Hope is not an emotion

This past year has taught me a precious lesson. I have, for many years, grossly misunderstood the nature of hope. And the more I longed for my imaginary version of hope, the more elusive hope became.

Hope, as it turns out, is as misunderstood as love. Like love, hope isn’t an emotion. In fact, hope doesn’t have to feel good in the least. Like love, hope is a choice and a commitment. A commitment to what? A commitment to keep choosing the path of life — in spite of feeling hopeless.

Ink

When I first started dealing with periods of severe depression in 2013, I came to believe that one does not simply choose to have hope. Those seasons of unspeakable, impenetrable internal darkness convinced me that sometimes, one is completely robbed of the capacity to have any hope at all. As such, I began taking for granted this notion that the only way to get out of those psychoemotional abysses was to hang in there and “wait it out”.

I don’t mean to say it doesn’t work. Sometimes, staying alive in itself can get so difficult that that’s all the work you can do. With your loved ones standing by your side and giving you just enough to not quit on life, and you dutifully taking your prescribed medication, the storm eventually dissipates, and you start to see the light again, and you find reason to get back on your feet.

But over the course of my last depressive episode, I noticed something rather peculiar. It started when my therapist told me, “You know, at some point, you’re going to get tired of despairing, and you’re going to want to do something.” This was after many sessions of me walking in simply because it gave me something to do, while remaining unreceptive and unwilling to acknowledge that things could get better. My first reaction to her remark was of annoyance and anger. Get TIRED of despairing? You make it sound like I’m choosing to despair. You make it sound like I know some kind of alternative to this terrible existence. But deep beneath all that maudlin angst, I knew she was on to something.

I was noticing that there comes a time when despair becomes your comfort zone. Yes, a very uncomfortable comfort zone, but a comfort zone nonetheless. It’s that zone where you’re no longer thrashing, kicking, writhing, screaming — but you’re floating in that murky, slushy, stinky cesspool of despair. Despairing, loathing, and bemoaning your existence has be come second nature, and the thought of recovery is actually scary. Despair is familiar; recovery is foreign. Not wanting to live has been your default state of being for so long that learning how to live again is intimidating.

I reflected on this further, and then I went back to my therapist and admitted to her that I was afraid of recovering. I was afraid that if I should start making some changes to my mental and physical routines, I would start to feel better, but still find myself loathing my lot and my existence, and I would have no more excuse to be less than functional. I would have to accept the terribleness of my existence, and simply deal with it.

This admission to my therapist, but mostly to myself, was an important turning point. Of course, I didn’t make an instant 180 to start making tangible progress — I continued hemming and hawing for a while — the bad cognitive and behavioral habits that develop over months of despairing are so difficult to shake off. But there came a day when I decided I would find a way to start moving again. No, not because I felt better, not because I received a sign from heaven that all issues would be resolved. Simply because I realized I had nothing to lose.

It’s funny how that works. The flip-side of despairing about virtually everything is realizing that you have nothing to lose. And suddenly, you find there’s this untapped reservoir of boldness welling up within you. Call it tragic optimism, or a just darn clever biological mechanism that kicks you in the direction of recovery, but you can choose to ride that wave, or choose to continue thrashing.

‘Drowning Girl’ (1963) by Roy Lichtenstein

It became a psychological discipline to bat away negative thoughts, especially about myself. It doesn’t mean all of a sudden knowing what’s true and what’s false. Instead, the inner dialogue sounded a lot more like this: I know, I know, I’m useless and stupid… But I’m gonna be radically okay with it, and see how far I can go. And so I go about my my day having shelved that particular thought. I read a book, I go for the job interview, I enter into a conversation I would typically have avoided. Oh, yes, and I’m a cruel, heartless, wretched human being undeserving of love… But you know what? People seem okay with it. Let’s see how long I can go before I’m exposed. And again, I go about my day, agreeing to meet a friend, or attending a get-together instead of making excuses to stay home. Oh wait — how about the fact that I’m doomed to a lifetime of lonely misery and will never find happiness? Soon enough, I started being able to say, oh just shut up already. 

