Why I Avoid (and When I Shouldn't)

Last week was one of tragedy in my world, though I won't be more specific than that in an effort to not appear as if I'm sensationalizing events for my own writing benefits. (Disclaimer: What happened affected many people in many ways, and I am writing only about my experience. I write this to reflect and process my experience, not to indicate how anyone can or should feel/act/react.)

I'm an avoider. Ultimately I think I'm scared of emotional pain, so I avoid it as much as possible. I attempt to focus on those areas of my life that I feel I have control over, although my belief in a God sovereign over all means little actually falls into this category. Emotional pain is not something that can be controlled - it's a response to events outside one's control. Because I fear that, I avoid it.

I avoid by staying busy. Hard work (or at least busy work) produces predictable results. I might get tired and stressed, but those are predictable responses. I don't fear them because I know them. Aimless television, while not offering terrific rewards, also provides predictable distraction. When I fill my time with the predictable, I don't have to fear the pain of unexpected emotion.

Some avoiding is good and natural. Sometimes the only way to keep going is to make yourself so busy that you don't have time to feel. A recent book I read for grad school, Nation by Terry Pratchett, has some great language describing this. In it a young man realizes he has come upon the destruction of his entire home community, including his parents and everyone he knows. He is alone, at great loss, and in need of survival. Two passages in particular stand out to me:

• The dreaming Mau let his body do the thinking: You lift like this, you pull like this. You cut the papervine like that, and you don’t scream, because you are a hand and a body and a knife, and they don’t even shed a tear. You are inside a thick gray skin that can feel nothing.
• Or maybe I have no soul at all, maybe the darkness inside is my dead soul. . . he sat with his arms around himself, waiting for the trembling to stop. He had to fill his mind with everyday things - that was it. That would keep him safe.

I fell into this rhythm last week in order to escape. My safest moments were when I was alone typing a research paper. Alone doing nothing meant time to think. With other people meant time to mourn. So I tried to stay busy, stay distracted, and not deal with the pain.

Whether this is healthy or good, I don't know; and it really doesn't matter. It's how I successfully still do my job as father and teacher, and it's probably not going to change. However, what I've realized is that the results of getting busy and doing the predictable isn't limited only to times of tragedy. This same escape of uncontrolled emotion occurs whether one is in difficult times or not.

What I'm trying to say is that I realize I've probably missed many good emotions, which are just as unpredictable and uncontrollable, when I've had my head buried in day-to-day work. This is safer, for sure. But it's not a live of adventure. It's not a life of joy. And really, it's not a life of love.


Anyone else out there, like me, avoiding? In good times and in bad? Be careful how you spend those hours - missing the pain on purpose might also mean missing the good stuff.