Elisabeth Kübler-Ross confronted life's biggest uncertainty: death, when as a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, and a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, Kübler-Ross in collaboration with a group of theology students, began having candid interviews with people who were dying. She found that most people who knew the end of their lives were in the inevitable near future experienced five stages of experience: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
We don't only experience these stages in dying. We experience grief when our cognition -- in particular, our context, experience, rules and processes -- is not offering us a ready path.
We like to think of our brains as a thinking machine, but, in truth, our brain's don't like to think. They mostly react. Our brains spend all day dodging and deflecting the information coming at us at 60 billion bits a second. There was too much information in the ice ages. There is maddeningly too much now. Our brain wants sure things. It's pretty binary. Is it an opportunity or a threat? If it's an opportunity, what's the path toward it? If it's a threat, what's the path away? If I'm not sure if it's an opportunity or a threat -- weather; climate, change, death -- we experience a cognitive dissonance known as grief.
As documented by Kübler-Ross
Denial is a common defense mechanism used to protect oneself from the hardship of considering an upsetting reality. Even with something as definitive as death, most often -- this can't be true -- is our first response.
Anger shows up when our brain feels itself coming under the control of an upsetting reality and looks for an external force to blame. I'm in pain or under threat. This must be someone's fault.
Bargaining shows up when we're in the control of an upsetting reality. Anger and blame isn't mitigating or may be exacerbating the feeling of being out of control. We ride a bicycle to the indoor pool and carefully recycle the voluminous packaging that brought us a small item through the global supply chain of trucks, ships, and aircraft in order to feel --if I do this -- I can keep the bad thing away.
Depression comes when any response seems hopeless. We experience decision numbness. Why should I wake up early to write this? I have no power or influence. It will be lost in the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Acceptance is best represented by the Alcoholics Anonymous serenity prayer: to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
We don't just experience the five stages of grief individually. Our collectives, that is, partners, families, organizations, communities, cultures are grieving.
And our brains naturally resist and go screaming and kicking through denial and anger; offer false promises to ourselves and others, try to bargain our way out of confronting harsh truths, and go on a strike during depression.
And to paraphrase Winston Churchill, our brains will engage the hard work of thinking -- after we've tried everything else.
Here are five steps to practicee engaging in harsh truth:
- You're wrong about something. Find something you're wrong about.
- Tell someone something you found yourself wrong about. Actually, start telling a lot of people things you thought you were right about, but found out you were wrong. Specifically, find people you can tell, "You were right. I was wrong."
- Embrace complexity. Those harsh truths are bigger than you. Here's an example from Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados.
"How do we create the inter-generational responsibilities that allow us to know that it is not one generation, or one man, or one group of people, to run the race and to leave it as if that is the end of the race? I’m reminded by the words of the Talmud, which says we are not expected to complete the task, but neither are we at liberty to resign from it."
- Fred Hardigan, long time Dean of Princeton, was known for saying, "'I don't know,' is a perfectly acceptable answer when you don't know." . He gave his admissions counselors hats that said, "We do precision guess work." One approach to situational depression is to sit quietly with "I don't know."
- Courage. Our brains don't like courage. It puts it in danger. Our brain's first response to opportunities and threats is fear and greed. It likes fear and greed. Fear and greed keep it safe -- except ultimately from death.
May I suggest a long, uncomfortable, courageous, and hopeful journey though harsh truths delivered by the Honorable Mia Motley. It made my brain hurt. It stirred grief. I wish I could deny what she says is true.
Next: the cognitive work of probability.
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
Kübler-Ross : https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_189.html
five stages: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507885/
Mia Mottley: https://www.unep.org/championsofearth/laureates/2021/mia-mottley
Fred Hardigan: https://paw.princeton.edu/article/dean-deans-fred-hargadon-admissions-dean-1988-2003-dies-80