Perhaps it all boils down to putting aside your pride. We despair because we are unable to accept ourselves and our lives, or we believe the world cannot accept us, or both. It’s not an easy decision to make, but when we choose radical acceptance, magic happens. Slowly but surely, I started experiencing improvements in my mood. The more I put myself out there in spite of the forces threatening to engulf me, the more the clouds began to clear. My thoughts became more realistic, my emotions more stable, and my social anxiety markedly reduced. I became less inward-focused and could start loving and caring for other people again. At the very core of it, I came to recognize the inherent good of being alive once more.

And that was how I learned that you don’t sit around waiting to feel hopeful. Often, we imagine hope to mean seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, when it’s more like digging, grasping, and clawing your way through the dirt until you see the light. Hope is hard work. To decide that you are willing to try is a huge victory over despair, a huge cause for celebration for the people who have been rooting for you, and the beginning of a scary but empowering journey.

‘Christina’s World’ (1948) by Andrew Wyeth

Hope is courageous: it is letting go of the dogged notion that you need X, Y, and Z to live, and being willing to attempt forging a new path. Hope is humble: it is admitting that you don’t know everything, and that your forecast of doom and gloom is fallible. Hope is radical: it is a commitment to stop comparing yourself to others (you know, the “happy, productive, and functional” folks), and focusing on doing what you can do in a given moment.

And finally, you may or may not agree, but I believe that true, lasting hope requires faith. I know that any of my efforts to reject the voices of my inner demons would have been unsustainable without faith in a loving and merciful God. What made those psychological disciplines possible was a deeply spiritual discipline: to begin each day offering up my fears, anxieties, and regrets to God, and trusting like a child that He is already paving for me a new path my eyes cannot yet see. For hope that is seen is not hope at all. And faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance of what we do not see. This hope will not put us to shame.

I thank God for the gift of faith, and for loved ones who, having exhausted creative means to motivate me, beseech me to turn to God.

We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures. We are the sum of the Father’s love for us, and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.

–St John Paul II

Thank you for continuing to accompany me on this journey. 🙂

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An unrepeatable miracle

This is quite a departure from my usual “doodles”. I drew this today as my heart ached from the latest news about the desecration of the purest, most innocent of all human life. It is but the icing on top of many other abominable practices to which our culture has become desensitized. I’ve said much about this on other channels, and I don’t intend to elaborate in this space.

For now let’s pause to simply behold the miracle, the self-evident beauty that is every human being.

The human being is single, unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name.

–Pope John Paul II

Dear Chiara Natasha

Update: Chiara has gotten in touch with me, thank you for your help in spreading the word!

Dear Chiara,

My name is Karen, and I’m a 23-year-old Indonesian girl. I read about you in stories covering the recent AirAsia tragedy. My heart grew heavy as I learned that you have so suddenly lost the people I imagine had been closest to you. I was filled with an overwhelming urge to get in touch with you, but I didn’t know how, so I started emailing the editors of Singaporean newspapers. But I realized I didn’t want to waste any time. To people who aren’t in deep pain, another day is just another few hours that invariably tick by. But for those in agony, time stalls and you find yourself in an abyss where past, present, and future meld together. And so I’m writing to you here, and I hope you see this. I don’t have magic words or any big promises. To be honest, I don’t know how I can help you, except to tell you that you are not alone. Maybe you have many strangers trying to reach you with a word of comfort right now, or maybe they, like me, don’t know how. Maybe you will read this and you wouldn’t be able to take me too seriously because I don’t know your pain, but I just need to do something and I pray I can help in some way.

Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I am and will continue to pray for your father, your mother, as well as your brothers, Nico and Justin. I believe in a God whose love and mercy is unparalleled, and I pray that He, with the intercessions of the saints and angels, will lead your family members’ souls to heaven. And I know I’m not the only one praying for them.

I don’t know much about you other than the few details I could find in those articles. If I gather correctly, you are an Indonesian studying in Singapore. If so, we have at least one thing in common. I was also born and raised in Indonesia. In 1998, my parents sent me and my older sister to Singapore to get a better education. We lived apart from the rest of our family for quite a while, before they were able to join us more regularly when our youngest sister got older. Between then and now, we’ve relied on airplanes to take either our parents to Singapore, or us to Indonesia. Once or twice I’ve imagined the possibility of a disaster, but never too seriously. Words cannot express how sorry I am that this has happened to you. As I thought about you, I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling more alone than you must have felt when you received the news. But at the same time, I also thought, wow, that this girl is somewhere out there right now, wow, she is strong.

