential in doing that. There is a call to the strength of Being itself — the Being that could manifest itself in you. The Human Race has been dealing with Loss and Death forever. We are the descendants of those who could manage it. That capability is within us, grim as the task might seem.
If you truly love someone, it can seem a deep form of betrayal to stay integrated and healthy, in essence, in their absence or sadly waning presence. What does that ability indicate, after all, about the true depths of your love? If you can witness their demise and survive the loss, does that not imply that the bond was shallow and temporary, and even replaceable? If you were truly bonded, should not it destroy you (as it sometimes does)? But we cannot wish that every inevitable loss leads to the destruction of everyone affected, because we would then all be doomed, far more immediately than we currently are. And it certainly is not the case that the last wish of the dying is or should be the interminable suffering of those they love. My impression has been, instead, that people tend to feel guilty on their deathbeds (because of their immediate uselessness and the burden that causes, but even more because of their apprehension about the grief and trouble they will cause those left behind). Thus, their most fervent wish, I believe, is that those whom they love will be able to move forward and live happily, after a reasonable time of mourning.
To collapse in the aftermath of a tragic loss is therefore more accurately a betrayal of the person who has died, instead of a tribute, as it multiplies the effect of that mortal catastrophe. It takes a dying person of narcissistic selfishness to wish endless grief on their loved ones. Strength in the face of death is better for the person who is dying and for those who remain living alike. There are family members who are suffering because of their loss who need taking care of, and who may be too old and infirm and otherwise troubled to cope with the situation properly. And so someone strong has to step in and exercise the terrible authority that makes even of death something to face and overcome. To understand clearly that you are morally obliged under such circumstances to manifest strength in the face of adversity is to indicate to yourself—and, perhaps, to other people—that there is something in you of sufficient grandeur and power to face the worst forthrightly and to yet prevail. That is certainly what people need to encounter at a funeral. There is little to say, explicitly, in the face of death. Everyone is rendered speechless when they encounter the infinite expanse of emptiness surrounding our too-brief existence. But uprightness and courage in such a situation is truly heartening and sustaining.
I have suggested that strength at the funeral of someone dear and close is a worthy goal more than once during a lecture (where people might encounter it live, or on YouTube or a podcast). In consequence, a not insignificant number of people have indicated to me that they took heart in desperate times as a consequence. They set reliability and strength in a crisis as a conscious goal and were able to manage exactly that, so that the devastated people around them had someone to lean on and see as an example in the face of genuine trouble. That, at the very least, made a bad situation much less dreadful than it might have been. And that is something. If you can observe someone rising above the catastrophe, loss, bitterness, and despair, then you see evidence that such a response to catastrophe is possible. In consequence, you might mimic that, even under dire circumstances. Courage and nobility in the face of tragedy is the reverse of the destructive, nihilistic cynicism apparently justified under just such circumstances.
Again, I understand the negative attitude. I have had thousands hours of clinical experience. I have been deeply involved in some very difficult situations, along with those I was listening to and strategizing with, as well as within the confines of my private life. People have arduous lives. You think your life is hard (and it probably is, at least at times), then you meet someone and your life is so much better than theirs that, no matter what your hardships are, you cannot even conceive of how they might continue to exist in their current misery. And you find out, not infrequently, that those same unfortunate people know someone else whose life is so hard that they feel the same way about them. And even they are often left feeling guilty that they believe what they have is a hard lot, because they know just how much worse it could be.
It is not as if the suffering and betrayal, the catastrophes, are of insufficient gravity to make bitterness a real option. But there is just no good whatsoever in that option, and plenty of evident harm. So, what constitutes the alternative? I began to seriously contemplate the topic of this rule just before Thanksgiving, in 2018, when I was touring the United States. That holiday has become, arguably, the biggest shared celebration in America (and is also a major event in Canada, approximately a month earlier). The only competitor, particularly since Easter has largely faded away, is Christmas, which is also in some sense a holiday of thanksgiving, concentrating as it does on the arrival of the eternal Redeemer in the midst of the darkness and cold of winter, and so reflects the endless birth and rebirth of hope itself. The giving of thanks is an alternative to bitterness—perhaps the alternative. My observation of American holidays—I lived in the States for seven years, and I have spent time there on countless other occasions—is that the prominence of Thanksgiving among holidays seems to be a good thing, practically and symbolically. The fact that the primary feast of celebration characterizing a country would be one of explicitly “giving thanks” appears, in principle, as a positive commentary on the fundamental ethic of the state. It means that the individual is striving to have his or her heart in the right place, and that the group is supporting and encouraging that endeavor. Why is that, given the trouble that constitutes life? It is because you can be courageous. You can be alert, awake, attentive. You can see how demanding life is and can be, and you can see it clearly. Despite this, you can remain grateful, because that is the intrepid attitude toward life and its difficulties. You are grateful not because you are naive, but because you have decided to put a hand forward to encourage the best in yourself, and the state, and the world. You are grateful, in the same manner, not because suffering is absent, but because it is valiant to remember what you have and what you may still be offered—and because the proper thankful attitude toward that existence and possibility positions you better than any other attitude toward the vicissitudes of existence.
