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You’ve got this in you, too
Sundays of Meaning #3 - July 14th, 2024
Cassius
July 14, 2024
It is tempting to look to others in the hopes of getting a one-size-fits-all solution to our problems. We turn to those we admire who certainly have it all together, or at least that’s what it looks like. We wish to be like them and have what they do, so we do as they do. That should save us from despair, right?
James Stockdale’s jet was shot down over North Vietnam on December 9, 1965. As he landed, mid-air, he renounced his freedom. He was taken prisoner and for seven years torture was a routine. Being beaten up in seven different ways was just another Saturday night. He was denied medical treatment and had his leg broken twice from torture. At some point sent to solitary confinement, kept in unimaginable solitude in a windowless, concrete cell, light-bulb on all around the clock, and locked in leg irons all night, every night, we may confidently say there’s no way he made it out alive. Well, not only did he survive.
“I knew I’d prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
As George Harrison beautifully put it, “It’s not always gonna be this gray. All things must pass.” Stockdale knew he’d prevail regardless of the outcome because he chose to be in control. His captors were in control of his environment and even his physical state, but when it came to his mind, that was a fortress that only he commanded. This mental fortitude equipped Stockdale to put his rescue into his own hands. As for those prisoners who didn’t make it out alive? Stockdale recounts,
“Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
In other words, the difference between survival and dying of “a broken heart” was putting one’s rescue into one’s own hands (internally controlled) versus the hands of something or someone else (external control). How does one manage to pull that off?
The Stockdale Paradox:
“You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Stockdale’s story can help us put a lot of our problems in perspective. Most of us, if we take a good, hard look at our problems, may realize that yeah, things are tough, but it’s actually not that bad. If anything, our problems are actually pretty nice. As tempting as it is to hope for something or someone to save you, to give you the “right” and easy answer, no one will. You may get a helping hand, but at the end of the day the one who must put in the effort to get out of the pit is no one else but you. No one can and no one will do it for you. As scary as that may be, it is also liberating; it means that it’s all up to you. And the best part is that he had no more than you and I do. A physical body, a heart, a mind. You are as equipped as he was; you’ve got this in you, too.
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