Define Your Terms

In the early days of my post-apocalyptic life, I focused on two things to the exclusion of all others: surviving the psychic, financial and legal attacks I was subjected to; and helping my daughter adjust to the harsh realities of being suddenly chronically ill. Those first couple of years saw her academic, extracurricular, and social options narrowing drastically. It took a long time to truly accept that this girl who had excelled at everything she touched was not going to Harvard, no longer going to compete, not going to prom; that she would be lucky some days to be able to transfer from her bed to the couch for a few hours. With acceptance came the determination to optimize our reality. This is when I began to let go of the life we’d imagined for her and flip the narrative by redefining success.

Having lived for years in an affluent area whose claim to fame was its excellent academic standing, we’d been indoctrinated, as if by a cult, into accepting its conventional definition of success as the only one. Four years of high school, the more prestigious the better, with as many advanced classes and extracurricular activities as your time and money would allow. All in service of gaining admittance to a four-year college, whether or not you had a clue what you might want to study. Which you really needed to get a handle on so that you could plan out your graduate work when you weren’t enjoying a robust social life. It seemed nobody had ever heard of things like vocational schools or gap years, never mind incapacitation. We were on our own.

So, we opted out. We got creative. We began to define success as her ability to become educated on her terms and in ways that accommodated her limitations. And we began to measure it against her own performance rather than the dictates or expectations of the dominant culture. For her, success looked like leaving school at sixteen and getting her GED so that she could focus her energy on trying to improve her health. It looked like educating herself about subjects that caught her interest through reading and online courses. It looked like learning a new instrument, or a new skill, or trying a new hobby; anything that might contribute to crafting a life worth living. Above all else, I came to define success as her refusal to give up in the face of repeated and crushing setbacks.

During this time, we were both in therapy (I don’t think I’ll ever not find it hilarious that I truly thought I was fine but wanted some help in shepherding her through this difficult time), and I’d discussed all of this with my therapist. I’d also spent a lot of time discussing the end of my marriage, and one day we got around to how I felt like a complete failure for spending twenty-five years in a shitty situation. My therapist listened to me drone on for a while, and when I took a breath, said:

“You’ve talked about redefining success for your daughter. When you say you’re a failure, how are you defining success for yourself?”

And those are the types of $64,000 questions that, to me, make therapy worth every penny. Because, how indeed? Was it not a success that I was brave enough to face reality and leave? That I put my daughter’s well-being above my relative comfort? That I continued to forge ahead despite all manner of obstacles thrown in my path? That I was providing a stable life and a happy home?

That question initiated a major shift in my thinking. But because I’m a notoriously slow learner, it didn’t occur to me until more recently that there are a number of additional terms whose definitions are (or should be) extremely personal, and that our precision in defining them is important. Because you’re always going to run into problems if you’re using a definition that doesn't make sense to you.

Here are a few that I’ve found important (so far):

Safety. I used to think that safety meant being physically unthreatened and secure in the confines of a conventional marriage (I really hate to admit that and just threw up in my mouth a little). Although there is arguably a place for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the definition of safety, my current definition places more emphasis on feeling empowered to be fully myself. Knowing that I don’t have to hide, or shrink, or otherwise compromise myself to avoid unpleasant consequences.

Happiness. I used to understand this as the absence of all stress or discomfort. As a destination and a static state dependent on external circumstances. I now know it is a transient, internal state that I can cultivate through mindfulness and gratitude.

Faith. I used to equate faith with religion and, because my mid-century Catholic upbringing had casually traumatized me, I mostly defined it as delusion. Now I see faith as the belief that there is a benevolent force that might guide us if we are receptive. And I see faith in myself as the (hard-won) knowledge that I am enough and that I know what I need.

Family. I had defined this very narrowly as my family of origin, to which I later added (unfortunately, often in a secondary position) the family I created. I now define it as the few people with whom I have a reciprocal love and understanding; those who have my back as I have theirs.

Love. I shudder to remember my immaturity in this regard; I entertained too many inaccurate definitions of the concept to enumerate here. I now consider myself extremely fortunate, because of lived experience, to be able to agree with Brene Brown’s definition (paraphrasing here) that love is what grows between two people over time when they repeatedly allow themselves to be truly seen by each other.

I can imagine there will be other terms I’ll need to either redefine or be more precise about as life continues to unfurl. Meanwhile, I’ll leave the last word to Socrates:

"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms".

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Thanks for reading. Are there terms you’ve redefined for yourself? Or that you want to be more precise about?

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My two cents...on the theme of eye-opening calls to paying more attention to what matters

Must watch: Buy Now on Netflix.

Must read: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad