May ‘25 1-to-1 Wiseletter (The Weight of Just Right)
I spoke with a friend of mine recently. His name is Ryan. The quote below is from a brief article he wrote about his struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Read it here. It’s funny, wise, and moving.
Quote
I was lying in bed and noticed I couldn’t shake a particular song from my head. I’d later learn the term for this: an earworm…the lyrics felt like they were shouting at me, looping over and over with no relief
When I caught up with Ryan about the article, one point in our conversation reminded me of the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl said there are three sources of meaning in life: experiencing, creating, and suffering. You could think of them as the three modes of existence. We smile, we toil, we cry. We shift between them, sometimes with overlap between two, or even all three, at once.
After surviving the death camps of Auschwitz, one of the frankest expressions of hell on earth ever, Frankl had a hunch that, of the three modes, one ranks highest in helping us find meaning.
Suffering.
Frankl distinguished between needless suffering and suffering with courage. There probably isn’t too much meaning to be had in senseless masochism, the fetishization of suffering.
The greatest source of meaning, Frankl thought, was found in facing hardship and fears head on. Assuming Frankl’s suspicion is accurate, why would suffering carry the highest meaning potential compared to creative work or experiencing beauty, let’s say?
I think it’s sacrifice.
When we enjoy a beautiful sunset, even though we’re probably witnessing the result of a sacrifice happening at some deep, inexpressible level, it doesn’t require much of anything from us. We get to enjoy it.
When we work, we do sacrifice our time, energy, and attention, but the sacrifice is volitional. We choose work or at least the kind of work we do.
But when we suffer, we wrestle with something we didn’t ask for: taking care of a sick relative, getting diagnosed with a disease, getting dumped, getting fired. We have to give up something whether we want to or not.
When we suffer, we sacrifice. The quality of that sacrifice is proportionate to its available meaning. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the potential meaning. The greater the meaning, the closer we get to the Ultimate. Sacrifice is the fundamental act, the myths tell us. It brings about or is the process out of which all meaning springs: creation. Thought of in this way, reality doesn’t have meaning, reality is meaning.
Whether it’s the Big Bang or Christ on the cross or the cosmic Egg breaking within the depths of Tartarus, each express the creative process itself (or its source)—everything comes out of nothing, God abandons itself (i.e. dies) for the world, the whole shatters into the many. In this respect, when we sacrifice, even in the smallest ways, we inch toward harmony with that ultimate act of sacrifice.
Ryan’s sacrifice is his sanity. What Ryan makes clear is that OCD robs you of your sanity. Many of us are happy to sacrifice our time, energy, and will power at the gym, office, or studio, but few of us would willingly put our sanity on the line for such endeavors (a good way to treasure your sanity in a fresh way is to spend time in the same room as a relative or friend with late-stage dementia).
And since there’s a direct relationship between the value of the sacrifice and the available meaning, the potential on the table for Ryan was and is very great. You feel that in his writing. You can also see that in his life too.
What Ryan doesn’t share in his article is that he’s very successful. It would be weird if he said that. I’m not stroking his ego or hyping him up. I just want to paint a picture for you.
I worked directly with him in corporate America in enterprise software sales for about five years and spent another five years in the industry before I finally got the axe. The role can be brutal. The sale is extremely complex, taking anywhere from 12-18 months to close. Those who do not make their quotas (about 80-90%) are given the summary Performance Improvement Plan corporate kiss of death mercilessly and rapidly. There are a minority who do make their quotas consistently. Ryan is in that minority. Few people who started with Ryan handled the job for more than a few years and fewer still to his level of achievement.
I wonder how much of Ryan’s success has to do with his historical relationship with OCD. Ryan has all the requisite mental attributes of the job, but nothing that I think makes him special among his peers (sorry Ryan). He’s smart and sociable but so is everyone else at his level. Seldom is a top enterprise software sales executive dumb and irritating.
And although he may not have any unique mental attributes compared to his colleagues that I can see, it’s possible that he has advanced those requisite mental attributes further than most. The job requires high degrees of strategic forward-thinking, logic chaining, probabilistic reasoning, and theory of mind—advanced abstract cognitive skills perhaps best honed by therapeutically navigating the dizzying labyrinth of one’s own mind, specifically that portion responsible for abstract cognition. It's now obvious to me that Ryan’s had a lifetime of practice with this, more than most.
Ryan would say that he doesn’t have a choice in carrying his burden, but I would say that Ryan makes a very specific choice in how he carries his burden. If you read Ryan’s story you can tell that he suffers but does so with courage and humor. And it’s in this, the how of Ryan’s sacrifice, that ultimately makes the difference. I wonder if how we suffer is where we derive the greater share of our resilience, our vitality, our meaning, our ability to love, and our capacity to say yes to life.
Ryan reminds us that suffering with courage can transform what could otherwise be a pure debilitation into a vitalistic source of opportunities to be strong, show humor, practice patience, apply diligence, feel empathy, and see and speak truth.
Ryan tells us that he set out to write about his condition for his own sake, but found in the end that he wrote it for us; to let us know that we don’t struggle alone or without purpose and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It seems to me that living with OCD has helped him make contact with something that’s brought him, of all places, beyond himself.
You can find Ryan on instagram @beachsandcream
QUESTION
What challenge in your life has made you stronger?
Cheers,
John
