I can't fix wretchedness, I can only be with it, and that sucks

Some people are hard to love in the sense that they do not believe or accept love when it is offered. I've known people like this and I know other people report similar experiences. They are (in Visa's sense) wretched, down bad, not forever but at least right now.

I'm reminded of an exchange from Ted Chiang's "Division By Zero" between Renee (a mathematician who has just proven mathematics inconsistent and "therefore" meaningless, and sunk into depression) and her husband Carl:

Carl: I'm trying to understand.

Renee: Don't bother.

That's the basic dynamic right there.

These people are really challenging to live with and I, like most people, do a bad job of it. Some people do a bad job of it by taking responsibility for the wretched person's stress, and sometimes then resenting them for it. They may try to help and resent that it does not work, or they may resent that their offers of help are rejected. Some people do a bad job of it by rejecting the wretched person, insisting that their wretchedness is not valid, therefore I don't have to feel bad for you. You suck so I don't have to help you. I do a bad job of it by making myself scarce whenever I smell the signs of wretchedness.

This is in my opinion the best of the bad strategies, but I feel bad knowing it is indeed a bad strategy.

I think it is the best of the strategies. It means abstaining from the harm of involving oneself in their situation as a Helper, trying to Help Them, hurting oneself by immiserating oneself about the whole situation, and hurting them in treating them as an object in our savior fantasy. It means abstaining from the violence of insisting their pain is their fault, not mine, and therefore I have no obligation to help, nyeh.

But, it's a bad strategy. Even if the stories they tell on top of the pain — for example, that their pain is unique, that others don't understand their pain, that the people who appear to care for them really don't — are false, their pain is real. That pain needs processing. Their behavior shows that they don't feel capable of processing it themselves, that it feels too big for them. It is easy to believe their stories about the depth and size of their pain and think their pain is too big for me to hold with them. I can't know for sure without trying, but my best guess is that I am not equipped to deal with that right now. I may never be — I surely won't ever be fully prepared — though I hope to feel more prepared later.

The whole issue of wretchedness reminds me of an exorcism movie. It reminds me even more of the premise of tabletop RPG CAIN (introduced excellently in this video). The idea of demons and exorcism movies and CAIN, those feel to me like what you get when you take the patterns of wretchedness, the kinds of stories that support wretchedness, and blow them up to insane, mythical proportions. It's getting at the experience of wretchedness from the outside. The wretched person in the metaphor becomes a host for a demon or a "sin." We take the perspective of the exorcists who cope with the host from the outside, wishing to help them, and fearing that in so doing we may crumble and become like them.

In principle, the right thing to do must arise from relating as beneficent space, probably. From presence. From being with the person and not needing things to be any certain way for our sake. From relating without attachment to the outcome.

That's natural and simple, but also really hard. Really hard. I don't think I could do that for an hour, let alone as long as someone might need it. That's a whole other unrealistic expectation, wishing to be predictably, knowably enough to meet the demands of the situation — the psychic shadow of the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics living in the back of my brain through culture. The real question is, who will be there if I'm not? Wretched people are hard to love — so the answer may be nobody.

One may decide to act "even though the outcome may be hideous." As Ngakpa Chögyam/Ngak'chang Rinpoche says, nobody gets out of this alive. As long as we are not too invested in the outcome and won't make things worse, intervening (theoretically) is all upside risk.

(I am sure I read this line about acting "though the outcome may be hideous" somewhere in a Ngakpa Chögyam book or Q&A, or maybe in something David Chapman or Charlie Awbery wrote, or maybe (shudders) in one of Chögyam Trungpa's books, and there was probably some extra wise framing, expectation-setting or advice or context around it, but I can't find it, so just pretend I included a wise quote here.)

And sometimes we are (I am) too invested in the outcome. Sometimes we will make things worse if we get involved. Although "don't get involved" is better than the other strategies, it's not always the right move. And yet, sometimes not getting involved is the right move. It feels bad anyway — doing nothing is awfully tempting for its convenience.

I think there might more complicated heuristic answers than "don't get involved" that are better and still only approximations to "relating as beneficent space," but I'm not going to offer ideas. Offering exceptions would open me up to "well, _ should be an exception, too," and the exceptions I make are not open for public debate. Make up your own exceptions if you like; you probably have some.

I understand why people who want to help the wretched, and also those who want to make wretchedness not their problem. I ignore wretchedness in part to avoid the pain of failing to help, failing to improve the outcome. I ignore wretchedness in part because I don't want to deal with it and risk failure. But I can't keep from recognizing and feeling a wretched person's pain, and the pain fucking sucks. I'm sorry they're feeling that way, even if I can't fix it and may not stay with it.