When I was a young man attending university, I applied to be a resident assistant in the campus apartments and dormitories. Resident assistants receive free room and board in exchange for providing counseling and event planning for students living on campus.
I got the job, which thrilled my father since he was footing the bill for my education. Unfortunately, I only lasted one year as a resident assistant.
I started strong, organizing dorm events, and counseling students who were struggling with personal problems. But, as I neared the end of the school year, I started to burn out on the job.
The residential life coordinator, Roger, (who was a friend of mine as well as my boss), sat me down one day and gently delivered the bad news. I would not be hired back next year.
Roger assured me that I was not being fired. Rather, they simply decided not to renew my contract next year. Still, I knew the truth. My performance had declined and it cost me the job.
Change makes us grow
At the time, I viewed the situation as bad news. I was hesitant to tell my father, but when I finally mustered the courage to call him, he surprised me.
“Don’t worry about it, Johnny,” Dad told me, adding, “There’s often good and bad in things like this.”
“Well, I don’t see much good. Obviously, I didn’t do a good job, and now it’s going to cost you more money next year,” I said.
“That may be true, but you’ll learn from this experience. And part of me didn’t want you to take the job, anyway. I wanted you to enjoy your university experience, and focus on your coursework.” Dad said.
“The good and bad things are what form us as people… change makes us grow.” -Kate Winslet
Turns out, Dad was right. The next year at university was spectacular. Free from the responsibilities of my resident assistant job, I was able to join the campus newspaper as their editorial cartoonist.
I also took up swimming, martial arts, and weightlifting with my friends. I doubled down on my academic work and graduated with distinction. It was a great year, and I learned to think differently about the “good and bad in things” as my father put it.
The label we put on people, events, and experiences isn’t always the whole story. What’s good or bad often depends, and sometimes it can be relative.
Fate had other ideas
Heather Lanier is the author of Raising a Rare Girl: A Memoir. When Heather was pregnant with her daughter, she focused on having a SuperBaby. She swallowed mercury-free capsules of DHA and filled her grocery carts with organic fruits and veggies.
She prepared meticulously for an unmedicated birth and listened to a natural birthing program of self-hypnosis. Later, after thirty-six hours of labor, her daughter Fiona was born.
As much as Lanier planned for a SuperBaby, fate had other ideas. Lanier’s daughter Fiona was born with an ultra-rare chromosomal condition called Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, which results in developmental delays.
“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.” -Viktor E. Frankl
For awhile, Lanier was gripped by despair over her daughter’s seemingly tragic condition. But then her perspective changed. In a TED talk about her daughter, Lanier said that:
“…reality is much more fluid, and it has much more to teach. As I started to get to know this mysterious person who was my kid, my fixed, tight story of tragedy loosened. It turned out my girl loved reggae, and she would smirk when my husband would bounce her tiny body up and down to the rhythm. Her onyx eyes eventually turned the most stunning Lake Tahoe blue, and she loved using them to gaze intently into other people’s eyes.”
Lanier learned that there were different ways of perceiving things. Where an occupational therapist described Fiona’s eyes as neurologically dull, Lanier viewed her daughter’s eyes as a calm, attentive presence.
Lanier decided that labels are damaging. Instead of declaring her daughter’s condition a bad thing, she realized she had another choice. As Lanier states in her TED talk:
“I could drop my story that neurological differences and developmental delays and disabilities were bad, which means I could also drop my story that a more able-bodied life was better. I could release my cultural biases about what made a life good or bad and simply watch my daughter’s life as it unfolded with openness and curiosity.”
Good or bad, hard to say
We tend to label things in life as good or bad. If we hear that a work colleague’s baby has Down syndrome, we whisper with others about the unfortunate outcome. Or we try and spin the good, saying how people with intellectual disabilities are so simple, pure, and here to teach us something.
Lanier questions our assumptions about what makes a life “good” or “bad.” She urges us to stop fixating on labels and solutions for whatever we deem not normal. Rather, we should take life as it comes.
“When we label a person tragic or angelic, bad or good, we rob them of their humanity, along with not only the messiness and complexity that that title brings, but the rights and dignities as well.” -Heather Lanier
In Lanier’s Ted talk she opens with an ancient parable about a farmer who lost his horse. The farmer’s neighbors tell him, “Oh, that’s too bad.” And the farmer said, “Good or bad, hard to say.”
Days later, the horse comes back with seven wild horses. The neighbors say, “Oh, that’s so good!” The farmer shrugs and says, “Good or bad, hard to say.”
The next day, the farmer’s son rides one of the wild horses, is thrown off, and breaks his leg. The neighbors say, “Oh, that’s terrible.” And the farmer says, “Good or bad, hard to say.”
Later, officers come knocking on village doors, looking for men to draft into the army. They see the farmer’s son and his broken leg and pass him by. The neighbors say, “That’s great luck!” And the farmer says, “Good or bad, hard to say.”
What makes us most beautifully human
So it is with our lives. Things happen. Good or bad, hard to say. I lost my job as a resident assistant, which freed me the following year to have the best university experiences ever.
Think about your own experiences. Perhaps some that seemed awful at the time, led to good things later on? Maybe this is the yin and yang of life.
Heather Lanier is raising a rare little girl. The experience is beautiful, complicated, joyful, frustrating, and more. It’s not good or bad. It’s life.
In a Wall Street Journal article, Lanier notes:
“A better life isn’t one that steers clear of the most pain, managing to arrive at the end with the eulogy, ‘He had it easy,’ or ‘She was the least scathed person I know.’ This belief in the virtue of the ‘happy’ and suffering-free life sterilizes and shrinks us, minimizing what makes us most beautifully human.”
Why would we want to run away from what makes us beautifully human? All of us have warts and imperfections. But we have our talents and charms, too.
Let’s spend less time assigning labels and more time enjoying all that life has to offer. Neither good nor bad, it’s all part of life and our human condition.
Lanier ends the Wall Street Journal article with the following, elegant observations:
“The point of this human life, I believe, is love. And the ridiculous and brave and risky act of love turns my heart into taffy, stretches it across the broad spectrum of human feeling. I hurt, I long, I exalt, I rejoice. And yes, my chest sometimes aches from the work of raising a rare girl. But the ache in my chest is a cousin of joy.”
Before you go
I’m John P. Weiss. I write about life lessons, culture, and the creative arts. To follow along, check out my free Saturday Newsletter here.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Artworks by John Patrick Weiss