How a little courage can fix a broken world

Letter #7

Dad, there’s so many great lines in your last post.

Like this one:

“Some of the greatest gains we’ll ever make is from pain.”

I was reading David Goggins’ latest book recently, Never Finished, and he wrote something similar to this.

“Most people don’t even want to think about their darkest shit, much less talk about it. They refuse to speculate in the harsh wilderness of the past because they are afraid of exposure. Believe me, there’s gold in them there hills.”

This leads to a realization for me.

It seems those haunted by trauma are filled to the brim with fear–not just of what happened to them, but of facing what happened to them, and the ensuing damage on their self-worth is so overwhelming that many don’t believe they’re capable of more.

I started watching a show called The Bear on Hulu, and by “started watching” I mean binged the whole first season in one afternoon. It’s about a world-class chef who comes back to Chicago to take over his brother’s crappy restaurant. 

It’s a mess. There’s no system in place. The restaurant bleeds money. And most of the cooks have an attitude problem. 

The new chef, Carmen, comes in and attempts to put a new system in place. It proves unbelievably difficult for the existing cooks. Some of them actively backstab the team and take zero responsibility for screwing things up.

There’s some hilarious fist fights, screaming matches, and other drama that makes it a very entertaining watch as a viewer, but despite all this, over time, the team starts to change. 

They start believing in themselves. They start trusting each other. They “buy in” to the new system, even though they got dragged there kicking and screaming.

You watch The Bear and wonder how all of these cooks just accepted the dysfunction. Early on, there’s cracked eggs on the floor, dirty condiment bottles laying around, food scraps everywhere, mold on the walls, and nobody seems to care.

In The Bear, it requires a chef from the best restaurant in America to turn things around, and even then he has to fight tooth and nail to get things done.

I bring this up because of a sentence you wrote in letter #6, “All of these people were extremely dysfunctional without the slightest clue as to what makes a good family.”

These people had no idea how an efficient restaurant was run.

To change the restaurant, Carmen had to change the culture.

He calls everyone “Chef,” as a sign of respect. He allows creativity to flourish. He encourages everyone. He lends a helping hand. He builds trust, and in turn trusts others.

His pastry chef, at the start of the season, can’t even make bread correctly. By the end of the season, he’s making beautiful chocolate cakes and donuts. He reads a bunch of books. He even sleeps at the restaurant sometimes to cut down his commute time.

The lesson I got from the show is about how hard it is to change a dysfunctional environment. The answer, I think, might lie in a word I just used to describe Carmen.

Encouraging.

I never thought about the connection between the words “encourage” and “courage” until now.

“Courage” and “encourage” stem from the French word encoragier, from en- “to make or put in”, and coeur- which means heart.

So, basically, “encourage” literally means to put something into someone’s heart.

The Trinity Youth Services website sums this concept up well:

“The basic premise of the word “encourage” is to instill confidence and hope (to give heart) to have courage is to be confident, brave or bold (to have heart).”

Carmen changed the dysfunction by encouraging his chefs.

Could we also change a broken world with a little more encouragement?

Looking at the dysfunction of your family, Dad, is so enlightening. We didn’t experience that growing up. For the most part, you and Mom created a great environment for us to flourish in, and the proof of that is in all the great memories we share together.

Like you said, many people don’t have the slightest clue how to make a good family.

Or how to act in general, for that matter.

They have zero idea how to be a good father, mother, friend, teacher, worker, or whatever else.

This is baffling to me. For me it’s obvious how to be a good parent. 

You encourage, you discipline, you love, you listen, and you lead, just to name a FEW things.

That’s because you and Mom taught me how to do that!

A person close to me had their mother abandon them when they were a child. She just left. Years later, they reconnected and their mother basically told them she thought she did nothing wrong. 

I have another friend with a father who has literally never told them he loves them. Never. This same father knew they were getting beaten by their stepmother growing up and did nothing to stop it, either.

Fear.

I look at these stories and the first word that pops into my mind is fear.

But also, they had no idea how to be parents. 

It’s unconscionable for me to understand coming from a place where there was love and warmth growing up. Like, HOW DID THESE PEOPLE NOT KNOW how to be good parents?!

It’s infuriating for me to think about, but also scary because I think this is true for so many people. We just have no idea what we are doing.

Nobody is teaching us. 

And even if we did, most people’s self-worth is so low that they wouldn’t believe they’re capable of being “good” at anything.

Part of it is that it takes courage to love, I think. 

It really does.

