Ugly Crying: Self-Sacrifice and Inner Conflict
A lot of the values that build connection come to us when we are at our best. Even self-care, which a lot of us turn to in bad moments, represent a triumph of our better selves – the part of our brain that knows that pushing on past our pain is going to leave us broken later. Habit building is simply using our motivation as wisely as possible. And focusing on the process of how gatherings happen instead of how they appear takes real willpower over our monkey brains that want more likes, more status and to look more accomplished than we are.
But self-sacrifice, ironically, comes when we are at our worst. Because sacrificial effort is the act of pushing past what we want to give, we must first come to the place where we’ve given what we want to. A lot of our culture’s understanding of womanhood is centered around this – the mom who works two jobs to keep food on the table, the military wife who waits patiently for her husband, the female executive who works twice as hard to get half as far. But none of those modern portrayals include the key part – we have to reach a point of inner conflict.
What do we all think this looks like? Because it’s not pretty. Perhaps, for the beautifully self-contained among us, it’s all held in, but in my life, moving into self-sacrifice looks like crying while wrapping another present because my back hurts so bad but I want to pass down Forrest’s family tradition of wrapping stocking stuffers. Or it looks like yelling at my kids while navigating rush hour traffic because a reclusive friend has invited us over and I want us to honor that. Or it looks like sitting in the rain watching your kid play soccer again and again and being grumpy because it’s really fucking cold out.
The hard thing about self-sacrifice is that I can’t tell you when to do it and when not to. To one person, anything that leads them to cry is too far. For me, well, I cry when I stub my toe so it’s really not a bridge too far to cry while wrapping presents. I guess I’m always using my resentment radar. Am I getting bitter from this? Does it make me think mean things about myself or others? Do I somehow feel that I am above the people I’m sacrificing for?
When our sacrifice starts destroying connections, it’s no longer serving its purpose. At that point, why are we even doing it? But to think that engaging in the consistent hard work of community is going to be pretty, without complaint, and without pushback is a fairy tale. When building community, we have to center connection first. If what we’re working at doesn’t bring us closer to people, then we might as well just come home and sit with a book and a cup of tea. At least then we’re pleasant to be around.
