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.