Over the years, without thinking too much about why, I’ve largely defined ideas by their opposites: Love is not painful. Integrity does not lie. Creativity is not limited.
This reverse approach to understanding and explaining life felt most natural for me. As an anxious person, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit learning to recognize what I don’t want, so that I could avoid it. This has occasionally meant focusing too much on those things, which led to unnecessary worry and—depending on how attached I was to the outcome—rumination.
I’m also an analytical person. I think deeply of an idea, but also of its inverse, its leading and lagging indicators…its impact. This makes me very good at my job, because I can envision any goal in both its ideal and substandard states. I can also thoroughly deconstruct it and identify productive action. But as a human being trying to manage my days with as much ease as possible? It’s draining. Simply put, when I’m not careful, I tend to loop through any number of undesirable possibilities. I must be careful. I am being very careful.
In fact, in this high-stress environment we’re all in, it’s getting harder to avoid obsessing over what we don’t want to experience and who we don’t want to be. It’s all I see on social media—the ever-expanding list of sociopolitical potholes we are veering our choices, behaviors, and declarations around.
What’s missing, though, is the alternative road we want to pave. There’s little vision to be had these days. Far too often, we’re defining ourselves by who and what we are not.
We’re not conservative or liberal.
We’re not Christian or Muslim or Jew.
We’re not bad people–fake, selfish, violent, misguided.
We’re not like them.
But when we define ourselves only by what we’re not, as opposed to what we are or could be, we cement our defensive posture—arms folded, eyes shut tight, fists closed. We think this means we’ll lose less, but it’s also true that we can’t embrace anything new, see anything different, or grasp anything better. We are braced for offense. Primed for protection. As a result, our worlds get smaller by the day.
This is the energy circling us right now. We fear being misunderstood more than we desire to be understood. We emphasize rejection more passionately than we promote acceptance. We are obsessed with the takedown, but not the rebuilding.
Are we safer this way? After all, for many on either side of any polarizing issue, this feels like wartime. It’s natural to be defensive. But if we’re unwilling or unable to cast a vision of the future we can believe in, what will we do when the war is over? Where will we go? Who will we be when “not that” loses its emotional heft?
This idea transcends politics. It applies to parenting, leadership, wellness, the climate, and faith practices, and requires the ability to hold space for both a tenuous present and a preferred future at the same time. Right now, it feels irresponsible to take our foot off the “stop that” gas, and impossible to imagine a future where we can. But each of us can start by committing to generative definition. By remembering our individual and collective potential to produce and create.
I’ve begun to define myself by what I am—what I believe, value, and expect—without using opposites as a springboard.
I believe in human potential. I believe in interconnectedness. In compassion. In justice and fairness and love. I value family, community, creativity, and collaboration. I expect respect and healing and safety and abundance—for my own family and for yours. And while all of this feels grossly disconnected from our current state, I have first-hand experience with the saying, “what we focus on grows.”
I already know what we’re not. That is abundantly (and unfortunately) clear. On this beautiful Fall day, when nothing is as it should be but everything is just as it is, I am longing to know what we are.
Tara Jaye Frank
Image courtesy of Ku Nakagawa