Idealism and Reality

From Menletter March 2009

By Tim Baehr

The arthritis specialist said that the best chance for relief for painful knuckle joints was extra-strength Tylenol. Even maximum dosage shouldn't fry my liver unless I drink (I don't). So I happily started downing the maximum - eight pills a day.

After a couple of days I was mostly pain-free. Yippee. But then I had a rare but known side-effect: canker sores in my throat. I didn't make the connection at first, so I kept popping the pills - and feeling lousy. It took me a while to catch on.

I did a little research and stopped the pills. Canker sores gone. Pain in the hands back. This was not acceptable. Not at all. I seemed doomed to suffer.

Then I remembered that the doctor told me that the arthritis would progress at its own pace and that I couldn't make the underlying structural damage worse or better by what I did with my hands or whether I took medication. I also remembered that a great deal of our suffering comes not from actual pain but from expectations. I expect to be pain-free. I have a right to be pain-free. Anything less than this ideal is a personal affront, and I'm perfectly justified in feeling bummed out and disappointed. Every twinge of pain is a sharp reminder of the insult my body is heaping on me. Suffering is my lot. Woe is me.

But what if the major thing that's wrong with me, and the source of my suffering, is not the arthritis but the expectation - the idealism that I should be pain-free? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

For now, at least, the pain is mine to keep. It's annoying, especially first thing in the morning or when I try to do certain things. But it's not debilitating. And if I don't compare my situation with some abstract ideal, the pain is a lot less of a big deal than it was. It's just a reality, and one I can deal with. And I still do things to alleviate the pain. First thing in the morning I wash out the cats' bowls. The hot water feels good. And I keep moving, using the hands. That seems to help.

Great Expectations

How much of our dissatisfaction with life, what we might justify as suffering, is based on our expectations, our idealism? Let's have a look around. Reality is what is right here and right now. It is what it is. Our idealism is a struggle with what the Universe (of which we're a part) presents to us. Good luck with that! The Universe wins every time.

We're taught that idealism is a good thing, that it's good to have ideals to live up to. And when we, or life, doesn't live up to the ideals, we are supposedly spurred on to make things better. Making things better is fine. Making things perfect - matching the ideals - is impossible. So should we stop trying at all? Stay in a bad job or a bad marriage? Not set limits for our kids? Never vote or engage in community service? Ironically, giving up on everything is also succumbing to our ideals. We're saying, in effect, that if we can't make it perfect it's not worth even trying. But by not acting we can increase pain and suffering.

What to do? I think it's healthy if we can accept a certain amount of various kinds of pain as a normal part of life and if we can work - without expectations of perfection - to make things better. We embrace reality and accept that we are part of that reality. We can act, within our abilities, to make it better. Our suffering, or at least our disappointment that things aren't perfect, becomes much less of an issue.