The Incredible Light of Being Human


"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
    - Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"



These lyrics crystallize what I love about Leonard Cohen.  The tipping towards impefection.  Like the ancient Korean potters who purposefully left a mistake in every pot, Cohen raises anthems to human error.  This past weekend, Alan and I traveled, by Amtrak, to Vancouver, B.C., to experience Leonard Cohen give a concert in his native country. Tonight, after sitting with five patients, all of them good people who hate themselves to varying degrees due to the simple fact that they, like me,  are homo sapiensand therefore must make mistakes, my thoughts go back to Cohen's lyrics and their message of error, acceptance and self (and other)forgiveness. 

If we are even to halfway celebrate life, we are going to have to come to terms with being human  Most of the people I see in my practice want to "error-proof" their lives, which is an impossible task and rather ugly, when you think about it, implying, as it does, that being who we are, is being wrong. 

Here's a quote I like:
"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.  In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive enrvousness on their behalf.
    -William James, "The Will To Believe"

Yes, the same William James who gave Gertrude Stein an A on her philosophy test at Harvard (I think it was Harvard!) on the day when she wrote at the top of her paper something like, "Dear Dr. James, I am so sorry, but it is such a beautiful day outside and I do not feel in the slightest like taking a test".   He could stretch.  He could  weigh this against that. He knew what it was to be human. (He also knew, of course, the considerable weight of the considerable Gertrude Stein's intelligence and ability).

Back to Cohen.  The other thing I love about Cohen is his obvious passion.  It has become common practice, in this ultra-puritanical country of ours, to believe that extra bits of intensity and passion are such "overboard" emotions as to only be explained away by attaching mental illness diagnoses to the front or back of them.  God, I get so sick of this.  Think what diagnosis Dante would be given - or Shakespeare - or any of our greatest writers or artists. Well, it's happened to nearly all the best of them, hasn't it. Go ahead and feel - - but not TOO much.  And, if you DO happen to feel a great deal, for heaven's sakes, don't SHOW it.  Because THAT'S bad form.

To be judgemental, we must feel sure that we know right from wrong, and that we ourselves would never ever confuse the two.  But the experience, philosopher Kathryn Schulz says, "the experience of erring shows us otherwise.  It reminds us that, having been wrong in the past, we could easily be wrong again - and not just in the abstract but right now, here in the middle of this argument about pickles or constellations or crumb cake."

Pickles or constellations or crumbcake. Right in the middle of an ordinary hour in an ordinary day in an ordinary life. Because we are human.  Because we are mistake-makers. And mistake we need not dread being mistake makers.

Because there is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.