Not me, though. I am a wallower in good-bad. However, recently I have come to understand that the problem with identifying any situation, event or phenomenon as "good" or "bad" is not just that to do so is to reinforce dualistic thinking. It is that often we are quite simply wrong in our identification.
One of my favorite "bad" hobby horses is my childhood. As a kid, I was small, socially inept, and given to crying over anything and everything that didn't go my way. I was a natural target for every bully and tough guy, and I must have been pretty annoying even to the "nice" people, adults included. When I hear people wax rhapsodic about their childhoods, I look at my own set of memories and recollect mostly pain and loneliness.
Don't get me started. I told you I was a wallower.
Today I read this post from the blog, Think Simple Now, and an issue that I had been skirting for quite a while suddenly snapped into focus. Author Nadia Ballas-Ruta opens her post with the words:
About two weeks ago, I uttered a sentence that I never thought I would hear myself say. I was talking to my husband and the following words came out of my mouth:
“You know, I have reached the conclusion that I am really happy I had a horrible childhood.”
"Oh, well, it couldn't have been that horrible," I thought. I bet mine was worse. But then she goes on to describe a childhood surprisingly similar to mine, not in the details as much as in the effect. She was right; it was pretty horrible. I could relate.
But could I be happy about it?
Maybe. It might sound Pollyanna-ish to say so, but I am the result of that horrible childhood, and I like who I am today. As Ms. Ballas-Ruta says, "...as I looked at that part of my life, I came to see how it made me who I am and I love being me." Who would voluntarily choose a life of physical abuse and social ostracism, even if they knew it would make them a "better person?" Very few of us, I suspect. Yet when I look at myself up to about age 17 (I often say that my life has improved everyday since I left high school), I have to admit that a lot of who I am today is a direct result of the pressures put on me by my early life.
In my mid-twenties, I worked briefly in a dead-end job for a criminally unscrupulous boss who exploited everyone around him and made no apologies for it. It was one of the worst jobs I ever had, taken just to pay the bills (which I was able to do just barely). I often say it was the worst career mistake of my life, and if I had it to do over, I would not work for George.
But it was on that job that I met Nancy, something that most likely would not have happened had I been otherwise employed. That was more than 25 years ago, and we've been together that whole time.
Bad situation--good situation.
Who knew?
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