Dear Chiara, I don’t know your pain, and I don’t know your fears. All I can offer is any empathy or insight that could come from having been clinically depressed a few times in my life. Each time, reality and facts would become so distorted in my mind that I believed with every fiber of my being that I was alone, and that I had nothing left. I pulled through with the unsolicited help of some very unexpected people in my life. For example, a friend of my ex-boyfriend’s parents reached out to me and became a listening ear and a constant source of support. Who would have thought? Well, God intervenes in our lives in very unexpected ways. Dear Chiara, I hope during this time you will be open to even the most unexpected sources of support. Dear Chiara, this must sound most contrived, but how I wish I could give you a hug.

I am and will continue to pray for you, my sister. Many things may not make sense right now, but have hope in a God who knows and sees more than we do. Where we see no open doors, He sees one that we don’t even know exists. You are very strong, and you are very loved.

Chiara, please feel free to contact me anytime at all. You can email me at: karen.zainal@gmail.com. If you’re not Chiara, feel free to share this with her, or anyone who might potentially know her.

With love,

Karen

What we can learn from those with “special needs”

As an aspiring special education teacher, I wanted to learn how to interact with kids with more profound developmental disabilities. I found KEEN, a nonprofit that pairs volunteers with special needs participants (kids and young adults) in a time of free play. I started two weeks ago; as it turns out, there wasn’t much to learn at all — though there was much to unlearn.

My buddy, Charles, is an African-American male in his 20s. He was born with Down syndrome. Because of his intellectual disability, he behaves like a young child. Charles often repeats himself, his favorite lines being “How you doing?” and “What color is this?” Charles is also incredibly friendly, and would shake hands with anyone he meets. Sometimes, he might pick up your hand and sniff it (it’s his way of showing affection), which tends to startle people meeting him for the first time. He loves shooting hoops, which I happen to be terrible at, and thankfully doesn’t bother him.

When I first met Charles, I was keenly aware that under “normal” circumstances, we would unlikely be friends. Charles and I have close to nothing in common — not gender, not race, not age, not occupation, not skills, not interests. But it quickly became so clear to me that we have one very important thing in common — we’re both God’s children.

There is unparalleled beauty in simple interactions. When I talk to Charles and other participants at KEEN, there is absolutely no pretense. There’s no need to be smart, or witty, or funny, or interesting. No judgment, no expectations. Simply put, these are interactions in the purest form. No one’s trying to impress anybody, and no one’s trying to gain anything from anybody. I felt freedom.

Occasionally, I take a step back to just marvel at what’s going on in this basketball court, and I realize that this is an oasis in a clockwork society that expects so much of every individual.

One time, Charles wanted to take a walk outside of the basketball court, so I took his hand and we ventured out for 5 minutes, during which we ran into a few college students. Charles being Charles, promptly walked up to them and asked for all their names, before shaking and sniffing their hands. I was enraged by the grimaces and general discomfort plastered all over their faces. That was the moment I realized the extent to which we’ve created a society so hostile to those who are “different”. It’s no surprise that we’re seeing more and more “wrongful birth” lawsuits filed by parents who declare that they would have aborted their baby if they’d known he/she would be different. And then we have the likes of Richard Dawkins who’d go so far as to say that “immoral” not to abort unborn babies with Down Syndrome.

I, too, am guilty of perpetuating an elitist, ableist world. For four years, I immersed myself in the intellectual bubble that is The University of Chicago. There, I learned life-changing critical thinking skills that I am incredibly thankful for. Unfortunately, it also instilled in me a poisonous pride in my ability to engage in “intellectual” conversations, and hence a preference for a certain type of interaction. It took a major bout of depression that robbed me of many of my cognitive abilities for me to be humbled once more.

I love the work organizations like KEEN does, but it saddens me that we actually need to recruit volunteers to fulfill social and emotional needs that wonderful people like Charles are often deprived of.

I encourage you to try spending some time with people like Charles. They will always teach and remind us about what it means to be fellow human beings, and it will be good for our souls.

Charles gave me a slip of paper with his name on it so I wouldn’t forget him over the course of the week.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 18:1-4)

 

Also published on The Mighty.

 

Enough with the endless abortion euphemisms

I thought “reproductive choice” meant choosing whether or not to conceive, not whether or not to destroy a child already conceived.

