How Low Can You Go, but More Importantly, How Long Are You Going to Be Down There?

If you've been around this life for more than a few decades, you'll have your share of valleys.  Peaks and valleys, for sure, but let's just talk about valleys today. Especially those valleys that you don't know are coming.  Let's face it, who does know?

The problem with the valleys is not that they exist; we'd be fooling ourselves if we thought we wouldn't hit life's lows.  Yes, the problem is not in their inevitability, but in their duration.   Just around the river bend? Just around the corner? Light at the end of the tunnel? Don't even know I'm in the river. Can't even see the tunnel, let alone some mythical place where light might shine again.

When you're mired in a slump or in the depths of grief, depression, or despair, there's no corner in sight. No river about to turn. No sun about to shine. I'm not talking about clinical depression.  That's another matter entirely and one on which I'm ill-equipped to advise.  I'm talking about the valley that comes when you lose your job (as I did) or your spouse or you realize your marriage is over or you get burned by a friend that you trusted with your deepest darkest secrets. The valley is wide and the valley is deep. The chasm is filled with turmoil and frustration, self-doubt, self-pity, and rivers of tears.

How much of the valley's burden would be lifted if you only knew when the timer was up? How low could you go if you knew you would definitely be able to get up pretty soon?

A good friend whose marriage ended told me that she hadn't expected her grief to be as lasting and deep as it was. She's bright, kind, capable, loving, energetic. Having what she held to be true proven very false, threw her for a loop.  A lasting loop.  If she knew going in - hey here's the deal - you're going to be so distraught, so angry, so depressed, so hurt, so why-me for about ninety days.....then on day ninety-one, poof, you're all good; she could have navigated days 1 and 23 and 45 and 58. Day 91 is coming.  You can count down.  You can hold your breath and tread water for that long, surely.  Wouldn't that be the trick?

When I lost my job, I went from shock (but yet, not awe), to disbelief, to anger, to can't I just roll back the clock and try that again? A little bump would send me reeling.  I probably cried more in the first few weeks than when both of my parents died.  Seriously.  That hurts to write, but it's true. If I could only tell when I would turn the corner, turn the page on it all, I could make it. I could navigate the valley.

As my father used to say, though, you don't know what you don't know.  When life throws us a curve ball, we swing and miss. We don't know what's going to happen next. Are we going to strike out? Are we going to get hit by the next pitch? Is the coach going to pull us from the game? Is everyone in the dugout thinking - why is this person even batting right now? Are the fans booing or cheering or does my name just rhyme with boo? Are we ever ever ever ever going to make it to first base?

So much noise. So much energy wasted on what everyone else thinks is going on. So much energy wasted on what everyone else thinks period. So much self recrimination and self loathing. It's not them, it's me. The world is out to get me. I shouldn't be up to bat. I am a failure. I can't do anything right. Nobody is every going to love me. Life isn't fair. Why don't I ever get the game winning hit in the bottom of the ninth inning?

There are times when you are in the valley when you forget you were ever on a hill.  Crying seems more ordinary than smiling or even mouth set in a straight line. The slightest thing can make you go batty.  Agh - I'm a failure. Agh - I can't do anything right. Agh- nobody is ever going to love me.  Agh - any criticism anyone has ever wagged in my direction is true.

Then you simply step back and take a deep breath.  Take one deep breath. Take one deep breath and quiet the noise in your head and the voice that says you are not enough and you are not up to the task.

The sun comes up. The earth turns. The hurt is a little dulled.  Something arbitrary makes you smile. The pain doesn't cut through you like a knife.  A better day seems possible.  You make a mistake and you don't fall apart.  You trust someone with a little bit of your soul and it doesn't get shredded.  If you'd only known at the beginning, that there would be an end to the misery. Ah,there's the rub. When you are low and feeling defeated, you do not know. You never know when it's going to end.

There is just one thing.

That one thing is you.

You have to get yourself out of it. You have to choose not to wallow.  You have to choose to turn the page. You have to listen to friends who love you.  You have to have faith.  When you're feeling that the low is as low as it's going to go and there is no end in sight, do not do it.  Do not succumb to the exquisite pleasure of hiding under your blanket in a dark room.  Do not succumb to 'the world is out to get me'. Do not blame your valley on someone else's peak.

Guess what? Doesn't help.  It's only you. It's only you and it does get better.  I can't promise you when it will end. I can't say when the lows will ebb and the pain will recede.

I can only promise you that it does.


Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill made low
The crooked straight
And the rough places plain
--Isaiah 40:4
--Handel's Messiah
--but really Isaiah 40:4

Exalt in your valley and what you learn from what's it like in there.

Then make that rough place plain.

