On Seeing Hard Things

I am going to be honest. I have not watched “12 Years a Slave.” I mean to. I really do. But every time it comes down to committing to watching it, I just can’t make myself do it.

I have also not watch “Django.” Or “The Kite Runner.” Or “Rabbit Wire Fence.” Really anything that will make me cry. Ugly, heaving cries.

By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I read “The Kite Runner”? I was on a plane from Washington Dulles to San Diego and I was almost 7 months pregnant. I add that last fact in only to make you think that my hormones might have lead to some of my response to that book. In truth, it probably would not have made much of a difference. I sobbed on the plane reading that book. Like, sobs that made the other passengers sitting next to me uncomfortable. I tried to muffle my sorrow, but the tears flowed like tiny rivers down my face, landing in smudgy little drops on the pages of the book as I read.

For months afterwards, my mind would replay certain scenes from that book and I would find myself fighting tears again. I would drift off to bed at night with the last thought being of the horrible child rape scene in the book.

That was just from reading a book.

I want to watch hard things. I really do. I want to watch movies that touch on the most horrible human brutality. I want to watch movies that show me the state of a world I don’t know, like “Hotel Rwanda.”

But then again. I don’t.

I am a very visual person. I don’t forget what I see. It’s why I can’t watch horror movies either. When I was 7, I saw the movie “Poltergeist.” To this day, I still can remember every graphic, twisted and disturbing scene from that movie. 7 was a long time ago. But my mind, and my heart, still hold on.

A few months ago, a good friend of mine posted something on Facebook about how important it is that people watch movies like “12 Years a Slave.” After all, we have a choice to watch a movie about it while fellow humans didn’t have a choice and had to actually live it. I understood exactly where she was coming from, but again, I knew that I wasn’t going to be sitting down any time soon with that movie.

I am a sensitive person. I do not think I am necessarily more sensitive than other people, the only thing I know how to explain is how I feel. When I watch a movie like that, it takes an emotional toll on me, one that I am not that quick to bounce back from. It weighs on me and exhausts me and pulls me down under the heavy weight of it. I feel helpless, I feel angry, I feel empathy, I feel pain. My heart wants to burst. And I sit there and my mind replays things. Again and again and again. The movie doesn’t end in my mind, even after the final credits have run.

I know that terrible atrocities occur every day in this world. But I can’t always watch and listen and read about them. I don’t want to go running towards the opposite end of the spectrum and sit with my feet up on the couch catching up on “The Kardashians” which munching on popcorn, but I do know that I have a threshold for how much human pain and suffering I can expose myself to before I start to become an emotional wreck who wants to be an activist for every social cause I feel any passion for.

When something like the horrible factory collapse happened in Bangladesh a year and a half ago happened, which left laborers basically dying in a massive coffin, people around the world were angry and sad. I was one of them. I cried and I imagined what it must have been like for the people in that building. I built stories in my mind about the children they undoubtedly left behind. I imagined “Slumdog Millionaire” type scenarios in my mind about what was to become of the orphaned children.

That’s how I process things. And in some ways, it is extreme.

You know, I know that in some ways I’m a coward. But I also think that I am very much a realist. I know how much I can emotionally take and process without putting myself in a state of paralysis.

Yesterday, the internet (ok, hardly) almost damn near broke because of Kim Kardashian’s ass being on display. And then it almost broke again (ok, not really) when photos of her entire naked body were revealed. And it’s kind of sad that there are so many things going on in this world that we should be talking about and addressing, but every person on the internet was most likely exposed to some aspect of Kimmy K.’s nudity yesterday.

I think our fascination with all the fluff is because we can’t, in my best Jack Nicholson voice, “handle the truth.” The truth is hard. The truth is scary. The truth is so much more painful to process sometimes then looking to see what the favorite reality star du jour is wearing (or not). Sometimes avoiding the truth is a result of pure apathy, but sometimes, it’s the exact opposite of apathy that makes people steer clear of it. Why should we talk about the impact of the Ebola scare on the rest of Africa when we can take about Blake Lively being pregnant? Why should we talk about the sex trade in Thailand when Rihanna is back on Instagram.

As I re-read this before I hit “publish” the thought that comes to me is that I really am going to make an effort to embrace watching emotionally challenging things, no matter how hard it might be. I think it’s okay to feel a little wounded and have your heart be more sore. It’s okay if you have to cry and push yourself a little harder to try to place yourself in someone’s very uncomfortable shoes. But…it’s also okay if you just can’t.

“Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.” Barbara Kingsolver

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