I thought “reproductive health” meant fixing faulty reproductive systems and ensuring healthy pregnancies, not puncturing uteruses and the skulls of perfectly healthy unborn babies.

And how I wish “feminism” meant fighting for equal rights, not for special exemptions from fetal homicide laws. (Existing fetal homicidal laws make a man guilty of manslaughter if he kills the baby in a mother’s womb, except in the case of abortion.)

“We hear that abortion is fundamentally about a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. Or abortion is a litmus test for judicial nominees. Or abortion is symptomatic of what’s wrong with the social discourse in America. But none of those things is what abortion really is. Abortion is the intentional killing of unborn children.”

–Jon Bloom in Relentlessly Call Abortion What It Really Is

As much as abortion clinic counselors want to tell women that abortion is but the removal of clumps of cells, tissues, and at best “fetal matter” (watch real video footage of Planned Parenthood feeding women with misinformation and blatant lies), here’s what actual abortionists have said:

“Even now I feel a little peculiar about it, because as a physician I was trained to conserve life, and here I am destroying it.” –Dr. Benjamin Kalish

“We know that it’s killing, but the state permits killing under certain circumstances.” –Dr. Neville Sender

“In one room, you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity in the fetal heart is not important, that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then, in the next room you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it is a good thing that the heartbeat is already irregular . . . she will not have a live baby.” –Dr. John Szenes

“After twenty weeks, where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it because the potential is so imminently there.” –Dr. James McMahon

The killing of babies can be tolerated, even championed as a human right, as long as we shroud it with euphemisms and avoid calling it what it is. Where are the honest politicians and protesters chanting, “We demand the right to decide which of our children to kill!”? Let us stand guard, lest our conscience be dulled by mere rhetoric.

Re: “I am pro-choice because all evidence shows that restricting abortion increases the rate of abortion.”

There are pro-choicers who don’t consider the unborn baby a human being. A fetus is not a human life, they say, so they have no rights. And then there are pro-choicers who do recognize the unborn’s personhood. They also acknowledge that it’s unfortunate that an innocent life is terminated during abortion, but consider it a necessary evil. Statistics show that lifting restrictions on access to abortion reduces its occurrence. Besides, would you rather abortions be performed by trained, certified physicians, or by shady back-alley providers?

The first justification calls for a discussion on whether personhood is inherent or earned. In this post I intend to specifically address the second.

It’s safe to infer that these individuals feel abortion is on some level immoral, though most prefer to call it “unfortunate” or “sad.” At least, I assume so because they do want it to be rare. What I’m perplexed by is this “logic” of allowing something as a means of reducing its very occurrence. It reminds me of the movie The Purge: In a dystopian society, the government has instituted an annual 12-hour period called “The Purge,” where all criminal activity is permitted. The justification? Because of this, overall crime-rate is now at an all-time low.

Reactions to this analogy have been varied. I’ve heard “I don’t see how that’s ‘dystopian’ if it works!” (to which I have nothing to say), while others have taken great offense. The latter group is not wrong to point out that abortion is a real-life situation, not some fantasy, non-existent scenario. Regardless, it seems to me an analogy that successfully highlights, without any sugarcoating, the inherent moral contradiction in saying that you want restrictions lifted so as to reduce the incidence of that very act. Or is putting lives on the line supposed to be some sort of reverse psychology tactic? As Rush Limbaugh aptly put it, “The message that President Obama delivered…was: morality is immoral. . . . Why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there’s nothing wrong with it?”

I’m in no way denying facts and statistics. Call me an idealist, but there has got to be better ways of reducing the occurrence of abortion that don’t force us to deny our conscience as individuals and as a nation. Have we looked hard enough? Rather than let Planned Parenthood drive up demand for its own profit, have we even tried to reduce demand for abortion? How about pouring more resources into…

…quality sex education (granted, content is highly debatable) + access to birth control (since the non-religious are unlikely to opt for abstinence) + better maternal healthcare and work benefits + better physical, emotion, psychological support for crisis pregnancy moms + reducing stigma against pregnancy out of wedlock in and outside the church + applauding the courage of women carrying their unplanned pregnancy to full term + actually recommending adoption as an option + …

I don’t know, I’m no public policy expert, but there has got to be ways to reduce abortion that are less morally lazy than expanding access to it.

