Helpful or harmful?
“Are grapes good or bad?”
I left this message for my functional nutritionist, Stephanie, many months ago. I earnestly hoped that she would cave in and, for once, give me a clear cut answer to my question. She did not.
“Can you tell me more about what is making you ask this?”
At first, I insisted that my question was due to the high sugar content of grapes in comparison to other fruits. However, my inquiry into the moral value of grapes actually stemmed from an impatient frustration that had been steadily growing.
For the past many months, Stephanie and I had been systematically zero-ing in on the root cause of the extreme and seemingly uncontrollable health symptoms I had been experiencing for over two years. While we had been on this journey for awhile, it was clear that there was still a long ways to go.
And my exasperation was catching up with me.
There had been blood tests and supplements and saliva samples and dietary tweaks. There were lifestyle changes like consistently prioritizing moderate sleep and moderate movement that felt inconvenient and challenged my affinity for extremes.
There were also the voices. The old parts of me that had lived out decades of disordered eating were screaming at me to ditch the balance and recklessly throw myself into an internet-prescribed extreme diet. The ruthless perfectionist in me wanted strict criteria against which I could judge myself, my behaviors, and my body as a failure.
It was a lot. I was exhausted. And I wanted an absolute answer.
Stephanie, however, would not give me one. Despite my many pleas, she gave me an aggravatingly calm, balanced, and accurate final answer.
She advised (for the 5983rd time) that I try my best to get a balance of protein, fat, and carbs every time I eat - regardless of the specific foods at play.
She explained (for the 8290th time) that stressing out about whether or not a food is good or bad is ultimately counterproductive for me - as an influx of stress was more likely to derail the healing of my hormonal system than an influx caused by any dietary substance.
And above all, she reminded me that while labelling anything as 100% good or 100% bad might feel helpful in some ways, it also ran the risk of being harmful in other ways.
The clear cut answer I was looking for simply didn’t exist - in this, or in any situation.
Safety Addict
Ask people what they want most right now, and they will likely say that they want something they believe will bring them safety.
For example:
They might want more money so that they feel a sense of financial safety.
They might want a relationship so that they feel a sense of emotional safety.
They might want to know, with absolute certainty, which direction they should go next in life so that they feel a sense of mental safety - or in other words, the safety of ‘knowing’.
The issue with the quest for safety is that there will never be ‘enough’ of it. So when we throw ourselves blindly into searching for it, we can quickly become addicted to the next hit of perceived security.
And this is really where we can get into trouble - both individually and as a society.
Most people are consciously aware that safety - at least on the macro level - is an illusion. For example, while your financial situation may have a large impact on your immediate physical safety today, you are also probably able to clearly see that in 100 years, you brain will not care about your student loan balance.
Does this mean that we shouldn’t care about seeking safety and safeguards throughout the course of our lives and in our society now?
No, it doesn’t mean that at all. Quite the opposite.
But it is worth noting that humans are hardwired to operate from our subconscious survival instincts - not our conscious minds, especially when we feel our safety is threatened. And so it’s pretty common for nearly all of us to get tossed into the safety and security addiction cycle without even realizing it.
Before you know it, you might find yourself chasing a relationship that you know isn’t good for you because the hit of promised emotional security is more alluring to the terrified subconscious mind than is logical.
Or you become fixated on making more and more money, only to hoard it all. Because, while you are technically financially secure and ideally believe in giving back to the community, your subconscious mind doesn’t feel quite financially safe enough yet to do so.
Or, as in my aforementioned case, you might rush to label a group of foods bad due to the certainty expressed by a couple of representatives in an imperfect medical system. Yet in the meantime, you ignore and miss the very clear, very obvious clues your body is trying to give you as to what you do and do not need.
Once we start falling into the trap of subconsciously grasping for safety, the next step is typically to try to seek out or create certainty wherever we can.
But certainty is not the same thing as safety. And in a world where so much of the touted certainty is manufactured, misleading, or incomplete, adopting certainty can oftentimes be more harmful than it is helpful.
So then what?
The entire reason I’m writing this post is because I’ve noticed a huge uptick in my own allergic reactions to artificial certainty being touted out and about in the world.
As a coach, I’ve seen certainty wielded by people and organizations across the personal development space for many years.
“Do this thing and you will get this result.”
“Ponder this question and it will change your life.”
“Buy this course and you will become a billionaire.”
This type of narrative has always been present, but in the past many months, I’ve seen it increase exponentially. And it feels unsettling.
It feels like people are constantly yelling above each other. No listening, just yelling - like a noisy dinner table with nonstop clamoring for the loudest voice to win.
Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you enjoy it? Perhaps you do. But I certainly don’t. Neither as a participant nor as an observer.
And yet, the coaching and personal development industries aren’t the only place this absolutism is showing up. It’s appearing to increase everywhere.
“This food is killing us while that other diet will save us all.”
“College degrees and certificates are a costly scam but the more degrees and certifications someone has the more trustworthy they are.”
“Their belief system is ruining the world and they should be stopped yet the people criticizing my beliefs are judgmental people who can’t mind their own business.”
It’s not the contradictions that are the issue. Life is a giant contradiction. Contradictions are necessary, beautiful and productive.
The issue that has been increasingly occurring is that there is a rapidly waning level of even the simplest acknowledgement that there is indeed a contradiction in the first place. We are increasingly, both within ourselves and as a greater society, seeing the extreme polarities and taking that as a sign to quickly adopt one of the certainties in the paradigm at play.
One of the definitions of ‘peace’ is “a state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended”. Peace exists in the grey area between the polar certainties. This is true in society. But most of all, it’s true within ourselves.
There will be times in your life, maybe even a few today, where you will find yourself asking - is this person, this animal, this food, this place, this perspective, this statement, this religion, this country, this behavior, this thought, this emotion….
….. is it helpful? Or is it harmful?
Chances are, it’s a little bit of both. Because everything is a little bit of both. And the accuracy of that innate contradiction is point from which real growth and evolution - both personal and societal - is possible.
My suggestion for you is this. When you are faced with this question, wait a little more. Listen a little longer. Sit for awhile in the in-between space. It might be uncomfortable at first, but it also will be where you find the peace - and corresponding safety - that you’ve been looking for this whole time.