The Velvet Rage (19 page)

Passion is felt when you notice the joy that is felt frequently when you perform a particular task. If you are not mindful of
your emotions in the moment, you don't notice that when you create a new recipe or learn about a rare variety of fish, this elicits passionate feelings. In order for passion to be evoked, joy must first be noticed and felt.

Danny would often bring to his therapy session the most unusual pieces of machinery. They were always small, unusual, and very intricately crafted. He was a machinist at a local metal shop, and he would bring a piece that he thought was interesting.

Danny had suffered from depression for many years prior to coming to therapy, and carefully trained his mind to notice and ruminate on many of the negative things in his life. As is the case with most of us when we are depressed, his mental vision narrowed to a tunnel that filtered out everything but the negative subject in current focus. He had great difficulty imagining himself not being depressed, and stated that he had not felt joy in years. He'd been in several relationships with other men that had been short-lived, mostly because they couldn't tolerate his continually gloomy mood.

What was at the source of Danny's depression wasn't the lack of joy,
it was the lack of noticing joy
. During a period of about a year, Danny had created a dozen or more interesting and functional metal objects that had ever so briefly triggered a spike of joy within him. He loved the experience of creating something that was simultaneously beautiful and useful; he was in many ways a sculptor. The spike of joy often went unnoticed and quickly faded as Danny's mind quickly returned to the negativity and self-invalidation with which it was most comfortable. His memory of these experiences was often occluded by the cloud of depressive emotions that surrounded the experience.

As you can imagine, not being capable of recognizing his own experience of joy, Danny reported that he had never, ever felt
passion for anything. He couldn't even imagine what passion was and not surprisingly seriously doubted its existence.

To help Danny be more mindful of joy, he began completing a daily diary of his emotions. Specifically, he was to report in the diary whenever he thought that he might have experienced joy. During the first weeks, Danny reported not feeling any joy. Then, with some prodding on my part, he began reporting very slight instances of joy, usually at having created something interesting at work. Over time, Danny became more mindful of the joy that was actually present in his life. As he noticed it more often, we worked on skills he could use to prolong those moments of joy.

Passion for Danny was clearly centered around his creativity in working with metal. He regularly experienced joy at taking a block of material, combining it with other materials, and carving it into something useful. The more mindful he was of the joy it gave him, the more joy it gave him. Over a period of a year, Danny's depression relented, and for the first time in many years, he began finding some enjoyment in life.

I share Danny's story to point out that most of us aren't mindful of our experience of joy, and therefore ignore passion as well. Because it is a quick and fleeting emotion, it flies past us unnoticed. As a result, we haven't a clue about those things that make us passionate, and it all just seems like psychobabble, happy talk.

The gay man who has spent most of his time in life avoiding shame is also likely to not have discovered his passion in life. He has felt joy—and may be able to recall various joyous experiences, but he has been so preoccupied with avoiding shame that he hasn't developed the skill of noticing joy and prolonging it when it occurs.

 

The skill of creating and prolonging joy has three parts:

The first step in creating joy is to put yourself in the most likely state for joy to occur. For most of us, this state includes having plenty of rest, appropriate nutrition, and a safe environment.

Troy is an artist. His paintings grace the walls of some of the finest hotels and office buildings around the country. To make himself vulnerable to joy (a critical element for him in making his best work), he must be completely rested. Often in the early afternoon, he takes a half-hour nap to ensure that he is adequately rested. Another way he makes himself vulnerable is by listening to his favorite kind of classical music while painting. Being rested, listening to music, and painting in his beloved studio are the factors that make him most vulnerable to feeling joy.

A common problem among people who report that they don't feel joy, or have lost the joy that they once felt, is that they are physically tired and overly stressed. It doesn't matter how much joy you may have experienced while writing if your new job is so stressful that you haven't been able to sleep for days. The writing that once brought you joy is likely in this state of exhaustion to feel like a tedious chore.

To increase your experience of joy, it is helpful to mindfully notice when you are feeling joy. Make it a point to notice your feelings throughout the day. Sometimes using a diary can help with this task. When you feel some joy, even if it is slight, notice what you are doing at the moment and where you are. By recording the behavior and environment in which joy naturally occurs
for you, you are better equipped to make yourself feel joy in the future by putting yourself in the same kind of situation again.

A gay man can easily confuse joy with the satisfaction of validation. He may mistake the warm feeling of having other men notice him, perhaps when he works out at the gym or when he enters the room at a party, as joy. Or he may assume that the feeling after the applause of the audience following his performance or the rave review of a critic is joy. While there may be some joy felt in both these situations, there is a difference in experiencing authentic joy and the temporary satisfaction that comes from validation. Joy emerges from inside you and is intrinsically generated. Validation is most often an external event that comes from other people. While external events can trigger the internal experience of joy, it is easy to confuse the two and assume that joy is nothing but the experience of validation. Often, the most intense experiences of joy have nothing to do with the validation provided by others.

The distinction between validation and joy is important for the gay man. In the early stages, he was pursuing validation as a defense against shame. Now, in the discovery of his passion, he pursues an activity not because others approve of it, but because it brings him intrinsic joy. Very often, these two activities are quite different.