To be grateful for your family is to remember to treat them better. They could cease to exist at any moment. To be grateful for your friends is to awaken yourself to the necessity of treating them properly, given the comparative unlikelihood of friendship itself. To be grateful to your society is to remind yourself that you are the beneficiary of tremendous effort on the part of those who predeceased us, and left this amazing framework of social structure, ritual, culture, art, technology, power, water, and sanitation so that our lives could be better than theirs.
The temptation to become embittered is great and real. It requires a genuine moral effort not to take that path, assuming that you are not — or are no longer — naive. The gratitude associated with that state of Being is predicated on ignorance and inexperience. That is not virtue. Thus, if you are attentive and awake, and you can see the structure of the world, bitterness and resentment beckon as a viable response. Then you might well ask yourself, “Well, why not walk down that dark path?” It seems to me that the answer to that, to state it again, is courage: the courage to decide “No, that is not for me, despite the reasons I may have for being tempted in that direction,” and to decide, instead, “Despite the burden of my awake mortality, I am going to work for the good of the world.”
Courage—but Superordinate, Love
That decision seems to me to be courage subsumed to love. If it is resentment and bitterness and the consequent hatred that emerges from that tempting us toward the torment and destruction of everything that lives and suffers, then perhaps it is active love that aims at its betterment. And that seems to me to be the fundamental decision of life, and that it is correct to identify it, at least in a vital part, as an act of voluntary will. The reasons for acrimony, anger, resentment, and malevolence are strong and plentiful. Thus, it must be a leap of faith—a decision about a mode of being not so clearly justified by the evidence, particularly in hard times—that Being should be strengthened and supported by your aims and your acts. That is something done in some deep sense despite “Eli Eli lama sabachthani”—something that says “despite it all, no matter what it is, onward and upward”—and that is precisely the impossible moral undertaking that is demanded from each of us for the world to function properly (even for it to avoid degeneration into hell).
It is within the frame of that impossible undertaking—that decision to love—that courage manifests itself, enabling each person who adopts the courageous pathway to do the difficult things that are necessary to act for the good in even the worst of times. If you determine to manifest the two virtues of love and courage—simultaneously, consciously—you decide that you are going to work to make things better and not worse, even for yourself, even though you know that because of all your errors and omissions you are already three-quarters lost.
You are going to work to make things better for yourself, as if you are someone you are responsible for helping. You are going to do the same thing for your family and the broader community. You are going to strive toward the harmony that could manifest itself at all those levels, despite the fact that you can see the flawed and damaged substructure of things, and have had your vision damaged in consequence. That is the proper and courageous pathway forward. Maybe that is the definition of gratitude, of thankfulness, and I cannot see how that is separate from courage and love.
You might well ask, “Do people actually perceive and act in this manner?”—even—“Can they?” One of the most compelling pieces of evidence I have come across is the fact of grief over the loss of someone close. Even if you are ambivalent about life itself—and maybe even if you are ambivalent, to some degree, about the person that you lost, because that can certainly be the case—your likely response to a death is grief. That response is not exactly conscious. Grief is a strange experience. It seizes you unexpectedly. You feel shock and confusion. You are not at all sure how to respond. What is it that you are supposed to do? But if it is conscious grieving—the voluntary acting out of the supposedly appropriate response—it is not real; not in the manner that genuine grief grips you of its own accord. And if you do not feel yourself seized, unwittingly, in the latter sense, you might think, “I am not feeling the way I am supposed to feel. I am not crying. I am not overwhelmed by sorrow. I am going far too normally about my day-to-day business” (something particularly likely to occur if you receive the news of a death from a distant locale). But then, as you engage in something trivial, as if things are normal, the grief will strike you like a rogue wave. That happens repeatedly, God only knows for how long. It is something that arises from the depths, and it takes you irresistibly in its grasp.
