No Longer Who I Was But Not Yet Who I Will Be - Part
4
Michael A. Harvey, Ph.D.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Another tool:
Know that one successfully adopts a new identity by realizing that
this is impossible.
I don’t know about you, but I think that new identities are
over-rated, or at least misleading. The popular belief is that, with
enough work, one can drop one identity and take on another, much like
when my car mechanic replaced my old transmission with a new one.
Indeed, after I told Jill how to catch a monkey, she instantly
recognized the intended lesson: namely, just as the monkey holding on to
the candy caused its suffering, Jill holding on to her hearing self for
so long caused her to suffer needlessly. (That story, by the way, is a
Buddhist sermon that a colleague, Randy Collins, was nice enough to send
me).
Now, I certainly don’t have the wisdom to dispute a Buddhist
teaching, and, in fact, I agree with it in principle. It’s not that I
think adopting a new deaf identity is a bad idea or untenable, but I
think it’s oversimplified. There is a saying: “the map is not the
territory.” Although a map is useful to get us from point A to point
B, the map does not portray the complexity of the terrain. When I first
traveled cross country, I looked at a road map and noticed several
broken lines - you know, solid highway lines, but with broken dashes. I
wondered how I was going to travel on broken roads that stopped and
started. My map didn’t describe the terrain. Similarly, the construct
of adopting a new identity via a hero’s journey is useful as a guide,
as a map; but, like any construct, it’s not an accurate portrayal of a
very complicated process.
I’m reminded of a 40 year old woman who has had profound hearing
loss since late childhood who opted for a CI one year ago. As she put
it,
“Since my CI, I am more hearing now than I have ever been. But, in
some ways, I am more isolated than I have ever been, like when I was
deaf as a child. I feel I cannot tell my deaf friends truly what is
going on in my life as I am embracing the world of sound, revelling in
the hearing of half forgotten sounds- birds, the wind in the trees, the
sound of a kiss, the laughter of someone you love over the phone.
And as I take a place again in the hearing world, now
"fixed", bitterness lingers. Unjustly I think, "NOW they
love me". They cannot fathom the grief of being separated from
their world. Were it a leg I had lost, and a wooden one I had now no one
would imagine that I was made whole again. Yet with an implant they do.”
Let me tell you another story about a man who suddenly lost his
hearing on Christmas morning several years ago; and since then, has
relived that trauma every year on that fateful day. In his words, “Christmas
was stolen from me!” He felt tortured by every joyous holiday
reminder. The more he tried to “move on” and find happiness in his
new deaf self, the more his old hearing self would intrude. He became
more and more frustrated which led to despair.
What he agreed to do was the following. On the next Christmas day, he
would continue his tradition of opening presents with his family,
carving the turkey, etc. But he would also reserve at least 15 minutes
to be by himself and feel sad, to grieve - to revisit his old hearing
self. He would announce this to his family and request that he not be
disturbed. And an amazing, but not surprising, thing happened: after he
allowed himself this ritual, after he acknowledged and even honored his
tortured past, he was able to enjoy the present with his new self with
his loved ones. Every Christmas, he would be sure to repeat this hero’s
journey: taking a short leave of his deaf self and revisiting his
earlier loss.
Those of you who have read Mitch Album’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie,
may recall a similar story. The author chronicled the lessons he learned
about life from his teacher who was dying of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s disease. One day Mitch asked his dying
teacher if he ever felt sorry for himself.
“Sometimes, in the mornings,” Morrie said. “I give myself a
good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things
still in my life. On the people who are coming to see me. On the stories
I’m going to hear… I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than
that. A few tears each morning, that’s all. Then I look forward to the
day.”
So shifting identities is more complicated than it first appears. I
do believe, as Jill put it, that we humans have the capability of being
reborn, transformed; to shift identities. But at a deeper level, perhaps
we are continually in flux. Maybe we continually cycle back and forth
between who we were and who we are - like the Christmas story and like
Morrie allowing himself a “few tears every morning.”
Jill used a different metaphor: “I continue to hear deaf voices and
hearing voices in my head. The deaf voices remind me what I can look
forward to; they give me purpose; they ease my loneliness; they give me
comfort. And the hearing voices remind me of my loss.”
You know, loss may not be such a bad thing. The root of the word “decide”
has to do with to kill an option: “cide” meaning to kill, as in
homicide, and “de” meaning either/or. To choose or decide involves
loss; it necessitates the loss of one option. Like the monkey, we need
to let go of certain candy.
Although Jill decided to adopt a deaf identity, the internal voices
from her old hearing self didn’t just go away and disappear. But they
no longer occupied center stage; they became just one of many new
internal voices having to do with her new self. Jill, like all of us,
experience many voices inside her head. The extreme of this is multiple
personality disorder (MPD). We all have sub-clinical MPD.
By giving voice to both her new deaf self and old hearing self, Jill
was able to let go by realizing she could never let go. She realized
this essential paradox of life: that we cannot change until we accept
who we are. On the one hand, this makes no sense - that’s why it’s
called a paradox. But on the other hand, one definition of wisdom is the
ability to move beyond either/or thinking and feel two opposite feelings
at the same time; to be able to “hold paradoxes”; to know that two
opposite statements can be true. As children, things seem so black or
white; it’s either this or that. Not so as we get older and wiser.
There’s an old saying: “When the unstoppable bullet hits the
impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely
here that one will grow.”
**
So I think we’ve covered a lot of territory: monkeys bears, caves,
Sedona, 9/11, Multiple Personality Disorder, and Internet Explorer
(version 6.0). I want to close by first of all saying what an honor it
is to be your keynote speaker and to say thank you. And secondly, on a
personal note, to say how lucky I feel to have had the honor of bearing
witness to your hero’s journey: to when you are no longer who you
were, but not yet who you will be. I’ve learned a lot.
I think most of us are more comfortable hanging on to our “piece of
candy,” whatever it may be, rather than taking the journey. Letting
go, in Jill’s own words, was “comfortable only in retrospect,
terrifying in the moment.” When I told Jill I was lecturing for you
today, I asked her if there was anything she would like to say through
me. A week ago, she sent me a letter with a quotation from Eleanor
Roosevelt. It’s a fitting closing to my talk.
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in
which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to
yourself, ‘I lived through this horror, I can take the next thing that
comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Thank you.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
