Disarming the "I'm Fine" Narrative / Trinette Taylor
Whilst attempting to land a catchy title to this piece, I floated with many ideas: humorous reconstructions of movie titles, book titles, funny sayings, the works. There was a sense that I needed to catch an internet scroller, click-bait them into reading which is essentially a commentary on being real, raw, and honest with each other. A problem already? Or just another example of how we simplify the complicated, minimize the important, and disregard the crucial?
When Lambs are Silent is an effort to listen to the voices that our society has deemed unimportant and therefore those voices have become unheard of, unacknowledged, or forgotten. The stories that are so beneath the radar that they have become one with the earth, and we tend to walk over them in pursuit of our own ambitions, goals, and lifestyle choices. They are the stories of people who are complicated, important, and crucial. They are stories that are in this place. They are in our communities. They are under our noses.
Usually, to hear these stories, and to begin our journey into learning and listening, we must be brave enough to ask. We must grapple with the fact that our own stories are not the only stories that shape the world we live in. We must learn that there are many people that respond to the polite and indifferent “how are you?” with the “I’m fine” response whilst not currently in the emotional, mental, or spiritual state of ‘fine’. Those people, hiding behind a generic answer to a generic question, have stories that are waiting to be shared. Stories that are complicated and important and crucial. Stories that are worthy to be listened to.
I understand that there is a level of trust associated to a deeper response to this question. After all, a truthful response of struggle, despair, or really anything less than the conforming “good” response would alienate some, disturb others, or frighten a portion into not asking more questions in a careful attempt not to dwell further on unfortunate circumstances or say the wrong thing and jeopardise the situation. Replying in a manner which matches your circumstances means that the person who first asks the questions is forced to walk a conversational tightrope: should they engage with further probing? Should they reply with their own unfortunate circumstances? Should they leave that awkward conversation at that and stumble towards a mind-numbing account of the day’s weather?
To give background to this piece, I am currently a Funeral Director’s Assistant. I have the precious privilege to attend families, walk through rest homes and retirement villages, move through mortuaries, and help with the formalities of funerals. Before this, I was a support worker for a young boy who navigated his life with severe autism. In both occupations, I am able to see a fragment of the depth of pain, grief, desperate need, and dark bleakness that families and communities have to move through. I have seen mothers fall on their knees in soul-piercing grief as they reckon with their deceased child who, that morning, they had fed on their lap. I have seen wives lose their husbands and husbands lose their wives. I have seen a parent of three children of different health and mental needs suffer under the scorn and negligence of her community.
Our communities are hurting. Our neighbours are struggling. It is unlikely that they will knock on your door outright and divulge their current predicaments. It is unlikely that they will respond with a deeply truthful response: our current culture denies us the opportunity to speak honestly. It tells us that we will lose pride, be seen as weak, and become a needy problem to those who now know the shameful secret of their current life’s circumstances.
However, it is not only the courage it takes to share stories that is a hurdle to overcome, but the response that would likely arise from the conversation. In an interesting article regarding the expression of sympathy, Americans are more likely to give positive affirmations in a time of grief and despair,[1] whilst Germans were more likely to respond with greater recognition of the trial that is currently being experienced. The researcher of the article discusses the fact that “contemporary American culture wants to avoid negative states more than contemporary German culture[,] in part because American culture endorses a frontier spirit – achieving one’s goals, influencing one’s circumstances, overcoming nature – more than the German culture does”.[2]
How does that speak to us? In times of desperation, hurt, anger, betrayal, grief, and inequality, how does the culture of New Zealand shape our response? The classic “she’ll be right” mentality comes to mind here. A hopeful yet somehow emotionally distant saying that provides a weak comfort in time of trial. That is unfortunately our ‘American response’: a positive affirmation that disregards the complicated. It is the New Zealand version of “this too shall pass”. It is the way of saying “things will get better, but I have no idea how and, regrettably, I have stopped listening”.
The No.8 wire to fix your own problems might also come into shed some light on our responsive behaviour. If a person has accessible resources, they can do up their own fences and keep their problems in their own fields. I wonder if these fences, which we are encouraged to fix ourselves when they are broken, do not simply separate us from those who might need to hear the story of how this fence was broken to begin with.
I wonder if we need to dispel our “I’m fine” myth. I wonder if we need to take time to ask our co-workers not only about their weekends, but how they felt about what happened in their weekends. I wonder if we need to express more honestly about our own current circumstances in order to encourage others to be comfortable with sharing theirs. I wonder if we need to know our neighbours better, in order that we might learn to understand their stories, in order to be there for them in their times of crisis. I wonder if we need to learn how to lament the issues that rise in our communities, and not sweep the stories of poverty, violence, abuse, loneliness, fear, and inequalities under the mat of our lives. I wonder if we need to be brave enough to go deeper, to continue asking, to be comfortable with getting questions wrong sometimes, to be listeners (oh, to be listeners!). I wonder if we can be courageous enough to drop the ‘I’m fine’ façade to see the truth underneath. That is how we will learn the stories of our communities. That is how we will learn to listen to the Lambs who have been Silent.
[1] Koopmann-Holm, B and J. L. Tsai, Focusing on the negative: Cultural differences in expressions of sympathy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(6), 1092-1115.
[2] Ibid.
Trinette Taylor