Can Hopelessness Be a Form of Self Love?

Is it ok to hang up the cape?

This is not the post I intended to publish today.

I actually had another post all teed up – thoughtful graphics purchased – curated word count - triple edited.

Then something unexpected happened.  I was mentioned in another Substack about mid-life quests. 

I should have been elated. 

Isn’t this the electronic equivalent of a stranger coming up to you and saying “Hey aren’t you…”

I should have been elated… however, the author spoke of my self-deprecating, vulnerable and at times raw exploration of mid-life as the voice of my self-saboteur and as worship of my anti-hero.  Queue Taylor Swift song.

Ouch. Am I just a pathetic tale as old as time?

They say that if someone gets to you it’s because they are hitting a little too close to the truth.

I never thought of myself as an antihero.

Do I just need to dust off my cape; change the name of my Substack to something inspirational and stop wallowing in self-criticism and doubt?

~~~

A friend took me to lunch last week.

“We’re loving your writing (the school moms),” she said. “But…”

Oh no the dreaded but…

“Are you going to start writing about the solution?”

“The solution?” I queried.

“We’re all going through it.  What you’re struggling with.  Our careers, our marriages, our kids. We’re all freaking out inside – wondering both is this all there is and now what… but we need the solution.”

“Ah the solution.”

“Yes, you’ve nailed how we’re all feeling but we don’t want to feel this way anymore, so I hope to God you’re going to start offering solutions.  We need help and inspiration not identification.”

Everyone loves a hero.

For years I would have said that’s who I was – the ultimate comeback kid.

Like one of those kids punching clowns that popped back up after every blow life threw at me.

The international bank I worked for eliminated my division – I started my own company. 

Business One failed – I reinvented myself as a health and wellness consultant in Bali.

Marriage failed – I self-studied and became a licensed mortgage broker in two months flat.

Business Two had a forest fire, mudslides, lawsuits – you name it and after each set back there I was standing on the rubble… with my cape on.

I even wrote a book about resilience and how to succeed despite adversity.

So, what happened?  

Why am I calling my current situation a crisis instead of breakthru, quest or opportunity?

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, it’s because I love myself?

Can I give myself the grace to understand why a genuine belief in things working out might be hard?

Why the punching bag clown might consider not popping back up this time?

Resilience and tenacity and reinvention all sound great until you realize that an essential ingredient is hope.

Hope requires vulnerability.  And vulnerability means you’re willing to risk disappointment and hurt….again. 

What if hopelessness is trying to protect me?

What if the anti-hero, however misguided, is the part of me that loves me so much that it doesn’t want to put my fragile heart through one more disappointment?

Can hopelessness be an act of radical self-love?

I love movies like Maleficent or even the Joker because we see the complexity of the so-called villain.  The tales as told by the heroes always omit certain details, don’t they?

12 Step programs have us do an inventory of our character defects.  The irony (spoiler alert) is that we often see how our defects are really just our assets that have been working a little too hard.  The key isn’t to eliminate our defects as much as turn down their volume a little.

If I use this program as a model, then maybe my inner critic needs to turn into an inner editor.

Maybe my self-saboteur is really an inner bodyguard and maybe just maybe my inner punching clown wants to know, “will you still love me if I don’t get back up again?”