Dear Editor,
For many, many years the mental image of an ostrich with its head buried in the sand has illustrated the mindset of people who flatly refuse to look at any uncomfortable reality. Their thinking seems to be that “If I can’t see it, it can’t be happening”.
I recently had a conversation with a sweet lady who told me she didn’t want to even think about a particular upcoming reality. She said very forcefully “I don’t want to think about it”. She got more than a bit miffed at me when I told her that whether she liked it or not, she was going to be forced to deal with it sooner or later. She was adamant that it would take care of itself soon enough. When I asked her if she would consider the unavoidable need for getting out of the way of an oncoming train, she replied “Well, that’s different”.
It seems to my simple perspective that if you refuse to think about impending events, you have given up any hope of expecting a positive outcome. That sort of attitude is defeatism in the extreme. Why would a rational person forego the opportunity and the right to render an informed decision based on critical examination of available information? I cannot help but think of the analogy of a person who is in the midst of a run of b-a-a-ad luck at the gaming tables and has already gotten in way over his head and can’t or won’t stop to think just how painful the oncoming reality has become. He appears to feel that blinding himself to the coming pain will make it go away, never mind that he has already signed over his car and house in the belief that denying disaster will somehow bar the agony coming his way.
The unpleasantness being denied can be unpaid bills, or a visit by a very nasty individual, or a diagnosis of a hideous malady. No matter what is coming your way, if you don’t deal with it, it only gets worse. If you stand tall, examine the situation closely and face things head on, it might be only a short term and minor discomfort. Avoiding the reality of things is a guaranteed path to trouble, perhaps small, perhaps catastrophic.
The refusal to look the world in the eye straight on, can and does lead many good people down that tightening whirlpool of fear and pain into the very real and very immediate, personal hell that is sometimes impossible to escape. You can see real time examples of this in the haunted, empty eyes of those horribly damaged homeless folks who have given up all hope. They have no means of escape, so they try to bury their pain by drowning their sensibilities in alcohol or drugs to the point where they can no longer even care. They are not necessarily bad people, but circumstances have destroyed their ability to fight for themselves. Many of those came to this place in their lives because they stubbornly refused to think about an unpleasantness coming at them.
I have no training in the healing of damaged minds, but I do know absolutely that facing ugliness head on and accepting the fact that it is ugly and it is painful and that there are ways to deal with it is a whole lot healthier than denying reality. It will not always be comfortable or easy, but there is always help available in one form or another. That help may not be what you expect, but it will be there somewhere.
I have lost friends and loved ones to that fear of looking at reality. Denial is one of the most insidious and damaging emotions I have ever known. It may be the hardest to fight. But it is possible to fight it and to be truly victorious. I wish that those I lost had had the strength to fight. I wish to God that I had been strong enough to help them.
Jack Hommel
Kingman
