Lesson #5 From Rock Bottom

Separation by Edvard Munch

Compatibility is not commitment and commitment is not compatibility.

Have you ever wanted things to just make sense for once and they just don’t? Have you ever tried everything to put your life together, to get the world to give you what you want and it just doesn’t? A painful lesson that every idealist must learn and face is that the world and circumstances don’t make sense and the ideals of fairness and good and truth will not always be vindicated. You can do everything right and there are still things you will never be able to control and things will not work out and there is nothing you will be able to do about it. You can be completely qualified even over-qualified for a job and still not get it. You can speak out against injustice until you’re blue in the face and things still will not change. You can give someone everything they want and they will still abandon you, not choose you. People love to speak of the importance of compatibility and it truly is extremely important and extremely hard to judge as well. You can be compatible with a job or a person but that is not a guarantee of success. Compatibility is not a guarantee of commitment. And, of course, as anyone who has been in a bad relationship of any kind or been the product of a bad relationship( if one can even dignify such soul destroying arrangements by calling them relationships) knows commitment can exist without compatibility. Commitment without compatibility is a prison. But where there is compatibility, one must remember commitment is a choice or rather a series of choices and behaviors. Many people could be compatible for a relationship or a job in varying degrees. Compatibility could also be time dependent and is also partly a subjective assessment. Subjective assessments are by their nature going to involve things outside of our control. Subjective assessments are a personal calculus where you choose the parameters and factors to prioritize and emphasize, an interpretation of objective facts and objective assessments filtered through your subjectivity and given weight, differentiated, organized by your subjectivity. When you take that into account, it seems miraculous that anything gets done. It’s tempting to think that if it is aligned with your authenticity and also the right person or people and environment and right time then things should flow naturally in one’s favor. But perhaps compatibility should not be confused with the cliché of ‘meant to be’. ‘Meant to be’ itself is a retroactive interpretation we put on things that went our way and we see all the ways in which things fit together at the right time and call that meant to be. Perhaps it not working out was also meant to be. Balancing fatalism and agency is a tricky tightrope act. The desire for order, for things to make sense is deeply human. We desire order, understanding, explanations so much that we will even settle for a bad explanation rather than no explanation at all. The vacuum of not knowing and no explanation creates a gap that insecurities can scurry into if we are not careful. In short, it’s not personal and there’s things outside of your control. I know. It sucks and doesn’t make things any better when you’re at rock bottom or trying to claw your way up from it and all the world is giving you is resistance and slamming doors in your face. But in times like this, take it as an exercise in strengthening and nourishing the seeds of self-love, self-compassion, hope, determination, patience, courage, faith and as an exercise in strengthening your inner world, your subjectivity. Even if outside circumstances suck, you can still care for, nourish, cultivate your inner happiness, inner peace, inner hope nourished and sustained by the love you bear for yourself and find intrinsic motivation and sustenance in not giving up on yourself. Take heart, my darlings.