Some days, I find myself weighed down for reasons I can’t quite articulate. I’m grumpier, more likely to snap at the slightest annoyance; I find myself haunted by the amorphous sense that something isn’t quite right.
Inevitably, I’ll wonder if I’m not eating or sleeping enough, or if my period is starting, and take various half-baked mitigation measures, and midway through my carefully laid plans something will happen and I’ll suddenly think: man, I really hated what my friend said yesterday. Or, wow, I feel guilty about taking that tone with my partner. Or — I’m worried that we’re going in the completely wrong direction at work.
These days, whenever I’m feeling down in that ineffable way, I’ve started to ask myself: what are you afraid to think? Or, actually, because it’s not enough to just say that you’re willing to hear any criticism; you have to actually mean it—and this holds true for institutions as well—I’ll carve out a little time, try to relax, reassure myself that it’s okay, I can think anything, I won’t be mad, and then bam: the thought comes.
There’s a lot of ordinary unhappiness that springs from people’s unwillingness to think those unthinkable truths: what if I hate my job? What if I’m unhappy in my marriage?
It’s easy, at a remove, to comment on the sub-optimal nature of living in denial. But the fact of the matter is that it is always a protective measure. You don’t want to let yourself think the unthinkable truths because they could have tragic consequences! And they will, at times — that’s the brutal truth of it.
Yet these tragic consequences are often entangled with positive outcomes. Unthinkable truths carry with them the possibility of radical change. And this transformation will likely involve good and bad consequences alike. But you can’t isolate out the good parts.
Maybe you hate your job. Okay, you’ve acknowledged it. Now you can step into problem-solving mode: is there a way of making it better? Can you switch to a new one? Maybe. Or maybe you really need that health insurance and it’s a recession and you absolutely need to stay in your job.
Our minds are built to protect us from the worst case scenario. There is nothing worse than honestly assessing a situation and realizing that you (and those whom you love) are genuinely and unfixably trapped in a horrible situation. But those scenarios are rare: there is nearly always a way to make things better. And the fact of the matter is that “blissful ignorance” is rarely particularly blissful; it’s more like unhappy avoidance.
Thinking the unthinkable takes practice. It requires a leap of faith. In the moment when you ask yourself “what am I afraid to think?” you are opening yourself up to the possibility that fundamental aspects of your life are off-track, and all of the suffering and change that realization will entail. But you are also opening yourself up to the possibility of transformative change for the better.
I’ve spent the past several years of my life forcing myself to ask that question over and over again, and I’ve found that I can’t tolerate living otherwise anymore. It’s deeply freeing. It leads to a lot of short term suffering, but it’s also guided me to a life that’s much more in line with the person I want to be. And to be clear, I don’t always get there right away – I often manage to avoid thinking about things for several days or weeks before the truth forces its way up into my conscious mind. But as long as I ask the question, I find that I will, eventually, respond.
What are you afraid to think? Try asking yourself, sometime. You might be surprised by what you find.