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Brenda Denzler: "...the day I was disfellowshipped, it felt like the earth literally weaved and wobbled under my feet"
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You
One survivor on "New Normals" and living through "apocalyptic" times that reveal who we really are.
BY BRENDA DENZLER
PUBLISHED MARCH 31, 2020 www.curetoday.com
I have faced the apocalypse three times, now, in my life. I managed to come through the first two. Not unscathed…but I did survive. However, the world that I knew afterward was not the same one I'd known before.
The first time it happened I was 30 years old. When I was in my early teens, I'd joined a large fundamentalist religious cult that preached the end of the world by about 1975. Of course, that didn't happen, but personally, it more or less did. I wound up leaving the church in 1982 — getting kicked out actually. As I walked over to a neighbor's house the day I was disfellowshipped, it felt like the earth literally weaved and wobbled under my feet. It was a blow to lose the world I'd known for fifteen years. All the things I thought I knew, all the things I'd done because that was just what good, righteous people do…. All gone. Life went on, however, a new and different life than the one I'd thought I'd have.
The second time was in 2009 when I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. Another little apocalypse, but this time it challenged not just my worldview and my way of being in the world, but my life itself. Like the first time, I survived this, too. I was lucky. But also like the first time, my life was never the same. This time, though, there was a name for what I was facing — a "new normal."
Today, I'm in the middle of the third apocalypse of my life: the COVID-19 pandemic. No…that's not quite right. This time "we" are in a little apocalypse, not just me by myself. And we're not in the middle of it at all — we've only just begun.
Our way of being in the world is changing every day. Things we thought we knew, things that we thought were truths and steadfast parts of our lives that we could pretty much rely upon, are being revealed as only provisionally true or frankly untrue. Almost everything is in flux for us now, like the ground that moved under my feet decades ago when my personal world shifted on its axis.
We will, however, find a collective new normal. Eventually. I've never liked the term. It makes it sound like everything gets OK again. It's maybe just a little different, but it's basically just like it was before. Before the world fell apart due to a belief system collapse or due to a cancer diagnosis. That's not true though. As many cancer survivors know, a "new normal" always means leaving something behind, something that you inevitably miss.
I miss the certainty and reassurance of being a fundamentalist — of having my world consist of blacks and whites, wrongs and rights cosmic checklists that I can mark off to make sure that I'm OK and in God's good graces. I miss the way I felt good before cancer, a feeling of well-being and the ability to do things that are now beyond me, not to mention the assumption (false though it was) that the future only holds more of the same.
Today, I also miss the way I lived before COVID-19. Coming and going as I pleased, knowing that if I went to the grocery store I'd be able to get whatever I needed, not worrying about whether my high-risk status dooms me to my worst nightmare: the choice between drowning in the waste products from my own COVID-infected, self-destructing lungs or having a tube pushed down my throat to try to force oxygen into me--or being denied that because I'm too old at 66. I worry about the safety of my family and my friends. I am scared senseless at the unnecessary magnitude of the economic collapse that threatens to bedevil us as surely as the late effects of cancer treatments.
I only know one thing for sure. It's a thing that most cancer survivors already know: What doesn't kill you, makes you. It doesn't make you stronger, or prettier, or healthier or more kind or charitable…. It just makes you more of whatever you already are.
We will find a new normal, once this global mini-apocalypse has passed (at least, in its extreme form). What that new normal will be like is up to us. We will lose something, for sure. We will have to mourn what we've lost. But there will be no going back. What we are left with will have to do; it will have to be - or become - good enough.
Take a look in the mirror. Take a look at everyone around you in your life. Take a look at the human race. We are in the process of becoming more of whatever we already are, and we're going to have to live with it for a long time. Let's do what we each can to make it our best. As John Denver said in his song, The Eagle and the Hawk, "reach for the heavens and hope for the future, and all that we can be and not what we are."
Be safe. Stay well. Help others.
Brenda Denzler
10 comments:
I miss the certainty too.
But we have read about people who were certain Coronavirus was nothing to be concerned about, who ended up dying from it.
Delusion is comforting until reality hits you in the face.
Many people die in the faith - if there is no afterlife, they will never wake up to find they were wrong. None of seems to be in a hurry to find out.
Someone once told me, “What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.”
