Lessons from Having Been Bullied 5: the Dark Night

It's entirely possible to be someone who has gone through the dark night of the soul and at the same time do one's best to be a positive thinker. To wish to live in the light, and to share the values of most of the positive thinkers.

It is, however, not possible to have survived the dark night of the soul and still believe that positive thinking alone is enough, by itself, to get you through. It's not possible to be a Pollyanna wishful thinker. It's no longer possible to ignore that bad things do happen to good people.

It's no longer possible to pursue the light in denial or rejection of the dark, because you know the dark personally. You've become good friends. You've even moved in together and been roommates for awhile.

Sometimes it feels like at least some of the positive thinkers are infected with some kind of willful denial, a rejection. It just doesn't seem realistic.

Maybe it's because I've been through the dark night, or maybe it's because I was bullied a lot when young—one of the key lessons of that being that you know how people often conceal things even from themselves—and I cannot help but feel, sometimes, that some positive thinkers I've met are hiding something from themselves (or us), or suppressing it or denying. Or perhaps it's that people who have not survived the dark night—and I have met many just like this—really just have no comprehension of the more shadowy sides of life's colorful palette. They just don't get it, because they haven't experienced it. I don't know. I just wonder sometimes.

I've told my story of being bullied (for being gay, for being smart, for having grown up overseas, for just being different) to some of my friends who are dedicated to being positive in all aspects of their lives, and some of them just don't seem to get it. They're politely accepting, but you see it in their eyes, in how they won't look at you with real focus or conviction, like they really don't believe you, or maybe just don't want to.

This is not a criticism of any of my friends. It's just something you notice from time to time.

And when you tell someone you've been bullied, and they clearly don't believe you, even if they are polite about it, what are you supposed to do with that? It's looks too much like the people who didn't believe you when you were being bullied as a kid, and who did nothing to stop it, and often were in complete denial about it. When you've been bullied, one of the lasting effects is a distrust of figures of authority, because they were either clueless or powerless to stop the bullying, back then. When people deny that this happened to you, they sound a lot like the bullies themselves, who are really good at denying to the authority figures that they've done anything wrong, even when they're caught doing it. It creates substantial cognitive dissonance.

This all comes to mind because one sees the media talking heads right now asking how a big tough rookie football player in Miami could possibly have been bullied by his teammates. Neglecting to mention that they're just as big or bigger than he is. Or that rookies always get extra shit from the rest of the team. And then of course there are the comments that it's just boys being boys, roughhousing, hazing, all that stuff that serves as the usual excuses not to believe that bullying is going on, or to stop it. It's all just fun and games and you shouldn't take it seriously.

But that's the denial line. That's the rejection line. It's very odd to hear that line coming from someone who declares themselves to be a positive thinker. It makes you wonder if there's a man behind the curtain. It makes you wonder if there's denial.

One thing you learn from the dark night is just how common denial is. You don't learn this from the dark night itself, because what the dark night does is strip away illusions and denials and suppressions, leaving you naked and alone in the desert of your spirit. You learn about the commonness of denial when you return to and re-enter everyday life, when your experience has changed you and given you insight into what people do and say, most of which no longer seems real or substantial to you, after the dark night, but itself illusory. And then you try to articulate what you've been through, and no one wants to hear it. It's politely rejected, and denied, and ignored. Probably it makes most people uncomfortable. Which is all fine and good, until the moment their discomfort leads them to try to deny your experience. Incomprehension, cognitive dissonance, denial.

So, there are no answers here, just some observed realities, some speculations.

I'll say it again, just to be clear: I think positive thinking is great. It's just that it doesn't always ring true. If it's in denial of the darker shades of experience, it becomes shallow and one-sided to be believable. You can't really see Heaven till you've been standing in Hell. And that's how the dark night deepens the light side of experience. It gives it dimensionality. It gives it depth. And that matters, if you want to be whole.