There’s pain in many faces I see, as reality doesn’t match dreams

By David McElroy · November 14, 2020

For just a moment, I thought she was going to cry.

She had turned her body and her face away from her husband and their two young children. I don’t think she knew anybody could see her. There was pain in her face. It wasn’t anger. It was the pain of disappointment and resignation. And then she pasted her mask back on and returned to the life which seemed to hurt her so much.

That’s what I saw anyway. Maybe I’m wrong. But for the long moment when I looked into her face and saw something that no human should have to feel, time slowed and I felt as though I could have reached out and touched her soul.

This was Friday night in the Walmart near my house, but I see similar pain on faces all around me, almost every day. I see people who I believe are miserable. It seems as though the pain and hurt and disappointment are etched onto their faces — hidden briefly by masks — and I wonder why nobody else seems to see what I see.

I could build a narrative for the woman I saw in the store, but there are dozens of stories that could explain the details of what I saw. Her husband had just snapped something at her. I don’t know if they had argued. I don’t know what might have led to that moment as they walked through the store with their kids.

I just know that he said something in a tone that was low and mean and cold. Whatever he said stung her. She turned away because she knew not to respond. Maybe she didn’t want a public argument. Maybe she didn’t want her kids to see what their parents are really like.

Whatever the rest of the story is, I can be certain of one thing. Her life is nothing like what she had dreamed it to be. When I see this particular look in people’s faces, it feels almost as though they’re halfway between living this life and simply disappearing into nothingness. Life is painful for them — and they don’t know why.

Some people watch birds. Others watch television. I watch people. I look at their faces. I try to see what I can read in them. Sometimes their faces are blank or neutral. Most people know to guard their feelings from the world around them.

But every now and then, her mask slips — or maybe his or maybe that one over there — and there’s raw emotion on display for the world to see. In those moments, the person’s naked soul is thrust out from behind the mask — as though in a desperate plea for understanding or connection. For someone to help. For someone to care what they’re going through.

I don’t think they consciously feel these things. I think they mostly feel blank in those moments. But I think there’s some little piece of themselves which wants — instinctively more than consciously — for someone to see who they really are.

I’ve always watched people in these ways. I’ve always seen some of the hidden pain I’m talking about. But I see more of it than ever today. It’s been getting worse for decades. As modern culture gets more dysfunctional and unhealthy, more and more people know something’s wrong, but they have no idea where to turn.

Their culture has sold them a lie. It’s a lie depicting unlimited pleasure and happiness and fun, but it turns out that the people in the dream projections are plastic and cold and the golden pleasures are nothing but flimsy cardboard which falls apart on close inspection.

It’s a culture which believes it’s killed off God. It’s a culture where nothing is sinful or evil except to believe differently than the culture says to believe. It’s a culture where the underlying messages are to worship false gods and to revel in consumption and pleasure.

It’s a culture which is dying. And the hurting people don’t understand that they will continue to hurt — and to be disappointed and confused and alienated — as long as they keep trying to live by the patterns which this culture commands them to obey.

I know there’s another path, not just in a happy afterlife to come, but in a joyful experience of love and family and community right here and now.

But the culture has perverted what love means. The culture is confused about what a family ought to be. And the desire to consume and compete keeps us isolated in our cardboard mansions, almost completely separated from each other.

I hate the pain I see on the faces around me. I hate the grief and disappointment that I saw on the face of that woman tonight. I hate the lies which are so deeply embedded in the dysfunctional culture. But I can do nothing about any of this, because I can’t make the changes — in hearts and minds — that will bring about renewal and salvation.

Our culture is broken. Most people seem to be suffering. We are desperately in need of redemption, but that has to start in the heart of every single person. It has to start with the conscious decision to reject the lies which keep us married to evil.

I want to build a new culture, one which is healthier and more honest and more joyful. I just wish I could reach out to each one of these hurting souls and say, “Will you come with me? Are you willing to start all over?”

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I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

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