Grief must be a reflection of love. It is perhaps the ultimate proof of love. Grief is an uncontrollable manifestation of your belief that the lost person’s existence, limited and flawed as it might have been, was worthwhile, despite the limitations and flaws even of life itself. Otherwise, why would you feel the loss? Otherwise, why would you feel, involuntarily, sorrowful and bereft (and that from a source self-deception cannot reach)? You grieve because something that you valued is no longer in existence. Thus, in the core of your Being, you have decided that the person’s life was valuable, despite whatever trouble they caused you—and themselves. In my experience, that happens even when people die who were quite monstrous. It is a rare person whose life has gone so catastrophically wrong that their death brings no sorrow.
There is a deep part of us that makes the decision, when we grieve for someone we have lost, that their existence was worthwhile, despite it all. Maybe that is a reflection of an even more fundamental decision: Being itself is worth having, despite it all. Gratitude is therefore the process of consciously and courageously attempting thankfulness in the face of the catastrophe of life. Maybe that is what we are trying to do when we meet with our families during a holiday, wedding, or funeral. Those are often contentious and difficult affairs. We face a paradoxical, demanding tension. We bring people that we know and love close to us; we are pleased at their existence and their proximity, but also wish they could be more. We are inevitably disappointed in each other, and in ourselves, as well.
In any familial gathering, there is tension between the warmth you feel and the bonding of memory and shared experience, and the sorrow inevitably accompanying that. You see some relatives who are in a counterproductive stasis, or wandering down a path that is not good for them. You see others aging, losing their vitality and health (and that sight interferes with and disrupts your memories of their more powerful and youthful selves: a dual loss, then, of present and past). That is all painful to perceive. But the fundamental conclusion, despite all of that, is that “It is good that we are all together and able to share a meal, and to see and talk to each other, and to note that we are all here and facing this celebration or difficulty together.” And everyone hopes that “perhaps if we pull together, we can manage this properly.” And so you make the same fundamental decision, when you join communally with your people, that you make when you grieve : “Despite everything, it is Good that We are Together, and that we have one another.” That is something truly positive.
The same is true of your relationship with Your Children. My grief at life in recent decades was exaggerated in the case of my daughter, because she was very ill for many years as a child, adolescent, and young adult. A child is a being of tremendous potential, capable of developing an admirable, productive, and ever-increasing autonomy and ability. But there is also something truly fragile about their three- or four- or five- (or even fifteen- or twenty-five-) year-old forms (because that fragility never truly disappears from a parent’s perception, once it has been experienced deeply, as it certainly will be with the experience of caring for young children). All that is part of the joy of having them, but also part of the pain. The pain is the absolute certainty that the fragility will be exploited. And yet I thought that whatever steps I might take to eradicate that fragility in my children would also destroy that for which I was thankful. I remember thinking this quite distinctly with my son when he was three, because he was supercute and fun. But he was three, so he was little. He would collapse, bang his head on tables, fall down the stairs, and get into little scraps with other kids. Maybe he would be playing in the supermarket parking lot and, distracted, run off briefly. This is not a wise move in a place ruled by cars. There is an undeniable vulnerability around children that wakes you up and makes you very conscious of the desire to protect them, but also of the desire to foster their autonomy and push them out in the world, because that is how you strengthen them. It is also a vulnerability that can make you angry at life because of its fragility, and lead you to curse the fate that joins the two together.
When I think about my parents, the same thing comes to mind. They are getting old. As people get older, in some sense, you see them crystallize into the people that they are. My father and my mother both have a decided character. They were who they were in their fifties, and now they are perhaps even more so. They have their limitations and their advantages (and it is even the case that the latter are often integrally necessary to the former). They are in their eighties now and are very particularized. Sometimes it is frustrating to deal with people and their particularities. You think, “Would not it be better if they could be some other way?” I am not saying I think that about my parents more than people generally think that about each other. It is by no means a criticism of them. In addition, there is no doubt that they (and others—many others) feel the same way about me. But it is necessary to understand that, just as in the case of children, all those particularities, fragilities, and limitations are part and parcel of what it is that you come to love.
So, you might love people despite their limitations, but you also love them because of their limitations. That is something very much worth understanding. Doing so may help you see how gratitude remains possible. Despite the fact that the world is a very dark place, and that each of us has our black elements of soul, we see in each other a unique blend of actuality and possibility that is a kind of miracle: one that can manifest itself, truly, in the world, in the relationships we have that are grounded in trust and love. That is something for which you can be courageously thankful. That is something in which you can discover part of the antidote to the abyss and the darkness.
Be grateful in spite of your suffering.