Find your tribe....and then please leave all other tribes alone

We've heard it often enough before:  if you feel out of place and wondering where you might fit in, you need to 'find your tribe'......meaning people like you or at least people with whom you feel comfortable and at home.  It's a community where you can feel safe, feel free to be yourself, be vulnerable, laugh hard, cry a little, argue a bit, and then still be a tribe in the morning. We say it a lot to middle schoolers.  You know, those kids in the awkward in between stage of being a child and a young adult.  You know the time in our lives none of us older than 18 would ever want to repeat again. You're growing into yourself and finding out who you are.  Helps if you can do it somewhere you click, somewhere you just go aaaahhhhh, these people are like me and these people like me.

So you need to find your tribe.

Here's the thing we all need to remember though when we find our own tribe:

Other tribes do not suck.

It always amazed me after decades of being under Soviet rule, how quickly all of the ethnic battles popped right back up and got bloodier than ever when the USSR fell apart and with it the hold of communism on the eastern block countries.  We didn't like you a hundred years ago, we still don't like you today. Maybe we've been at peace for a while, but it's all about who gets the power now. And when my tribe is in power, I'm going to make sure I do everything to squelch your tribe.

The Armenians didn't like the Azerbaijanis, the Serbs didn't like the Bozniaks and the Croats, the Sunnis still don't like the Shiites, the Hutu slaughtered all the Tutsis, the Arabs are constantly at war with the Jews, the Irish Protestants loathe the Irish Catholics, the Republicans don't like the Democrats.

People. People listen. Let other tribes be. There's a place for everyone. There's never going to be enough power to go around.  Everyone wants their tribe to be on top.  But here's the catch:  we never come to any agreement or workable solution without one side giving some and the other side giving some and meeting somewhere in the middle.

What if we just said, what I have is enough?  I have enough and I want everybody else to have enough.

So if you are at all physically and mentally capable, you take care of your own self (as a viral toddler rant on the internet once went).  If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one. If you want to worship Allah, great! But don't kill people who worship Jesus Christ. If you believe a black life matters, don't kill a blue one.

You have your tribe and you love your tribe but we all need to live in the world with other tribes. OK. But do you have to take all the other tribe's stuff? Do you have to dominate the other tribe and make the other tribe feel lesser than and unworthy and humiliated? Do we have to use the words libertard and repuglican? Didn't our mothers and fathers tell us not to call each other names?

I've often wondered who Bashar al-Assad is going to rule when the bloody Syrian civil war is over. He's killed most of the Syrians or they've fled the country.  Is it really that important to have killed that many of your own people so that your tribe can rule? Rule what? Rule whom? Will you have a country left? You're going to be a tribe of one. Guess what?  Not a tribe.

We live in a country where a lot of people have come to escape ethnic cleansing and civil war and genocide.  Immigrants among us? Start by looking in the mirror.  Our country is not a white country. Our country is not a Christian country.  Our country is made up of all different kinds of people, races, religions, ethnicities, and cultures.

People. Let's celebrate tribes.

Of all kinds.

Your tribe will still be around in the morning.

This is my tribe

Cindy Lou Who

I got this feeling when I was listening to the national anthem before the NHL Finals game 6 between the Sharks and the Penguins on the night of the Orlando massacre.

Listening to those beautiful words after the horrific events of that early morning, reminded me of Cindy Lou Who.  You know - the little Who who taught us what Christmas really meant.  The Grinch tried to steal Christmas. He took the presents, the bows, the trees, the ornaments, the food for the feast.  He thought he'd squashed their spirit and their holiday.

Yet he couldn't load the essential element on his sled because it was intangible.  The Grinch couldn't understand why the Whos weren't upset.  He'd taken all of the things he thought were important. Come Christmas morning, though, all the Whos woke up, walked outside, joined hands and sang. Sang to welcome Christmas morning. Sang to be glad to be together and share fellowship and welcome the day. It wasn't about things. It was about people, community, togetherness.

Here in these United States, we feel the same.  We start every sporting event by singing the national anthem.  No matter which side you're rooting for, there's one side we all root for:  our country.

If anyone thinks they can take our freedom and our pride by stealing it, by bombing it, by shooting it up - well, quite frankly, they have another think coming.  Being American, being able to express yourself, being who you truly are, living and loving and pursuing happiness....that's not something you can buy at the store.  And, no, the victims of the Orlando massacre are not things.  Far from it. But terror tries to take freedom. Terror tries to take our souls.  Terror tries to tell us to stay home. Don't go out dancing, don't pursue happiness, be submissive, walk only one line and be only one way. Stay in the proverbial closet.

So let's just be clear:

That is not who we are.

That is not what we do.

We are everyone.  We are every person.  We are gay, straight, white, black, rich, poor, Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, young, old, tall, short, nice, mean, blonde, brunette, southern, northern, liberal, conservative, married, single, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins.

You cannot terrorize us.

We will not let you.

We will not stop being who we are and doing what we do.

We will persevere.

We will join hands and celebrate the day and celebrate freedom and sing loudly and boldly.

We will not go away.

We will not quit being American.

Next!