Consolation

I was once talking to a rather mischievous friend of mine, who had just received some bad news about a graduate program he had applied for. I texted him something like "it's their loss." And "I have so much faith in your abilities." This was followed by a pause. His eventual reply came simply in the form of a url. It took me to an opinion piece from a major newspaper. It said that clichés are the wrong thing to say when someone is going through a hard time. Well, serves me for trying.

If clichés are the wrong thing to say in such moments, however, what can be the right thing? It would seem the pitfalls of tactlessness are multiple, and exist on all sides. Some people, when clichés fail them, resort to advice-giving. We learned on day one of divinity school, however, that this is the cardinal no-no.

Advice is worse than unhelpful - it is actively destructive. By advising a person to do something, you instantly foreclose for all time precisely the course of action you just advised them to take - which might actually have been a perfectly wise one, and which they might eventually have stumbled upon on their own.

No one can ever adopt the course of action someone advised them to take without admitting that they had ultimately depended on outside help, rather than their own innate genius and sense of purpose. So they can never take it at the risk of losing face.

This is why, if you really want someone to do something sensible, it has been often observed, the best approach is to praise all of their least sensible ideas and projects. This will make it into an act of free will, rather than perceived coercion, when they eventually decide to take the more obvious and reasonable course of action.

There's a passage in one of Philip Roth's novels in which a character is contemplating quitting her job. Her mother tells her to stay put, which makes her feel trapped and heightens her desire to leave. She then asks her father, in the hopes that he will give her permission to quit. He does so. In the newfound sense of personal freedom that comes from hearing this, she suddenly has the strength to persevere. She stays in the job she has. So it goes with all advice-giving.

Rather than trying to play this dangerous game of opposites, however, (in which one always runs the risk -- as is also well known -- that someone will see through the reverse psychology, and its effect will thereby be reversed twice over, landing one back where one started), the safer course is just not to give advice at all. But if advice-giving is out, what then is left?

The advice on how to avoid advice-giving we received in divinity school was to use only "I" statements. Speak from your own experiences, instead of trying to judge what might be good for someone else. Perhaps, you can hope -- if you give an honest accounting of yourself -- their souls will vibrate in harmony with yours. They will see themselves in what you describe. "Let their doubts know that you have doubted," as Emerson advised the aspiring divine, from the very pulpit where we were similarly advised not to give advice.

There's a downside to this approach as well, however. I discovered this recently talking to a coworker who was frustrated by an aspect of her job. It occurred to me, in the course of the conversation, to apply the Emersonian maxim. "When I was starting out here..." I began, my words swelling with emotion as I went. What a tale it was to unfold as well! All about how I had suffered too, once upon a time, in my work. But eventually I had triumphed, as she no doubt would as well.

As soon as I reached the end of this speech, it occurred to me that I had just made the conversation all about myself. And this, surely, is the peril with using "I" statements, pretty much by definition. Was I really saying anything consoling, then? Or was I just puffing myself up?

As I asked myself these questions, I was suddenly put in mind of a description of a character in George Eliot. It's a passage that immediately stabbed me with the pain of recognition, when I read it several years ago. "[H]e always blundered when he wanted to be delicate or magnanimous;" Eliot writes: "he constantly sought to soothe others by praising himself." Here is the nightmare version of the Emersonian consoler -- the ultimate over-user of "I" statements.

I guess it shouldn't entirely surprise us. No one ever said, after all, that Emerson was actually a good parish minister.

Nor is this the end of the problems with the Emersonian approach, it turns out. The "I" statement approach can also end up placing the speaker in a vulnerable position, where their feelings are liable to be trod upon by people who are themselves in distress -- and are therefore often not at their most considerate. By the end of the conversation, as a result of this method, we are often left with two people who need consoling, whereas there was only one to start with.

In Flaubert's immensely moving story, "A Simple Heart," there is a scene in which the good-hearted servant and protagonist Felicité is trying to console her mistress, who is deeply concerned because she has not received a letter from her daughter in several days. Felicité unconsciously applies the "I" statement model. She seeks to create a community of suffering, "[t]hinking that her own situation might serve as some comfort to her mistress." (Whitehouse trans. throughout). She therefore remarks that she has not heard from her own beloved nephew for as long as six months.