Coda
As I indicated in the overture, much of this book was written during long months spent in hospitals—first, visiting or staying with my daughter, Mikhaila, then doing the same over a longer period with my wife, Tammy, and finally—when it became necessary—during my repeated admissions. I do not think it appropriate to write about those personal trials in any more detail than I already have in the Overture — partly because the common circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have rendered everyone’s life tragic in an unimaginable manner, so that it seems superfluous, in some sense, to provide a detailed account of familial or individual suffering on top of that, and partly because the current book is not about my daughter’s troubles, or my wife’s, or mine, directed as it is to topics of general psychological import. What I truly find necessary to relate, however, is our appreciation to all those many people who supported us during this trying time. So, some additional discussion of our various maladies appears unavoidable at this point.
On the public front, we received an outpouring of good wishes from thousands of people who had become familiar with my work. Some of this was delivered in person, when people met Tammy or me in public; some was sent by email and social media; and some of it came in YouTube comments on my videos. This was exceptionally heartening. My sister, Bonnie, gathered and printed out particularly thoughtful messages to Tammy from around the world, and posted them in bright colors on the walls of the hospital room where they could be easily seen. The messages later addressed to me helped bolster my oft-wavering conviction that I could and should prevail in the face of the difficulties I was experiencing, and that the book you are reading or listening to would maintain its relevance, even in the face of the terrible pandemic that currently envelops the world. We were also the beneficiaries of medical care, much of it extreme, but most often provided with optimism, care, and competence. Tammy’s dual cancer surgeries were courageously performed by Dr. Nathan Perlis of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and when the complications arising thereof became too extreme, was treated by Dr. Maxim Itkin, director of Philadelphia’s Penn Center for Lymphatic Disorders.
More privately, Tammy and I were individually and jointly the grateful beneficiaries of constant support from family and friends, who interrupted their lives to spend days, weeks, or months of time with us while we were undergoing our trials. I can only hope, in the face of serious doubts about the matter, that I would have chosen to be as generous with my time and attention as they were if the tables were turned. It is particularly necessary to thank my family members—my daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, and her husband, Andrey Korikov; my son, Julian Peterson, and daughter-in-law, Jillian Vardy; my brother-in law and sister Jim and Bonnie Keller; my brother and sister-in-law Joel and Kathleen Peterson; my parents, Beverley and Walter Peterson; my brother- and sister-in-law Dale and Maureen Roberts, and their daughter, Tasha; my sister-in-law Della Roberts and her husband, Daniel Grant; as well as our friends Wayne Meretsky, Myriam Mongrain, Queenie Yu, Morgan and Ava Abbott, Wodek Szemberg and Estera Bekier, Wil Cunningham and Shona Tritt, Jim Balsillie and Neve Peric, Dr. Norman and Karen Doidge, Gregg and Dr. Delinah Hurwitz (the former of whom also profoundly helped me edit and improve 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos), Dr. Cory and Nadine Torgerson, Sonia and Marshall Tully, Dr. Robert O. and Sandra Pihl, Dr. Daniel Higgins and Dr. Alice Lee, Dr. Mehmet and Lisa Oz, and Dr. Stephen and Dr. Nicole Blackwood, all of whom went above and beyond the call of duty in the attention they paid to Tammy and me over the last two years. There are, finally, three men of God who were of service, particularly to Tammy: Fathers Eric Nicolai, Fred Dolan, and Walter Hannam.
My family made arrangements to have me treated in Moscow for the consequence of a paradoxical reaction and then a dependence on the hypothetically safe but truly dangerous benzodiazepine antianxiety medication. This was arranged with exceptional efficiency, despite the time of year (the Christmas and New Year holidays in 2019–20), by Kirill Sergeevich Mikhailov, the consul general of the Russian Federation in Toronto, and the consular staff who provided an urgent visa in a matter of days. Many people, including Kelly and Joe Craft, Anish Dwivedi, Jamil Javani, Zach Lahn, Chris Halverson, Metropolitan Jonah, and the V. Rev. Victor Potapov and Dimitir Ivanov, helped expedite what was a very complex, multidimensional process. While in Russia, my safety was ensured by Alexander Usov, and my sense of isolation diminished by daily visits by Mikhaila and her husband, Andrey, who truly cannot be thanked enough. The Russian medical teams included IMC Addiction by Roman Yuzapolski, who agreed to supervise my case despite being advised by assorted experts that it was too dangerous to do so, and his staff members, Herman Stepnov, administrative directors, and Alexandr, therapist, who translated for me constantly for a two-week period, without even a change of clothes. The team of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences took me in with undiagnosed double pneumonia and in a state of catatonia and delirium, and restored my ability to ambulate. Dr. Marina Petrova, the deputy director, and Dr. Michael, the head doctor of what was known as the Reanimatology Ward, were of particular and notable aid. Uliana Efros, nanny to my granddaughter, Elizabeth Scarlett, always had our backs and traveled with Mikhaila, Andrey, and me for eight months from Russia to Florida and Serbia, caring for Scarlett, including spending a month in quarantine. Thanks as well to Uli’s daughter Liza Romanova, who helped take care of Scarlett in Russia, so that my daughter and son-in-law could visit me in the hospital. Finally, on the Russian end, I would like to thank Mikhail Avdeev, who helped us extensively with provision of medication and translation of medical information—both on very short notice.
