I grew up with a “harder is better” mentality, and I’m still unlearning it. Part of that process was the pendulum swing toward avoiding suffering bc I was actively working against that martyr mindset. Where I’d like to end up is in a place where I can focus on the correct “ends”; I’m moving forward in my vocation with an eye toward the good things I’m called to, which will likely involve some degree of suffering, but the suffering isn’t what I’m seeking. I hope I can accept it as peacefully as possible as part of the journey and not focus on it as a sign of God’s approval or a sign that I must be on the right track.
For me, the most effective pushback against “the worse the better” mindset has been accepting that some suffering and hardship will happen. I have found that a bit of stoic pragmatism is a good check against running towards suffering as a measure of goodness but also a check against missing out on greater goods by trying to avoid difficulty (which often leads to its own suffering further down the road).
A close friend of mine is struggling with several chronic fertility conditions (PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and then some) that cause a whole host of symptoms and pain, and I felt rightfully called-out by the paragraph in Ross's book you cite about the relative ease of rising to an "occasion." I've found it easier to be there for her in moments of specific, acute need, such as the aftermath of a surgery, than to be present for the daily grind of her feeling ill in various ways. And I've noticed that it's easier for me to keep a "vigil," as you described, while she works through her *emotions* about these conditions and what they imply for her hopes about children, etc., than to be there for the embodied aspects of her suffering. I think because those things feel like something I'm actively giving, in a way that brings us closer, whereas things like recognizing that sometimes she'll want to cut an evening short because she's not feeling well, etc., just feel like they pull us apart.
My alternative to "the worse the better" is the wry words of Flannery O'Connor - "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."
I have always been skeptical of measuring commitment by pain endured. It always seemed to me that it was presented as a trap of martyrdom, and especially for women.
I used to be Roman Catholic, and it seemed to be a particulary Roman Catholic thing, for women in particular to be like Mary, patient in suffering, again, how meritorious a woman are you by how you have suffered.
Nope, I never bought into it and especially since I'm now Protestant.
There is always pain in life, this is a fallen world, but to seek meritocracy by pain endured? Nope.
As for helping those who need constant help because of their situation. Yes, it's boring, but if it's a close relationship, ie., familial, it's just a matter of helping where you can, as you can. Suffering just exists, it's just part of life. You're just doing what has to be done, the support work of caring, because of the mutuality of relationship.
Oh my goodness, I very much did measure my capacity to love by the degree of attachment parenting my babies, of whom I had four in four years, including a set of twins. I'm a different parent today, 15 years later. I would be more flexible today with cloth diapering, cosleeping, breastfeeding exclusively despite terrible challenges. Every one of those choices can be part-time, and doing them full-time, with newborn twins and a high-needs two-year-old, does not prove how much a mother loves her children. I spent years desperate for sleep and horribly depressed, in part due to these choices.
I'm still working on "the worse the better." My 17yo daughter is chronically ill, and her experience parallels your descriptions of Ross's in many ways. It's a challenge for me to be present to her day after day, in the knowledge that there are choices she needs to make to heal that she isn't making. I have to remember that I don't know what it's like to go through what she does, and maybe she actually can't make those choices.
It's a different thing compared to physical, medical, embodied pain-- but I think the everyday routines of housekeeping can be a place where "love performed as suffering" shows up, even for those of us with ultimately good intentions of care for our families. Anyone else ever cleaned up *at* their spouse or children or housemates in the evenings, bubbling silently with resentment at the others' restfulness while commending themselves for being the ONE person committed to a functional, tidy household, and silently awarding themselves the otherwise un-forthcoming praise they're sure they're worth?
I've seen a video making the rounds in which a woman's hand holding a Sharpie draws a short line between "husband feeling tired" and "going to bed", and then a long, jerky, angular, backtracking line that snarls its way through half a dozen chores before the woman goes to bed. A) The joke lands; it's funny cause it's true; but B), it seems like a visual representation of that dark "worse is better" mindset we can get into when the demanding routines of caregiving tempt us to borrow suffering and breed resentment.
(There can be real imbalances around household labor, and I don't mean to ignite the embers of that important conversation; just to describe the relational or psychological "pain" we can gin up for ourselves by tying up the worthiness of our commitment with the routine chores we attend to in service to ourselves and our loved ones.)
This calls to mind unmedicated childbirth vs. medicated childbirth. After having one c-section with no labor involved, I was "tempted to measure [my] capacity to love or [my] moral worth" by saying that I didn't get to suffer in the way God intended women to suffer to bring children into the world. On the surface, I know why I had the c-section, and I *also* knew that having the surgery brought up many unique opportunities to suffer compared with a typical vaginal birth. Deep down, I felt less worthy than other women in my Bradley method birth class who actually managed to have the unmedicated births for which we prepared. They got to feel the pain of contractions, and I somehow had a baby without feeling a single one.
Fast forward two years, I and also had the opportunity to have a 48-hour long unmedicated VBAC. I felt the raw power of every contraction. Objectively, my second birth was significantly more painful than the first.
It's tempting to say that I can love my second baby more because of how he was born ("the worse the better"). It's tempting to say that I'm a better mother because I suffered for a longer period of time than I did with my first birth.
Perhaps more accurately, my capacity to love has increased slowly over time by being a mother to my first son, not the challenge I undertook to birth my second son. The births were different and each had their challenges, but my capacity to love my family cannot be measured by pain endured.
