Midas Touch but for Pain
some people have the ability to diminish all they touch
some people have the ability to diminish all they touch
Some people make everything they touch less than it was before they touched it. I’m not referring to people who are negative and naysayers on the surface. The people I’m talking about lack some basic element, like empathy or compassion, so everything they do is infused with a subtle but corrosive lack. This lack permeates what they do and their relationships. We all have lacks, flaws or things we aren’t strong at. This lack is a Midas touch for inflicting pain, on themselves and everyone they encounter.
To put it another way: nobody is perfect. These people, those with a reverse Midas touch, they manage to have stronger blind-spots, deeper faults; their lacks contaminate their dealings. They make things less than. That is not their intention, that is not their goal. But often, sometimes always, they can’t stop themselves.
Maybe they have a sense of righteousness that runs amuck. They are in a moment where real, tangible progress can be made, and instead of making that progress, they shoot their mouth off in the ill informed pursuit of what they think is right, and end up paying empty lip service to something while squandering anotherchance for actual movement in the direction they want things to go.
They opt-out of their better selves. They instead decide bad things are actually good, or somehow not as bad as other things. Perhaps in moment of fluster or overwhelm, they end up making unconscionable allowances for bad things that typically they might think they even oppose. It’s a response to not knowing how to cope or process all the things going wrong. It ends up leading them to opt-out. They then act or say things are somehow ok when they are far from it.
Maybe they’re scared. Fear they can’t tolerate. They can’t find a way to calmly co-exist with it, so it drives their actions. This fear drives them for key moments and subtly erodes any accumulation of growth, of both themselves and their aims. Fear can rust out the core of their good intentions. They may actually have good intentions, but they become moot in their fear-based actions and responses.
The opportunities turned to dust, the progress arrested in its tracks as if by air brakes, the losses of good things from their lives aren’t even seen, known or recognized by them. They simply end up smaller. Everything they touch ends up reduced. Everything they are and could be, and everything and everyone they come in contact with ends up attenuated. It is as if the volume was turned down, or limited. By them.
And a tragedy of it, in addition to the human costs of potentials unrealized, in addition to the goals forever stuck at an unreachable horizon, is they may never even know what they’ve done. They can end up old, either literally or metaphorically, and shouting at the clouds. They curse the world for not “getting it.” They rail at the “other people” who didn’t cooperate, the non-compliance of everyone who couldn’t make their vision, which they themselves hobbled, into reality.
And here’s the kicker: we can all be the person with the a Midas touch for pain. We can all destroy our dreams. The call can come from inside the house.
This isn’t a treatise on getting out of our own way, or stopping self-sabotage, though those are worthy pursuits. This is a cry from the dark to have us, each and every one of us, see the costs of our assumptions. Our blind spots, our lacks, our obliviousness at basic human things unmake our every undertaking.
It can be as simple to say and hard to understand as empathy. Failing to truly be able to engage other people with empathy and compassion will make our every act become small. No leader can truly lead well without empathy and compassion. It doesn’t matter if someone has a title of leader or not.
A recently new person in any group or project can be a leader if they can effectively and efficiently understand the other people involved. Not just a superficial understanding of people’s surface wants, but a more complete grasping of what is going on with the people you are working with, talking to and even those we love. Love must have compassion and empathy at its beck and call.
It can be as seemingly obvious as pushing back on denial. Denial is a natural reaction that seems to become available to us in many ways, like when we face loss, danger or surprise. It can even be valuable and serve a good purpose to protect us from things too big, too jarring and too hard to absorb all at once. Denial can even save our lives, at points. But denial can, like so many things, also rob us of what is most precious.
As uncomfortable as truth can so often be, it remains true without any believers, without any champions arguing its case. It is the nature of truth to remain impervious anything that is not itself; truth requires no externalities to remain true.
Truth, in every form, is not always knowable. But truth is always compelling in its steadfastness and resistance to opinion. We may not want to admit, or be able to admit, or even have access to the truth at all times, but the more we deny it, the more we luxuriate in or cling to denial, the more it keeps us from the strength of truth. It can be large philosophical truths and more contained truths.
Who, once an adult, hasn’t at least been tempted, consciously or otherwise, to believe a fiction about oneself? Who hasn’t denied to themselves something important, like an insight that, while unconformable, remained true? It may have been large, but it could also have been small and personal.
Maybe it was the unnerving reality of being exceedingly angry at someone very close and beloved. Or the unsettling and disruptive revelation that something we thought “should” be done, would be best not done. Or something we “needed” that was actually not good for us. Maybe we hate someone for something they have done while also loving them so much we don’t understand it, can’t fathom it. Perhaps we cannot square who we deeply think we are with what we also need, deeply.
If we let them, our human vagaries will gnaw at all we do. Our inabilities we don’t even think we have can ruin; they can ruin everything.
Humbleness in the face of our own selves can let things thrive. If we will not allow ourselves errors, even with what’s important, our growth stops. Things that don’t grow wither. And yes, growth can be painful. Pain is, heartrendingly, unavoidable. Misery is an option we can choose willfully by thinking we know everything and have nothing to learn.
Midas turned everything to gold, with every touch, until at last he destroyed what was most precious to him by touching it. There are those among us who reduce what they touch through their cracked assumptions and unmended broken hearts. Like Midas, they will end up touching and souring what is most precious to them too. Do not recoil in fear and seek a rigid way to avoid this. Instead: work to grow, to admit and again and again rediscover your own foibles, and aim to mitigate them, mend them, grow beyond them and strengthen yourself for the benefit of all you touch.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ―Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
David August is an award-winning actor, writer, director and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run it’s now out on Amazon Prime. He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. Off screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies and major studios helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the internet.