Soon after that, he was complaining to me about something.
I said, “I though you said that, 'What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.'”
He said, “Well, it's killing me.”
Very interesting reading! We need more of this instead of talking about the loser ministurds like Pack, Flurry, Thiel, Franks, and the bum in LCG:)
All the ACOGs have the crab in the bucket syndrome. If anyone tried to mature, they are pulled back down the other members and ministers. So leaving these churches can be the best thing that can happen to a person. It reminds me of a member telling me that for the first time in his life he began to grow after his wife left him.
2:01
The updated version in the revised translation is: "What doesn't kill you, makes you..."
Nck
One thing people seem to want from religiosity is certainty about the future and present.
It’s that most people understand probability, but few actually believe in it. No matter how much you analyze the past and present, based on empirical evidence , to indicate the highest probability of future events, it cannot offer absolute certainty. This troubles some people, but unfortunately, just like the old adage, the only certainty in our lives is death and taxes!
Most people get that certainties are rare, and the best you can do is make decisions where the odds are in your favor. They understand you can be smart and end up wrong, or dumb and end up right, because that’s how life works.
Most of what people care about is, “Were you right or wrong?” Probability is about nuance and gradation. But in the real world people pay attention to black and white.
(Part One Response)
If you said something will happen and it happens, you were right. If you said it will happen and it doesn’t, you’re wrong. That’s how people think, because it doesn’t take much effort to think it. Successful living requires a deeper perspective and maturity than this.
This happens during elections. A pollster can say there’s a 72% chance Joe Biden will win. Then, if Donald Trump wins people will say, “that pollster was wrong.”
Fundamentalism attempts to simplify very complex cross currents of life, and reduce them into 25 word "black and whites". We can’t just say this happens because people are dumb or lazy. Probability and randomness of life gets ignored for a couple of reasons…
(Part 2 Response)
1. People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.
A lot of what goes on with the opinion of so called experts in any field, is an attempt to rid yourself of the painful reality of not knowing what’s going to happen next. Someone who tells you there’s a 60% chance of a recession happening doesn’t do much to erase that pain. They might be adding to it. But someone who says, “There is going to be a recession this year,” offers something to grab onto with both hands that feels like taking control of your future.
When you realize that making people feel better is more appealing than giving people useful figures, you start to see why analyzing probability is rare.
2. It takes longer than people want for a sufficient sample size to play out. So many people just settle for guessing.
A guru pretends to know when the next war or depression, or tribulation is coming. Not that many of those happen in a lifetime for there to be a meaningful sample. .
If you want to really judge someone’s abilities you would compare dozens, hundreds, or thousands of attempts against reality. But a lot of fields don’t generate that many opportunities to measure. It’s no one’s fault; it’s just the reality of the real world is messier than an idealized spreadsheet.
If you don’t have dozens or hundreds of attempts – sometimes you have one or two – there’s no way to know whether someone who says “75% chance of this,” or “32% chance of that” is right or not. So we’re all left guessing (or preferring those who profess and pretend certainty, which is easier to measure).
Those who pretend to have certainty can often use this to create following of all types. It happens in religion, politics, business and other fields, even scientific. We seem to want to have these gurus and shamans , and are willing to pay them for their "certainty", and for providing a black and white future.
Maturity would have us learn to discard such nonsense, and realize that randomness rules much in this life. Even Jesus said that there was "time and chance" in life. All we can do is play the probabilities, but there will always be some chain smokers who live to 102, and health nuts who drop dead at age 32. There are indeed absolute truths, ie, murder or theft is wrong etc, but at the fringes, life is complicated. Fundamentalism attempts to create a "greater unified field theory" for virtually ALL aspects of life, and attempts to answer all questions of life and provide a certainty. It takes a lot of humility to say "I dont know", and that ability to say that , is "probably" (LOL) ...the real sign of leadership!.
Hey Tonto.
I'd recommend the book *Superforecasting* by Tetlock.
Nck
Btw A sign of leadership is not to not know, but rather to organize opposition or an advocate of the devil.
That might be a reason why Gary allows little Nicky to comment as a sign of true leadership, while resting or rather laboring assured under or on his own personal chosen journey and destiny. (or maybe he's just having fun sipping a beer.)
Nck
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
proverbs 12:16
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