I grew up with a “harder is better” mentality, and I’m still unlearning it. Part of that process was the pendulum swing toward avoiding suffering bc I was actively working against that martyr mindset. Where I’d like to end up is in a place where I can focus on the correct “ends”; I’m moving forward in my vocation with an eye toward the good things I’m called to, which will likely involve some degree of suffering, but the suffering isn’t what I’m seeking. I hope I can accept it as peacefully as possible as part of the journey and not focus on it as a sign of God’s approval or a sign that I must be on the right track.
For me, the most effective pushback against “the worse the better” mindset has been accepting that some suffering and hardship will happen. I have found that a bit of stoic pragmatism is a good check against running towards suffering as a measure of goodness but also a check against missing out on greater goods by trying to avoid difficulty (which often leads to its own suffering further down the road).
A close friend of mine is struggling with several chronic fertility conditions (PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and then some) that cause a whole host of symptoms and pain, and I felt rightfully called-out by the paragraph in Ross's book you cite about the relative ease of rising to an "occasion." I've found it easier to be there for her in moments of specific, acute need, such as the aftermath of a surgery, than to be present for the daily grind of her feeling ill in various ways. And I've noticed that it's easier for me to keep a "vigil," as you described, while she works through her *emotions* about these conditions and what they imply for her hopes about children, etc., than to be there for the embodied aspects of her suffering. I think because those things feel like something I'm actively giving, in a way that brings us closer, whereas things like recognizing that sometimes she'll want to cut an evening short because she's not feeling well, etc., just feel like they pull us apart.
My alternative to "the worse the better" is the wry words of Flannery O'Connor - "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."
I have always been skeptical of measuring commitment by pain endured. It always seemed to me that it was presented as a trap of martyrdom, and especially for women.
I used to be Roman Catholic, and it seemed to be a particulary Roman Catholic thing, for women in particular to be like Mary, patient in suffering, again, how meritorious a woman are you by how you have suffered.
Nope, I never bought into it and especially since I'm now Protestant.
There is always pain in life, this is a fallen world, but to seek meritocracy by pain endured? Nope.
As for helping those who need constant help because of their situation. Yes, it's boring, but if it's a close relationship, ie., familial, it's just a matter of helping where you can, as you can. Suffering just exists, it's just part of life. You're just doing what has to be done, the support work of caring, because of the mutuality of relationship.
Oh my goodness, I very much did measure my capacity to love by the degree of attachment parenting my babies, of whom I had four in four years, including a set of twins. I'm a different parent today, 15 years later. I would be more flexible today with cloth diapering, cosleeping, breastfeeding exclusively despite terrible challenges. Every one of those choices can be part-time, and doing them full-time, with newborn twins and a high-needs two-year-old, does not prove how much a mother loves her children. I spent years desperate for sleep and horribly depressed, in part due to these choices.
I'm still working on "the worse the better." My 17yo daughter is chronically ill, and her experience parallels your descriptions of Ross's in many ways. It's a challenge for me to be present to her day after day, in the knowledge that there are choices she needs to make to heal that she isn't making. I have to remember that I don't know what it's like to go through what she does, and maybe she actually can't make those choices.
It's a different thing compared to physical, medical, embodied pain-- but I think the everyday routines of housekeeping can be a place where "love performed as suffering" shows up, even for those of us with ultimately good intentions of care for our families. Anyone else ever cleaned up *at* their spouse or children or housemates in the evenings, bubbling silently with resentment at the others' restfulness while commending themselves for being the ONE person committed to a functional, tidy household, and silently awarding themselves the otherwise un-forthcoming praise they're sure they're worth?
I've seen a video making the rounds in which a woman's hand holding a Sharpie draws a short line between "husband feeling tired" and "going to bed", and then a long, jerky, angular, backtracking line that snarls its way through half a dozen chores before the woman goes to bed. A) The joke lands; it's funny cause it's true; but B), it seems like a visual representation of that dark "worse is better" mindset we can get into when the demanding routines of caregiving tempt us to borrow suffering and breed resentment.
(There can be real imbalances around household labor, and I don't mean to ignite the embers of that important conversation; just to describe the relational or psychological "pain" we can gin up for ourselves by tying up the worthiness of our commitment with the routine chores we attend to in service to ourselves and our loved ones.)
This calls to mind unmedicated childbirth vs. medicated childbirth. After having one c-section with no labor involved, I was "tempted to measure [my] capacity to love or [my] moral worth" by saying that I didn't get to suffer in the way God intended women to suffer to bring children into the world. On the surface, I know why I had the c-section, and I *also* knew that having the surgery brought up many unique opportunities to suffer compared with a typical vaginal birth. Deep down, I felt less worthy than other women in my Bradley method birth class who actually managed to have the unmedicated births for which we prepared. They got to feel the pain of contractions, and I somehow had a baby without feeling a single one.
Fast forward two years, I and also had the opportunity to have a 48-hour long unmedicated VBAC. I felt the raw power of every contraction. Objectively, my second birth was significantly more painful than the first.
It's tempting to say that I can love my second baby more because of how he was born ("the worse the better"). It's tempting to say that I'm a better mother because I suffered for a longer period of time than I did with my first birth.
Perhaps more accurately, my capacity to love has increased slowly over time by being a mother to my first son, not the challenge I undertook to birth my second son. The births were different and each had their challenges, but my capacity to love my family cannot be measured by pain endured.