Knowing When To Dwell In Difficulty

One of my greatest joys is sitting with people who are committed to creating a more just and peaceful world, and acting as a thought partner while they make sense of the web of thoughts, demands, challenges, and opportunities they face. Over the past three weeks, I’ve had conversations with various colleagues as they try to discern whether the difficulty they were experiencing was difficulty in which they should continue to dwell.

Our willingness to dwell in difficulty is a key capacity as people who work toward a more just and peaceful world. Dwelling in difficulty means not running from discomfort and pain when it comes in the pursuit of justice and peace. Whether we are examining our own privilege and power, addressing patterns of inequity in our organizations, wrestling longstanding norms in our institutions, or the many other forms our challenging work may take, difficulty is there throughout.

The ubiquitous presence of difficulty in our work, however, can fool us into thinking that we are required to dwell in every kind of difficulty connected to our aspirations; and, to do so every time we encounter such difficulty.

But dwelling in difficulty as a normal matter of our work is not the same as thinking that all difficulty must be endured by me in order for justice to be done. Discerning our response to difficulty requires us to ask, “Is this a difficulty in which I should dwell at this time?”

This discernment unfolds in two important directions. The first relates to the kind and circumstances of the difficulty we are encountering. The second relates to the timing and duration in which we are encountering the difficulty.

Consider a common experience for me as a white, cisgendered, formally-educated man who is trying to be an ally to peoples who experience marginalization and oppression. When I meet a new person or a new group who identify with those experiences, I am understandably seen as potentially dangerous.

Whether I am meeting a cisgendered woman, a queer person, people of color, or indigenous communities, I carry in my body and presence the markers of potential danger. After all, it is often people who look and sound like me that perpetrate violence toward people who share their identities and experiences. And, I am myself guilty of perpetrating violence in intentional and unintentional ways - including my refusal to acknowledge how I benefit from their diminishment. Caution is quite reasonable.

If you’ve been burned by a flamethrower, you don’t blindly plop down by the fireplace. You wait with earned skepticism to see what the nature of the blaze is in front of you.

This can make for difficult experiences for me. Sometimes I want to be recognized for past work and relationships from the moment I encounter a new person. I can think that because I have proven trustworthy to one person or group with whom I am a reliable partner in addressing racism, agism, homophobia, or colonialist attitudes and systems, the new people I am meeting should give me the benefit of the doubt. But it doesn’t work that way.

In fact, that very thought process points to the way cisgendered men are privileged in that we think we ought to given the benefit of the doubt when so many of our “others” are expressly and consistently not given the benefit of the doubt. That is a difficulty in which people like me do not have to dwell just as a matter of existence.

So, I need to show myself as trustworthy with each new person or group. That means dwelling in the difficulty of interactions where I feel unknown, untrusted, misunderstood, and perhaps disliked. When I dwell in that difficulty I hold open the possibility for a mutual, life-giving relationship. If I run from that difficulty, I confirm my unreliability.

This is a kind of difficulty in which I am called to dwell. It is a difficulty that is truly unpleasant and often lonely. But it is also life-giving because although I am in pain, my humanity is not diminished. The opposite is true; my shared humanity with my other is affirmed and recreated as our relationship slowly transforms.

Contrast that difficulty with a second kind of difficulty.

A friend was experiencing difficulty in her organization where for some time she had been marginalized and discounted. Although she had returned to this work environment time and again with hope for change, she began to sense her own diminishment in the space. By diminishment, I mean that dwelling in the difficulty robbed her of dignity and wellbeing. She was made to feel not simply untrusted or unknown, but less than human.

But because of messages she received about the importance that leaders dwell in difficulty, she had a sense of failure or shame at the prospect of leaving the situation. Her soul was screaming at her to get out, even as her sense of necessity kept her from walking away. Eventually, though, she discerned that this difficulty was one in which she no longer needed to dwell. Friends and family had told her to go for some time, but it was her own sense of timing and direction that freed her up to leave the organization.

The hero culture often attached to western notions of leadership and courage tends to tell us that “real” leaders never back down, never compromise, never run from a fight, and have no limits to their capacity. But that perspective, other than being a ridiculous fantasy, is also an impoverished understanding of the web of relationships of which we are only a part.

The reality is that you can dwell in difficulties that I am not able to endure, and I can dwell in difficulties that you may not be able to endure. Our shared commitment to dwelling in difficulty for the sake of more peaceful and just communities is not a suicide pact. It is a mutual promise to do all that we can - and no more.

Sometimes we must say, “That is good, important work; and I am not going to do it.”

This is also true of work that we have done in the past. As I mentioned above, whether to dwell in difficulty is also a question of timing and duration.

A second friend is currently discerning whether the difficult work he has done in the past, work that he has found life-giving and affirming, is still his work to do at this moment. For him, the question is whether a season of rest and revisioning is okay. He’s tired and feels a need to recenter himself, but worries about who will carry the work forward if he steps back.

An over-simplified understanding of what it means to dwell in difficulty might tell him that exhaustion is just the price of working toward justice, and therefore he must endure. But that understanding is partly responsible for the burnout and shame that so many people experience.

Not every period of difficulty is ours to dwell in. Our need for rest and healing is one important reason we don’t engage in the work of social transformation alone. It’s why we need community, confidants, and collaborators. It is why we need wise counsel and a connection to something bigger than us.

What difficulty do you need to dwell in at this time? How are you taking the time to discern between the kinds and times of difficulty in which you dwell? Where can you find wise counsel and confidants?