Getting Soft in Hard Times

In hard times, people harden. It seems to happen automatically, like a survival reflex, not even a decision. Maybe it worked for our ancestors, but in the modern age, it tends to amplify harms both individually and collectively.

It is, of course, sometimes necessary to establish strong boundaries. This can be done without closing yourself off. What I’m talking about is more emotional, psychological. This kind of hardening is not always protective; in fact it may be corrosive in its own ways.

When we harden, we pull back, we contract, and in doing so we lose contact with everything. Internally, this includes parts of ourselves that may need care and attention. If you’re armored all the way through, it might seem like a comprehensive defense, because nothing affects you. But it also means nothing can inspire, nurture, or transform you either.

In these times, we tend to see softness as weakness. It’s probably worse if you’re a guy, because men are supposed to maintain toughness under pressure; projecting strength is everything. It’s tough to act tough all the time—as though one could choose to only ever be this way and never experience any other feeling or emotion. Good luck with that.

The body knows all this even when our stubborn minds don’t. Listening to what our body is telling us requires slowing down and softening to ourselves. Various contemplative traditions have different approaches to opening up to a space of equanimity, easefulness, non-judgmental acceptance, and creative potential that is accessible within ourselves. Western modes like Internal Family Systems (IFS) or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) say much the same thing: you can’t work with a part you’re blended with, or address a pattern while you’re still tangled up in it. Getting such space requires softening, unclenching.

I’m learning that accompaniment in caregiving requires softness, receptivity. It doesn’t benefit from rigidity in one’s own beliefs and biases. Non-judgmental presence only arises if you’re soft enough to be completely open to the person in front of you as they are.

Softness isn’t a temperament you’re born with. I spent most of my life imagining myself a hardcore misanthrope, the one with the best argument and the most cynical outlook. What I’ve learned since becoming soft is that I was completely wrong about that—I fucking love people! If I was wrong there, I wonder what else I’ve been wrong about. Not in a beat-myself-up way, but a genuinely curious one. The point is, it is possible to set free outmoded ideas and self-beliefs. It isn’t easy, though it’s probably easier than we habitually make it. That’s OK.

It’s good to have no particular goal, which is itself a soft attitude. The moment we start thinking of ourselves as a problem to fix, we clench up. Even imagining “doing the work” puts a little tension in your shoulders and neck. Well, you aren’t a self-help project. You have always been perfect, and you have always been unfinished. No problem!

These are very challenging times, and people are really suffering, in ways we can see and ways we can’t. Many suffer from the empathic knowledge of this. But the response can’t be to hole up within ourselves and make a little spiky ball of our being, because people need us, and we need ourselves. In order to meet those needs, we’re going to have to get a lot softer. Let’s do it together.