Her mistress responds in essence by saying, your nephew who? As the author editorializes, her response to Felicité's "I" statement was much "as if to say 'I hadn't given him a thought! [...] A mere ship's boy, a scrounger; he's not worth bothering about! But someone like my daughter... Really!'" Felicité wilts in response. Her mistress has let "her words drop to the earth, like poor, hurt birds," to borrow an image from Gide. (Bussy trans.)

This was also the problem I encountered in a different, more recent conversation with the mischievous friend mentioned above. He was expressing his discontent with his adult life as it has actually turned out, and noting how different it is from the fantasy version he had always imagined. "Well everyone feels that way sometimes," I said, pulling a Felicité-esque move. "I certainly feel that way sometimes," I added. "Well of course you do," he replied. (I swear, this riposte was funny, rather than devastating, in context).

In short, the "I" statement approach leaves one open to suffering the fate of the outstretched hand of fellowship that is spat upon by the ungrateful.

The next stage of the ministerial advice, therefore, is often to drop the "I" statement as well. Maybe it's best neither to give advice nor to talk about oneself. Perhaps the best course of action is to say nothing at all. Instead, one should simply "listen."

Anyone who has tried to listen to someone in distress while saying nothing in response, however, will realize that this approach too has its limits. At some point, people rightly want you to show some life. You can meet this need partially by asking follow-up questions. Or by paraphrasing what the person has said as a way of showing you are paying attention. "So what I'm hearing you say is..." etc.

Try either of these methods for long enough, however, and you will find that people start to cotton on to your trick. "No, stop doing the minister/psychologist thing!" they will say,  "I genuinely want to know what you think about this!"

Once they have said this, you are backed against the wall. You cannot give advice. You cannot ask them in response -- except at the peril of appearing ridiculous -- "Why do you think you want to know what I think about this?" Or "What I'm hearing you say is that you want to know what I think about this." You have to actually respond!

Your only option then is to return to some variant of the Emersonian "I" statement. But how to do this without exposing oneself all over again to the two dangers noted above?

The favored strategy for salvaging the "I" statement -- promoted by divines the world over -- is to hedge it around with a caveat -- an acknowledgment that you know it may not apply to the present instance. This helps ward off both dangers at once. It helps diminish the sense of self-puffery, since it is prefaced by a frank confession of ignorance. And just so, because it leaves one less open to the charge of being presumptuous, it also diminishes the ingrate's desire to swat down one's presumptions, like so many of Gide's injured birds, for his own sadistic amusement.

I was once talking to a minister and whining about something or other. He paraphrased back to me the substance of my plaint, and I agreed with him that he had understood it well. There was an awkward pause after this, however. Where would we go next, the paraphrase having been approved?

He then said, "I don't know if this will resonate to your experience or not," before he went on to describe a highly analogous situation from his own experience. I thought the caveat he provided was touching, but also somewhat irritatingly over-cautious. It was as if he was applying over-dogmatically the injunctions of our profession. I was reminded of a minister I once met who -- every time she came to a point in a sentence requiring a conjunction that brought out a pivot or contrast between two ideas, would pause with a look of discomfort. She would then say "and," even though we all knew she meant "but." Even though "and" made no sense there. But at some point in divinity school, we were all taught that you should never say "but," because it negates everything that came before it. But plainly "but" is a word that sometimes has its legitimate uses, as much as any other!

Perhaps the only true consolation for the consoler can come from understanding that what they do in the conversation is utterly secondary, at last, regardless of which options they choose. I think back to the times in my own life when I was in great distress and needed to pour my heart out to someone. I very rarely remember exactly what the other person said in the course of my ranting. But I remember that it was extremely important that they were there.

Feel free, then, to advise, talk about your own greatness, text some clichés, ask follow-up questions, paraphrase, contemplate the inherent unknowability of another person's experiences. Sin and sin boldly. Whatever you do, it will probably be forgotten. But the fact that you were there at all, and tried to say your consoling things, however ham-handedly - that will be remembered.