Extreme

We are living in an incredibly extreme time right now. Extreme situations. Extreme circumstances. I would add that anybody raising teenagers lives with emotions swinging from one extreme to the other in waves that hit you so hard and without warning that sometimes it feels impossible to stand up.

I work with individuals whose lives are one big extreme version of life itself. 

By nature, I tend not to be an extreme individual. Something inherently centered exists inside me that lets me, by the grace of God, have some type of proportion and ease when faced with extreme situations. However, there is a big difference between being extreme and being dramatic. Drama is my game; queen is my name. I respond and am extremely dramatic, BUT I do not respond and behave in extreme measures. 

I must say that people tend to say that what I do in my work is extreme, that how I care is extreme, and the lengths and measures that I will go to for kids or people that are in my programs is extreme. 

To this I laugh, and I say, “What are you talking about? THIS is the way it should be.” 

I truly believe that this is what we all should do in these lives of ours.

We should go out of our way, spend the extra dollar, take a bit of a chance and raise the bar of doing good as high as we possibly can. If we all did that just a little, even just some of the time, the world would and could be such a better place.

You have no idea how much can get done by so little. There really is no need for extreme measures. Again, and again, I am surprised, saddened, and actually a little bit shocked by how self-centered people today have become, how thinking of the other is not natural anymore and considered to be extreme behavior.

My late mother was an incredibly thoughtful person. One of the many gifts she gave me was to always think of the other. She was an amazing social worker with the kindest heart. It was her nature to lean in. Why and when did leaning in become an extreme action?

I find it incredibly troublesome that this world we live in is so focused on “me” and not us or them.

What’s funny is that I try to teach my students the exact opposite. I tell them to focus on them, to focus on their “me” and hold on to it and to their worth and to be content. You see, my students’ reactions to every little comment, every look is intensely extreme. They will and can kill you if you look at them the wrong way.

When you grow up in extreme situations, when you have experienced extreme trauma, your responses tend to be exactly that — extreme.

“I am fucking going to kill that bitch if she doesn’t stop looking at my man like that,” she says.

“Don’t you think that is a little extreme?” I ask. “She really didn’t do anything to you,” I add. 

“Why she go looking at my man like that? Huh? She is disrespecting me, Ms. Can’t you see that?” she asks me in dismay.

This issue of respect or a sense of disrespect is extremely important to my students.

“No, I don’t see that,” I say. “I see someone hitting on your man. That’s awesome. It means you are with a man other women want.”

She looks at me confused.

“You are fucked up,” she laughs. “Hold on,” I say. “What would happen if you let it go? What would happen if you just love you, love your man, and ignore her?” 

To her, that was an incredibly extreme thing to ask.

“Ms., you don’t get it,” she tells me.

This woman has had a sad, hard, difficult life. She is finally getting it all together. I am so, so happy for her.

Someone looking at her boyfriend or at her seems to me so silly and unimportant, but here is the learning point for us both. I don’t see what she sees.  She doesn’t see what I see.

The lesson is in the center of those two extremes.

I ask her quietly and carefully, 

“Listen to me. Do you like where you live right now?”
She says, “Yes.”

“Do you like your job?” I ask. 

“Yes! Ms., I have two jobs,” she tells me proudly.

“That is awesome,” I say and add, “An extreme response to someone looking at you or your man could jeopardize all that.” I know that I need to lean into her.

“I get that it is annoying. I understand that you want to beat the crap out of her, but, really, is it worth it?” 

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“You could lose your job and where you live if you get in a fight. You could lose everything you have worked so hard for,” I say.

“That is only if I get caught,” and she laughs.

Thank goodness someone else butts in.

“Girl, how many times you been locked up? You always get caught for something.” Everyone laughs.

I think of my kids, who tend to have extreme reactions these days to my words and comments. I don’t always have it in me to not respond and/or to understand that COVID, adolescence, and hormones make them sensitive and irrational. I take the bait. I get mad. I push extreme with extreme and that is never good. 

“Girlfriend,” the other student says with conviction, “Live extreme in your head. In your head beat the crap out of her, fuck her, stab the shit out of her, rip her lungs out. But in reality? Live the calm, Bitch. Live it hard, until it becomes you. Nobody is worth your freedom. Extreme in your head, calm in your heart, Baby.”

I am quiet, because I could not have said it better.

“Extreme in your head, calm in your heart.” I need a tee shirt with that written on it.

“I feel you,” the first student says.  

I add, “Love yourself enough so that that other woman doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, Ms. That is a little extreme.”

“Actually, out of this whole story, that is the least extreme thing,” I say.

“I invite you to love you enough, so others who look at you or say stupid stuff don’t matter.”

She smiles shyly. She gets it.  

It’s a little uncomfortable, but she gets it.

“OK ,OK,”  she says “I got you.”

Now I smile.

To you who are reading this and are capable, I ask the opposite.

How about every once in a while, you love the other, the one who needs it, just a little more than yourself? Not all the time, not everyday, not to an extreme. Just once in a while, here and there, so change can have some space to grow.

This blog was published with permission through the Avot Project.