For Troy the painter, validation comes from having a painting sold to an important collector. Joy, on the other hand, comes to him in the studio when he creates something on canvas that he's
never created before. What sells best to collectors is often something that he may have painted many times before. What brings him joy is when he is pushing himself past his limits, reaching deep inside himself, and painting something new and fresh. The fundamental split between what brings Troy validation and what brings him joy is critical. If Troy runs after validation, then he continues to paint those kinds of images that sell best. On the other hand, if Troy seeks joy, he paints what is new and authentic for him—something that may not be as familiar or desirable to collectors. As a gay man learns this important distinction, he unlocks the sequence in the code of passion.

Of course, joy and validation are not always opposed to each other and often occur simultaneously. Eventually, as the gay man structures his life around the pursuit of joy, he becomes surrounded with people who validate his behavior. The key difference, however, is that the pursuit of joy is the primary objective, and validation comes only as a secondary benefit.

One of the three essential components to finding contentment in life is in discovering your passion. To do so, you must first be mindful of the joy you experience, and second, become skillful at maintaining and increasing the experience of joy.

Love, like passion, is also a meta-emotion and is the second essential component of finding contentment in life. Also like passion, love is felt only after noticing the ongoing experience of joy. While passion is about feeling joy in an activity, love is about noticing joy in the presence of another person. When the experience
of another person regularly stimulates joy within us, we begin to feel we love that person.

The sad truth is that it is difficult to ascertain love when you are driven to avoid shame. Joy is in short supply and much of your attention is consumed with avoiding shame through work, sex, addictions, etc. During stages one and two, what you think is love is often more an appreciation for another person who assists somehow in your quest to avoid shame. He's gorgeous, sexy, successful, talented, or shares your addiction. But relatively few of these things speak to real joy.

When I realized this for myself, I found it deeply disturbing, as do many gay men: the realization that I had never really felt love for another man. Oh, I'd felt it from time to time, a few glimpses here and there, but never consistently for the same man. Real joy comes more from such things as enjoying another's company, connecting emotionally, and common core values. Sure, it helps if he's gorgeous, sexy, talented, or rich, but it isn't the main dish. All of those things we sought in stages one and two had little to do with the simple but powerful experience of joy in the presence of another person.

When the gay man begins to truly experience love, it is because he is mindful of the subtleties in his partner that bring him joy. A look, a smile, a laugh, a walk, a touch. These consistently bring him joy and pleasure.

Learning to let go of the surface pleasures, and instead being mindful of the consistent joy, leads you down a very different path in seeking a partner. No longer are you looking for a man who fits your predefined “features” list, but rather you are wanting to experience a man who stirs an unspeakable happiness within you. He may not be young, gorgeous, muscled, or rich. The truth is, all this becomes irrelevant. He brings you real joy, and you to him, and that's all that matters.

If you're brave, the next time you say you love someone in your life, ask yourself: Does this person bring me joy? If you answer honestly, the answer will at times surprise—maybe even shock—you. Not until you are mindful of your authentic experience of joy are you truly able to feel love. Anything less isn't love.

The last of the three essential components of contentment is integrity. Integrity really cuts to the core of the struggle of the gay man, meaning
integrate all parts of oneself,
or more formally,
the state of being undivided
. For the gay man, it means the absence of hiding parts of yourself, no longer splitting, and allowing all parts of yourself to be known. Since this is the principal journey of the gay man as he moves from shame to authenticity, the attainment of integrity represents a crowning achievement.

Even after the gay man has entered stage three, integrity can sometimes be difficult to maintain. So practiced are we at hiding unpleasant truths, no matter how small or large, we easily slip back into old, familiar habits.

Integrity becomes a mindful practice for the gay man who chooses to maintain it. He cannot rely on the momentum of his
past nor his own intentions to make integrity a regular part of his life. He must consciously attend to all the ways in which he can maintain integrity.

Rico was a real estate agent in a small but wealthy ski resort town. He and his partner had lived in the town for many years and had ridden the wave of prosperity as the town's real estate had boomed into the stratosphere. Now normal residents of this otherwise rural town included movie stars, famous authors, and a very well-known talk show host.

Rico's partner was some twenty years older than he, and had begun to look his age as he entered his sixties. Rico, on the other hand, was quite young-looking and very handsome. Rico was committed to his relationship, although he enjoyed toying with some of his gay male out-of-town clients whom he would chauffeur around town, from house to house, all the while flirting and flashing his incredible smile. On not a few occasions, Rico would successfully close a real estate deal having the client infatuated with him because he failed to mention that he wasn't really available. At other times, he would withhold this information just long enough during the first meeting to see if he could catch the eye of his client, and then casually mention something about his boyfriend. It was a bit of an unconscious game with Rico, intended to elicit confirmation that he was still attractive to other men.

Mindful integrity requires that the gay man monitor all the ways in which he may be hiding himself, no matter how insignificant, and taking steps to correct them. As in the case of Rico, integrity calls for complete honesty even in what Rico commonly omitted from his initial relationship with his clients.

Being clear and straightforward about who we are, what we want from others, and our intentions is the cornerstone of integrity.