Tragedy and Limitations

Some limitations will always be there and we must learn to live alongside them. They put confines around the types of outcomes we can expect to experience in life and we can only learn to tolerate or accept that reality.

Here’s an example. I have a friend who was once engaged to a woman who died, tragically and unexpectedly, in a car crash. He never got the experience of being married to her, neither the joy nor the sorrow of marriage. He will never raise children with her. This was an outcome he anticipated, even expected. Her death placed a confine on his life: he will never see the future they planned. He can’t overcome that.

Let me be clear: he may very well find a happy and hopeful future with someone else. We could call that a certain kind of “overcoming,” because his life would not be defined by grief and victimhood. That would be legitimately good. But, at the same time, he will never see the future he planned with his fiancé and that is a reality that can only be grieved, mourned, and, hopefully, accepted as he enters a new phase of life. In that sense, specifically, he can’t overcome the tragedy. What I mean is, he can’t erase it from existence and he will always be impacted. He can’t bring his fiancé back nor change the past. He will carry it with him. Because he will carry this pain with him, there will be limitations. He will live with unmet expectations, remorse or regret (potentially), disappointment, shock, sadness, anger, and more. Likely he will struggle with emotional intimacy for a time because his burden is great. The list could go on. His life has confines now. He cannot marry the person he wanted to marry. Because of that, his future is limited to options other than the one he planned on. While this is deeply sad, this does not have to be hopeless, and we’ll talk more about that in the days to come.

The point is, life will throw things at us, at times, that we cannot undue, ignore, or simply move past. They must be confronted, somehow, some way and, even if we’re able to confront them, they may still impact us moving forward. In short, life’s difficulties can be so great that they place confines on us. They limit us and they limit our potential outcomes for our lives.

Here are some questions we’ll try to tackle in the next few days:

What do we do about this? How do we, as faithful people, respond to these limitations? Is the acknowledgment of these limitations an example of hopelessness?

Stay tuned.

Facing Limitations

We all have limitations of various kinds. Some of us have been so deeply wounded that we have become detached from our own lives to the extent that we experience a limited range of emotion. It is difficult to connect. Some of us experience unexpected, random tragedy, such as the loss of a child. This is a grief that never quite subsides. Some of us develop dependencies on substances while watching others who use in an identical manner go on about their lives unharmed. Some of us have physical limitations, such as sight or hearing or even strength. Some of us have mental limitations such as intelligence or a mood disorder or a psychotic disorder. These limitations places confines on our lives. Or, at least, they have that potential. Certainly some types of limitations can be transcended, even overcome, others we must simply learn to live with.

It’s the latter kind I’m particularly interested in as I write these posts over the next few days. Some limitations will always be there and must learn to live alongside them. They put confines around the types of outcomes we can expect to experience in life and we can only learn to tolerate or accept that reality. What do I mean by this? Stay tuned. I’ll begin to unpack this tomorrow.

Evaluating Your Own Decision Making

Today, I’ll put it to you.

What decisions have you been putting off making? Or, what decisions are you currently confronted with?

What values are at stake in this decision?

What do you want to value? How would certain actions add to, or take away from, that value (or set of values)?

Spend some time reflecting on what you want to prioritize in life and how your current options could play into those priorities.

Decisions Create Opportunities

Now, surely most of us have made decisions we knew to be out of accordance with our values. In fact we may even do this on a semi-regular basis. How do we explain this phenomenon according to this way of seeing?

One option is this: What we say we value doesn’t match what we actually value. Let’s be honest, sometimes we’re not honest with ourselves. When this is the case, it’s totally reasonable that we might act on a value different than what we say we value. I might say that I value being close to family more than making more money. If I get offered a job where I make 30% more money (but away from family), and I instantly take it, what am I communicating about what I value? I’m taking that money!!!

The other option is this: We aren’t being intentional enough about putting our practices into action. I’m guessing that we all want to be people who are able to live consistently, to value what we say we value, to prioritize whatever we deem to be “the right things” in life. Our decisions give us that opportunity. Sometimes there are confines, and sometimes the choices are less than ideal. Even in those cases we have the opportunity to choose to value something, even if it isn’t our “ideal.”

Demonstrating Your Values When Times Get Tough

We’re talking about decision-making. Get caught up, it’s too much to summarize.

Yesterday we talked about the fact that there are different levels of priority when it comes to our values. In the decision-making process, it’s a luxury when we can choose between preferences as opposed to choosing between needs. The example we worked through in the first few days dealt with a choice between taking a fictional job in California verses staying in my current job. That’s a decision that I am, theoretically, in control of. There are no external pressures forcing me to either leave or stay. If I leave, I do so freely. If I stay, I do so freely. This is because I have a job and a means of providing for my family either way. I can choose to value warmth and traffic, or I can choose to value stability and proximity to family. Either way, I’m (roughly) in control.

If I lose my job, the confines increase. I’m no longer making a low-stakes choice between two roughly equal, but opposite, outcomes. I need to find a job in a hurry in order to provide for my family. How do I demonstrate my values in such a case as this? What do we do when we have no desirable options? Using yesterday’s example, we can either stay put and be jobless or move to Arkansas, where the only relevant job offer comes from. I do not want to stay put because I value providing for my family and don’t want to lose my house and live on the street. I do not want to move because I value proximity to our extended family.

There’s a few things we can say here. One option is to get creative. Can you sell your home and temporarily move in with parents while you do an extended job search? Possibly. I could even get a less desirable job temporarily while I search. One option is to take the job and move and instantly start looking for jobs closer to the extended family. It’s okay to choose a temporary outcome in order to create the possibility for a long-term choice that matches our values.

The other option is to settle into different values than what we have previously said we prioritized. Let’s say we’re uncomfortable taking a job temporarily because we view that as being unfair to the new employer. Well, we’re choosing to value a certain kind of loyalty. We could also say that moving would be an act of valuing self-sufficiency. That’s not a huge value for me, but I could see why it might be for some. It would also be an act of valuing the immediacy of being able to provide for the family, which takes a great deal of anxiety off the table. In this case, we’d be valuing safety and security.

Each of these outcomes is perfectly acceptable, and values different things. It doesn’t necessarily matter which one we choose but, according to the way we’ve been looking at things, it matters that we know what we’re choosing so that we can live consistent lives.