Living in the Tensions 2: On Discernment

Last week, I talked about Liv­ing in the Ten­sions in terms of accept­ing the para­doxes of life. This week, let’s talk about liv­ing in the ten­sions in terms of it being a pre­req­ui­site for discernment.

St. Ignatius of Loy­ola has another word for liv­ing in the ten­sions: indif­fer­ence. He said that we should be able to to hold our­selves in bal­ance: not putting our­selves in one or the other choice or extreme. God’s will is said to be found in the ten­sions.

It is not to be reduced to a num­bers game: when you’re asked to give money for exam­ple and you have P10,000.00 and you give P5,000 because that’s the numer­i­cal mid­dle. Some­times, liv­ing in the ten­sions means giv­ing all the P10,000 and some­times it means giv­ing noth­ing at all.

It depends. Liv­ing in the ten­sions means weigh­ing every sit­u­a­tion like it is a unique one because if we think really hard, every sit­u­a­tion is a unique one! To find bal­ance then, is as much in the weigh­ing as it is in the actual choosing.

Because rules are not so clear cut, because for­mula is non-existent and noth­ing is imposed from the out­side, then life is a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult. Some­times it’s eas­ier to just have rules and reg­u­la­tions writ­ten down and to just fol­low with­out think­ing like chil­dren. But we’re not chil­dren any­more. (And even chil­dren ask why a lot of times!)

Now that we’re older (and hope­fully wiser), we real­ize that life is an eter­nal dis­cern­ment process. There is a con­stant strug­gle to make easy and dif­fi­cult deci­sions. From the moment we wake up to the time we go back to sleep, we have to make deci­sions. Some deci­sions are no-frills and require no think­ing (like choos­ing what to eat for lunch). But other deci­sions are more life-changing–like whether to con­tinue with Law School or to take up Nurs­ing for col­lege. Or to set­tle down. We have a sta­tus mes­sage in Friend­ster that I love–it’s called IT’S COMPLICATED. Prob­a­bly because we real­ize that life, for all our desire to put it in neat boxes with labels, is com­pli­cated. It’s com­pli­cated encap­su­lates in two neat words a whole story of pain and hope and cri­sis and lone­li­ness and the dif­fi­culty to be nei­ther in a rela­tion­ship nor sin­gle.

And because life is com­pli­cated, then we need the capac­ity to live in the ten­sions. To dis­cern. To have a gut feel of things. And to have the courage to say yes. Or no.

The image of a string used in an arrow comes to mind, which is the image used by the ancient Greek philoso­pher Her­a­clei­tus. A string can not be too taut or too slack. If it’s too taut, it runs the dan­ger of break­ing. If too slack, the arrow will be unus­able. It needs to be just right. But once again, there really is no for­mula for what “enough” is. The archer—if he’s an expe­ri­enced one—knows with an instinc­tive gut nat­ural feel what this “enough” is. He knows how hard he is going to pull the string.

We have a word for it in Fil­ipino: alalay. He knows when to pull harder and when to give slack so the string won’t break. Alalay lang.

Alalay is a Fil­ipino word that also means “helper”. Some­one who helps. Some­one who assists. Because that’s what an alalay does, and that’s how to do alalay—you lis­ten to the string, you feel it in your fin­gers, you sense it in your bones; and with an intu­itive gut feel, let the arrow go. Archers–the really good ones– swear they become one with the bow and the arrow.

In the end, liv­ing in the ten­sions is know­ing when to push and pull and when to give slack. To dis­cern is take every­thing in con­sid­er­a­tion, think about it, mull over it, feel it, and then when the time is right, when it feels right, jump to a conclusion.

Yes, you may be wrong or right. But the point may not even be in get­ting it right. The point may be in hon­ing your­self to feel. There is no exter­nal for­mula. The for­mula is inside you. The for­mula is in hon­ing your gut feel. To know when to tighten and when to give slack.

Because know­ing that is a much bet­ter skill in the long run than get­ting it right the first time.

Watch out for how to hone this dis­cern­ing heart/gut next week.