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Beyond the Rant

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For the better part of 20 years, I have had the humble privilege of working with medical students.  Whenever I spend time with them, I learn at least as much as I teach, and I come away inspired.

This day was no different, and I will never forget it.  We gathered in the stark conference center for a day-long communication skills workshop—physicians, nurse practitioners, residents, and medical students.  The facilitators came from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science; if you ever have a chance to learn from them, I highly recommend it.  I could almost palpate the group’s shy, tense, anticipatory excitement—this was a high-potential learning situation.  After time-travel role playing, imaginary ball-throwing, and Zip-Zap-Zopping with abandon, we relaxed into the liberated format that is improv-based learning.  That’s when I experienced an unqualified quantum leap in consciousness.  It came in the form of a rant.

The instructions:

Partner A: Rant rant rant, HARD, about something that really makes you angry—that truly enrages you, nothing small.  Not allowed to make it up, must be honest, let loose.  Yell, stomp, swear, etc., for two minutes straight.

Partner B: Listen, be present, no talking.  Introduce A to the group afterward.  The catch:  At no time during the introduction should the group be able to tell what A ranted about.

I paired up with Erik, a fourth year medical student.  I did the rage gods proud as I cursed and flailed for two full minutes about the victim mentality.  Your parents ignored you?  Your boss is a jerk? You’re stuck in a dead-end job in a crime-ridden city, hovelled in a grungy apartment with no view, and it’s all someone else’s fault?  Suck it up!  And on it went.  Erik stuck with me through it all, looking me straight in the eye and never flinching.  He introduced me thusly:

“This is my friend Cathy.  Cathy believes strongly, with her whole being, that each and every person has the strength and capacity to overcome any adversity, and lift himself out of whatever situation holds him back.  She believes in people, and wants to see them succeed, no matter what the circumstances.”  Nailed it.  What a powerful thing, to have someone distill and give voice to my core value, and after I had just raved like a lunatic, no less.  I had never met Erik before that exercise, and I felt an instant bond.  He saw me, and showed me a part of myself that I had not seen before. I am proud to know him.

Often when we witness ranting, we pile on and trigger an avalanche of mutual self-righteousness, or we unwittingly invalidate the person by arguing a counterpoint.  The practice of listening beyond the rant, hearing the core value, and then reflecting it, serves a higher calling.  It connects, validates, and settles.  It offers the ranter a mirror, an opportunity for self-reflection and awareness.  If we practice consistently, on each other and ourselves alike, we can hardly help but emerge transformed.

The Sh*tpile

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Everybody has one.  We inherit large parts of it from our parents, whose parents passed theirs down, etc.  Life experiences add mass and odor as we grow up.  It sits squarely in the middle of the house of our existence.  For the most part, we simply live our lives around it, walking past every day, careful not to knock any pieces off.  The surface gets dry and crusty; we grow accustomed to the smell.  No big deal.

Once in a while, something moves us to start digging, like that sudden urge to clean out the closet.  We quickly learn that sh*tpile insides stay fresh and painful, like unhealed wounds when scabs suddenly get torn off.  Our eyes water, our senses are overwhelmed, and we want to escape, and fast.  Maybe we avoid that room for a while, or we come back driving a tank to flatten the pile, to the destruction of other property.  Maybe we get so disoriented, overtaken by the sheer mass and stench of sh*t, that in fits of rage and confusion, we start flinging. Unknowingly we pelt innocent passersby, or even friends and family, just because they live closest and walked into the line of fire.  Exhausted, we step out, try to clean up some of the mess, shower, and long for the pre-poop-flinging state of things.

To live a truly conscious life, though, we know we need to revisit the sh*tpile regularly.  It’s not good or bad, it just is–everybody has one.  Maybe each time we come better prepared.  We call up our gardener friends, and invite them to the hardware store with us.  They help us choose the right picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows for hauling sh*t out.  They stick with us through the dirty, ugly process, because they know us for more than our smelly piles.  We may pick up some books or otherwise learn about cultivating with manure–what tools we need, what to expect in the process. We start to envision a flourishing garden.  Maybe we enlist professionals–landscapers–to help us bring the vision to life.  Slowly, we may even find a whole community of gardeners, tending their own sh*tpiles, one crumbly corner at a time.

Parts of the pile will always remain.  It’s not good or bad, it just is.  We pass them onto our children, much of them long before we die–multiple sh*tpiles in the same house, imagine that, whew!  And hopefully the kids also benefit from the beautiful gardens that grow from our best selves–play in them, feel safe in them, and see that excrement is just a natural product of living a full life.

One day we may become exactly the gardeners who helped us first. Then we can compassionately help others shovel their own sh*t for the better. Or we can just start now.