Later, in June 2020, I sought admission at the IM Clinic for Internal Medicine in Belgrade, an institution dedicated to benzodiazepine withdrawal, and fell directly under the competent and caring treatment provided by Dr. Igor Bolbukh and his staff. Dr. Bolbukh had flown to Russia previously to consult there while I was in a state of delirium, provided months of pro bono medical guidance, moved me to a more stable condition when I arrived in Serbia, and managed my care thereafter. The IM Clinic was founded by Dr. Nikolai Vorobiev, and his staff were very patient, without resentment—a difficult feat to manage in these days of COVID and the inevitable accompanying and sudden quarantines.
There are also those who profoundly deserve credit, recognition, and gratitude on the professional front. Thank you to my agents, Mollie Glick of Creative Artists Agency, as well as Sally Harding of CookeMcDermid (Canada) and her colleagues Suzanne Brandreth and Hana El Niwairi of Cooke Agency International Canada.
Thank you to the editors and publishers of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: Penguin Random House Canada senior editor Craig Pyette, who played a diligent and instrumental role in quality control and enhancement; former CEO Brad Martin; current CEO Kristin Cochrane; publisher of the Knopf Random House Canada Publishing Group Anne Collins; vice president, associate publisher, and director of marketing strategy Scott Sellers; Penguin Random House UK editor Laura Stickney and her colleague Penelope Vogler, and CEO Tom Weldon; and Penguin Random House International CEO Markus Dohle. Thanks to the editors and publishers of the current book, a group that includes the immediately aforementioned individuals, as well as additional Penguin Random House US personnel, including publisher of the Portfolio and Sentinel imprints Adrian Zackheim and editor Helen Healey. Finally, thank you to Professor Bruce Pardy and lawyer Jared Brown for their active support of my ideas during a time when doing so could be truly hazardous to one’s professional reputation and security.
The worldwide tour of 160 cities that Tammy and I undertook during the incubation period of this book as well as its preliminary formulation was organized with exceptional efficiency and good nature by Creative Artists Agency representatives Justin Edbrooke (assisted by Daniel Smith) and Ari Levin (assisted by Colette Silver), as well as Live Nation’s Andrew Levitt. The Australian and New Zealand tour benefited from the attention of Australian producer TEG Dainty’s Brad Drummond, tour manager Simon Christian, and security man Scott Nicholson. Gunnlaugur Jónsson and his crew were exceptionally hospitable to Tammy and me (as well as to my mother and aunt, who accompanied us for the days we were in Iceland). John O’Connell served as primary tour manager, and was extremely professional, great at problem solving, and consistently upbeat and supportive over the months of travel and organization.
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report traveled with us, introduced my lectures, and emceed the question-and-answer periods that followed, adding a necessary bit of levity to what might otherwise have been a too-serious endeavor. Rob Greenwald of Rogers & Cowan helped ensure appropriate media coverage. Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray, Gad Saad, and Steven Crowder extended their friendship and shared their extensive media presence. Zachary Lahn was there many times as needed, and Jeff Sandefer opened up his extensive connection network. Bill Vardy, Dennis Thigpen, Duncan Maisels, and Melanie Paquette served as drivers for the tour leg in North America when we used motor homes. Tammy and I would also like to thank designer Shelley Kirsch and the crew at SJOC Construction for completing the renovation of our house during these trying times with minimal supervision on our part. So much has happened in the last three years I am sure that I have missed key people, and for that I sincerely apologize.
Thanks is due, finally, to all of you who have read or listened to my books—Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, as well as the two 12 Rules volumes—and/or tuned in to my YouTube videos and podcasts.
I have been profoundly struck, as have the people close to me, by the exceptional loyalty and care you have demonstrated over the last half decade.
May all of you reading or listening to this book wend your way successfully through these difficult times. I hope you are surrounded by people you love and who love you in turn. I hope that you can rise to The Challenge presented by our current circumstances, and that we all might have the good fortune to eventually turn our attention to rebuilding The World after The Deluge.
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