Maybe people are afraid to love, because the people that should’ve loved them in the past never gave it to them.

That rejection stings to the soul so bad that you never want to feel it again.

The truth in one of your final sentences of letter #6 is beautifully ironic. 

“We have to be strong enough to realize how weak we are, once we accept that we become strong enough to begin standing on our own, confident in who we are.”

I mean, Dad, on a side note, that’s phenomenal writing.

But it’s true. It takes strength to admit weakness, and by admitting weakness, you become even stronger. 

When you live through trauma, I feel like your self-worth gets wrecked. And when your self-worth gets wrecked, I imagine it becomes hard to accept responsibility for wrongdoings because, well, it must mean you’re the unlovable person you probably think you are, deep down.

The truth is, I have a lot of sympathy for your Mom, my Grandmother, after reading these stories. I saw the original story you wrote last week before you edited out the particularly harrowing parts. I assure everybody reading right now that it was brutal. I’m sure there were plenty of other stories like it for you growing up.

But I feel like we really just have two choices when we’re the victims of trauma..

1. We face it, and use it to get better.

2. We become a victim, and let it define us.

To be honest, I can’t blame people for becoming a victim. I’ve never really been a victim of trauma before, so I can’t sit up here on my high horse and say that I’d choose door #1.

I think a big reason trauma keeps getting passed down through the generations, too, is because so many people let it define them. 

They are too scared to face it.

Mom Mom could’ve broken that cycle if she faced her trauma head on and dealt with it. I’m not blaming her, because I know it’s difficult, I’m just saying that could’ve saved you a lifetime of pain.

Courage seems to be the victim killer.

For most people, finding courage is impossible.

That’s why we get all these viral internet videos of defenseless people getting beat up in the street. Where’s the courage to step in and do something about it instead of pulling out your phone to record it?

Where’s the courage to tell someone you love them?
Or to have a difficult conversation?
Or to say your true opinion about something?

This stuff takes guts, and sadly I feel we’re lacking people with guts these days.

Pop Pop was physically strong. Didn’t he win medals at the Senior Olympics? I remember seeing them hung up at his funeral. This was his legacy. These chunks of metal defined his life. 

I wish he could’ve worked just as hard at being a more courageous person as he did at winning those medals. I’m not saying he wasn’t a good person, but I can’t remember ever having a decent conversation with him.

When he got cancer, he changed completely. I remember him crying his eyes out on our couch in the early months of his cancer and kissing my hand in his final months to thank me for visiting him. He couldn’t even talk in those final months. So he took my hand and kissed it. More love was shown to me in those 5 seconds than in all the 20-some years I knew him.

I remember being more impressed with the “weak” man that laid there kissing my hand than the “strong” man who showed up to my wrestling tournaments aloof up in the stands.

I think he was paralyzed by fear as well. I can understand that. I’ve been paralyzed by fear in my life as well. But how ironic is it that such a strong man who no doubt had to overcome immense physical pain to win his medals couldn’t find the courage to admit he was wrong, or find a way to say what needed to be said?

The irony of ironies? I don’t think it takes much, Dad. It doesn’t take much to make someone feel loved. In The Bear, Carmen tells his story in front of a group at Alcoholics Anonymous. He has immense pain stemming from his strained relationship with his late brother, who commit suicide weeks earlier.

He tells the room this about his cooking success: “I was good at something, that was so new, and that was so exciting and I just wanted him to know that and, fսck, I just wanted him to be like, "Good job!"

All he wanted was a “good job” from his brother.

He didn’t need gold or silver or some gaudy declaration of love.

He just wanted a “good job.”

I wonder how much trauma could’ve been avoided with a simple “good job” or “I love you” or “You measure up, kid.”

In the movie We Bought A Zoo, Matt Damon’s character says “You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage… literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery, and I promise you, something great will come of it.”

Some people can’t even find 3 seconds of courage to tell someone something they need to hear.

For most broken people, finding the courage is just a bridge too far.

Pop Pop, in his “weakest” moments, became more of a man than I’d known him to be my entire life. Just like you said..

“We have to be strong enough to realize how weak we are, once we accept that, we become strong enough to begin standing on our own, confident in who we are.”

A cancer diagnosis is the most sobering news you can get. It’s undeniable. He had to come to terms with his own mortality and the little time that he had left. When he accepted this “weakness,” he became a better man. 

That took courage.

And I think if we saw more of it, the world would be a much better place.

Thanks for listening, Dad.