Oblique Strategy #11 — Wait five years before you call it a tragedy.
Suppose something very bad has just happened to you.
It’s not something that’s been unimaginable, because you have imagined it. But it’s not something you’ve worried about. To the contrary, you’ve taken comfort in being able to dismiss the possibility because it’s just not going to happen. Then you can base future plans — and especially future expectations — on this foundation.
But it did just happen. One of your first reactions might be, I don’t want anyone to know. You eschew all of your regular activities in favor of taking to your bed for a week (or a month).
If no one notices your absence, the situation probably differs from your initial assessment. It’s worse. In addition to the initial, shameful, undermining, demoralizing and crushing event, you learn that nobody cares.
There must be something to be learned from sudden and unanticipated social isolation, but I don’t know what it is. For this column, assume someone is interested enough to locate you and determine what happened. And then they say variations of:
» It could be worse. “That happened to me but it was even more difficult.” The story that follows is not worse so you know your pain isn’t understood or the story that follows is worse so your experience is trivialized. The message is: Stop whining.
» There are plenty of fish in the sea.
» What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
» What will be will be.
» The especially annoying: Every cloud has a silver lining.
When in the presence of a person who has just had a devastating experience, there’s a natural urge to say something when there is little or nothing to be said.
“I’m sorry for your loss” has the advantage of being nearly neutral; the word “sorry” is so vague that it’s almost meaningless and of dubious sincerity.
After watching the first two seasons of The Sopranos for a second time, it was my impression that the expression was used whenever there was a death in the “family” — at least once an episode. One character would say to another, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and the other character would reply, “Watcha gonna do?”
Corny, trite and otherwise low in meaning, the expression acknowledges loss without presuming to describe or explain someone else’s feelings.
If the best I had to offer were, “I’m sorry for your loss,” I would have found something else to write about. In the face of devastating loss, the admonition: Wait five years before calling it a tragedy, may not be comforting, but if the loss is deep enough to become a self-defining event, it could help change the valence of that definition from negative to positive.
Wait five years before calling it a tragedy could be a grossly insensitive thing to say in the face of sudden and unexpected death, but it could still be useful and attributing it to someone else could soften its delivery. I first heard it as a quote from Anne Bennett, a former Santa Barbara Middle School teacher: “Anne Bennett might say … .”
At first there is nothing mysterious about the meaning of the words — but there are two levels of meaning. The first is a direction to someone who may feel in need of suggestions but cynical about the premises on which her life has been based. “Don’t call it a tragedy” is an easy instruction to follow and a hard instruction to resent.
You can call it anything you want, as long as you stay away from the T-word. What could be the harm in that? I didn’t say there would be a silver lining or that you can handle it or that it could be worse or that it was meant to be or that it will turn out to be OK in the end. I don’t know if any of those things are true; none will comfort you, and they are all likely to annoy and possibly infuriate you.
If you say, “Anne Bennett would probably suggest that you not label it a tragedy for at least five years,” it’s likely to be a conversation stopper. You won’t be asked, “Who’s Anne Bennett?” and you won’t be asked, “What are you talking about?”
If you are heard, the reaction may evolve to:
» “What an odd thing for him to have said,” and then to
» “I wonder what he meant by that,” to
» “I’m not sure what he meant by that but there could be something to it,” to
» “I’m not sure why but it sounds like a good idea,” to
» “I don’t have to do anything; I just avoid the T-word … and what’s a ‘tragedy’ anyway?”
Fast-forward five years. It turns out that this event was a “tragedy” in the sense that it started a multi-dimensional domino effect. The “victim” has been the subject of a series of apparently irrevocable losses — all directly linked to the original — without any migration. So it was a tragedy. Now you know and you don’t have to worry about a premature diagnosis.
During the course of five years it is likely that some potentially positive things will happen. If so, how they are “exploited” can affect the characterization of it — the loss and the potential tragedy. The “very bad thing” that happened isn’t likely to become a blessing in disguise, but it could be one of the few life experiences that allows you to learn that you couldn’t do things you thought could or should be able to do and you could do things you thought you couldn’t do.
• • •
Susan is my oldest friend. I stayed at her family’s place on Lake Tahoe for the first time when I was in sixth grade. I spent nearly every summer there until I started law school.
Exactly 39 years ago, Susan and her husband, Jim, spent the Fourth of July weekend driving a truck from the Bay Area to help me move to Santa Barbara.
Six months later, on Dec. 30, Susan called from the University of Nevada Medical Center in Reno. That morning Jim had suffered a brain aneurysm while putting on a ski boot. He had just been pronounced dead. He was 30 and had never been sick; she was 28. Other than their son and daughter, ages 4 and 2, Jim was the only family Susan had left. We had already been to a lot of funerals together. I was able to get to the Bay Area just as she was returning from Tahoe; it was very bad.
As a kid, Susan never quit — ever. I talked to her every day during the first six months after Jim’s death. She told me that she didn’t know how she was able to keep going; neither I nor anyone else had any useful advice. When hit by the terrible depression that’s part of grief, she said, “I can’t shake it.” She thought she had gotten the worst role in the play. I thought so, too. But if the play was a tragedy, she never thought of it as her tragedy.
Susan remarried and mothered another boy and girl. Her oldest child, Jim’s son, graduated from the University of Nevada Medical School at Reno — the site of Jim’s death.
I spent a weekend in May with Susan at the Tahoe house where we spent summers as children and where Jim started to put on ski boots for the last time. The occasion was the graduation of her youngest child, Jason — also from the University of Nevada Medical School at Reno.
You read the last two paragraphs correctly. Both of her sons are physicians. Two of the best days in Susan’s life were spent at the site of what was — by far — the worst day of her life. I don’t know what Susan did to have two children graduate from not only the same medical school but also from the same school associated with the hospital where her husband died, but can it be a coincidence? At the very least she didn’t do anything to prevent it from happening — and it wouldn’t take much to pass on the belief that a physical location was infused with bad juju and the source of her agony.
This isn’t to say that Jim’s death wasn’t bad. It was horrible. For Susan it turned out to be part of a much bigger life, which has included more joy than sorrow. Maybe she’s wholly responsible for the positive balance; maybe she had nothing to do with it, but she obviously didn’t get in the way. By not allowing her life to become a tragedy in her own mind, she left room for the good that was to come later.
Next column: Oblique Strategy #12 — Go to an Ikea store.
— Brian H. Burke is a certified family law specialist practicing family law and mediation in Santa Barbara. A researcher and educator in the field of divorce and family conflicts, he is also the creator of the Legal Road Map™. Click here for more information, call 805.965.2888 or e-mail info@burkefamilylaw.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.