Life isn’t what you make it

As much as we’re told that “life is what you make it”, that phrase could not be farther from the truth. The present life we’re living, wherever we’re reading this right now, is collectively made possible by our parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, bosses, doctors, firefighters, law enforcers, lawmakers, ancestors, founding fathers…..and lastly, ourselves.

Nothing apart from the decisions we make is inherently, wholly ours.

First and foremost, we’re alive today because we were each given a shot at life. We had the support of individuals (biologically related or not), groups, communities, and/or institutions that believed that we — though weak, voiceless, defenseless, even useless — were of value and had rights as members of a just and humane society.

We were cared for, taught the ways of survival, of weathering storms, of overcoming obstacles, defying odds, of discovering and pursuing our passions, until we’re ready to take those training wheels off. We then embraced the independence to carve out our own lives, and the freedom to do as we please. But never at the expense of others, because we remember to love and respect the way we were loved and respected for simply being human. We give others a chance to find their way the way we were given chance after chance.

Let’s consider our own profound indebtedness before we  make judgments about whether someone would be worthy recipient of society’s resources, or make assumptions about whether someone would be able to live a fulfilling life. If one is given the resources that will enable them to overcome and flourish, they will.

The greatest of these resources are love and respect, and the most basic of these is a chance at life. And when they no longer need their training wheels, they will pass them on to those who do. May this be the kind of society, the kind of human race we are proud to be members of.

“Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.”   –Malcolm Muggeridge

Pro-choicers, will you please answer this one question?

I am shocked. I am outraged. Life post-depression has been incredible, but pro-abortion news stories and articles never fail to shock, outrage, and simply bewilder me each day. I could opt out of having these appear on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but that would be to opt for denial. Today, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to longtime pro-abortion activist Gloria Steinem, not his first time bestowing the nation’s highest non-military honor to a prolific supporter of abortion. I can understand (this does not imply empathy) with why many people can associate abortion with romantic words like “freedom” and “choice,” but can we please look beyond rhetorics and the myopic snapshots that these rhetorics produce?

Please stop calling it “pro-choice” — abortion denies the defenseless child of any choice whatsoever. Please stop calling it “healthcare service” — what abortion does to the baby is the exact opposite of why healthcare is practiced, and why healthcare institutions and systems even exist. And you cannot begin to talk about “women’s rights” when you deny the first, most basic human right: the right to life.

In a promo for the recent Texas telethon that raised $50k for abortion, Sally Khon says women are “invited to laugh and feel powerful” — am I the only one who imagines this to sound like a sinister cackle?

Underneath all these labels are morally and logically inconsistent arguments. Pro-abortionists, there’s really just one thing to explain: why your life matters and theirs don’t.

“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” –Ronald Reagan

“I am in revolt…

“I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right! I tell you now that the majority is always wrong. Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes 50 years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.”

–Dr. Stockmann (An Enemy of The People by Henrik Ibsen)

Are you prepared to love?

Meet the Dennehys. This has got to be the most beautiful family in the world. Just seeing how much the adoptive parents’ love empowered and enabled these kids, I don’t think you could even call them “disabled” anymore.

Lately I’ve been thinking (and talking, and arguing..) a lot about what it means to be pro-life. Which involves knowing why you genuinely oppose  pro-abortion (I don’t like the term “pro-choice” — it attempts to shroud and sugarcoat the ugly truth) arguments. I honestly believe that the pro-abortion movement in modern, prosperous America is all about self-centredness. In particular the labelling of abortion as a constitutional “right” — it reeks of individualism (that discriminates the defenseless unborn). It’s about living and running a self-centric universe. It’s the American dream, of doing whatever it takes to get to where you want to be, stretched to disgusting proportions. But what about the argument that it’s for the child’s good, to spare him/her of a life with deformities/disabilities? Altruistic, is it not?

This video gave me another powerful insight into this question. Can anyone watch this and honestly say, “Those poor, miserable kids!”?

One big reason a woman would assume her deformed baby would grow up to be miserable, is because she herself would give the child a miserable life. She’s not prepared to love unconditionally, to love in a way that would enable a victorious life. When expectant parents say, “I don’t want them to be miserable,” is, what they really mean, whether they realize it or not, is “I don’t want me to be miserable.” There, self-centred.

Also watch little Ace Eicher tell the world about her brother with Down syndome, and weep. :’)