Attachment to Drama

Yesterday morning as usual, over my bowl of steel- cut oats and my cup of fresh-brewed coffee, I opened the New York Times and started reading. I never read the whole thing, but rather scan for articles that seem important. I was reassured, in an odd way, to see news about the continuing pandemic at the top rather than mid-way down or at the bottom of the opening spread. This continuing health disaster, accounting for more deaths in one year than all of World War II, has finally become the main issue it should have been for the past ten months.

But, to my dismay, I found myself skipping over all these articles and looking for stories about our former President. Apparently, I have developed some kind of attachment to my ongoing objections. I appear to be slightly addicted to my visceral responses to the terrible stuff he was doing in the last weeks of his term in office. Some part of me wants to keep reading about how bad it was and how narrowly the forces of good defeated the engines of evil.

I am slightly ashamed and quite interested.

The past four years have been very disturbing to me as our then-President shattered norms and pushed democracy to the brink of collapse. Over time I learned to be careful about the amount of time I spent looking at the newspaper or consuming news in any form. If I ingested too much, I would fall into states of agitation and fear that were difficult to exit.

We human beings are amazing in our capacity to read words on a page or hear someone talking on a screen and, from that, to imagine all kinds of awful and wonderful things. This capacity to create worlds in our minds is one of our great blessings and great difficulties.

One wonderful thing about these dreaming verbal minds is that we can think of what has never been. If my house is painted yellow, I can imagine what it might look like painted green. If my country is led by someone who I think is only concerned with enriching himself, I can imagine other leaders who might be less self-obsessed and then work to get them elected. If my mind is swirling with fearful thoughts, I can consider what I might do or not do in order to diminish my visceral suffering.

But one difficultly with our minds is that we can’t tell the difference between something that is actually going on and something we are just thinking. For example, imagine you are holding a slice of lemon in your hand right now. Picture the bright yellow wedge and imagine smelling its tangy citrus aroma. Now imagine bringing this slice toward your mouth and taking a big bite. Are you salivating and/or bracing for the sour tang in your mouth? There is no lemon nearby, but our minds are fooled.

Similarly, we react to what is happening in the country based on our thoughts and stories about what is happening (and what has happened) in the country. Have we narrowly avoided a strongman dictator who overturned rightfully conducted elections or have the elections somehow been manipulated by those in power for their own benefit? Many of the people who stormed the Capital on January 6 saw themselves to be true and courageous patriots. In their minds, they were saving the country from the Jews and the Blacks and the liberals who were stealing what is rightfully theirs.

This is where ‘truth’ comes in. Historically, we have agreed upon certain assumptions about what is ‘really going on.’ These assumptions have to do with verifiable information that can be evaluated by impartial judges who, in the end, will mostly agree about what happened. Our democracy is based on a freedom to debate and discuss the causes and the meanings of events, but our current divide seems to be more along the lines of an argument about truth itself.

But back to my problem.

Am I willing to let go of my attachment to my righteous certainty of good and evil? Can I let go of the thrill of outrage of high drama and begin reading articles about legislation and the complex work of a functioning democracy trying to meet unprecedented challenges?

I do indeed think we came very very close to losing our democracy to the machinations of one man and his cabal of authoritarian henchmen. But he was defeated in the past election and Joe Biden is now President. Biden once jokingly promised a boring Presidency and already the daily drama has lessened. White House press conferences are happening again and involve questions and answers. National strategies to fight against the pandemic are being constructed and rolled out based on evidence and science.

Huge and momentous issues are being debated and discussed. Power struggles and political jockeying for position are endless. But I do think we have entered new territory and I want to do my part to de-escalate the rhetoric and to moderate my extremist tendencies. In the end, I’m more than willing to give up the high drama of the past four years and to do my part to find new ways to live, work and be together.

Relationships as Possibility

Relationships, both with the people we care about and with the people we don’t care about, unfold over time through multiple actions and reactions. And every relationship contains within it, all the other relationships we have ever had.

Many of our perceptions and reactions in our relationships are more about what has happened to us before than to what is happening to us in the moment. If I felt lonely as a young boy, I will more sensitive to things you say or do, however small, that awaken that ancient sense of being alone. If other relationships have lessened my capacity to trust that it’s OK to show up as myself, I will unconsciously interpret things you do as evidence to verify the lessons I carry with me. So when we relate to others, we are also relating to ourselves and to the history of every relationship we have ever had.

Through the pandemic I have had the good fortune to be in a bubble with my wife, daughter, son-in-law, grandson and one Zen friend. I’m thinking now especially of my grandson Isaiah who is nearly two. Just about one day a week, my wife and I have had the pleasure of taking care of him while his parents work. With so many grandparents unable to travel and be in physical connection with their grandchildren, I’m a little embarrassed to write about him, but, he has been and continues to be a great teacher for me, so I feel compelled to mention him again.

Over the past year Isaiah has learned to jump from small ledges, walk backwards while laughing, formulate his experience into full sentences (‘Red car goes down street.’) and help me wash the dishes. I have to admit that he’s not very efficient yet as a dishwasher, but the enthusiasm he brings to the task more than compensates for his lack of skill. Isaiah has also learned that sometimes he doesn’t get what he wants but that his grandfather doesn’t always know the guidelines and may also be more likely to bend to his will than his parents so, hey, it’s worth a try. But all these interactions, with me, with his parents, with his teachers and friends at nursery school—all these formative interactions will not be consciously remembered by him as he moves through the years and decades (hopefully) of his life ahead.

Our world-view forms long before our capacity to remember or talk about it does. Like all children, Isaiah, will hold these deep and formative experiences as a template to organize information and experience as it comes to him throughout his life. Perhaps he’ll remember a few things from the coming year of being three, but his conscious memory won’t really kick in in an organized way until he’s four or five, or that’s how it is for me looking back. So Isaiah, like all of us, will be reacting to the people in his life based on the lessons he has learned from the past, a huge chunk of which will be unavailable to his conscious memory. Seems like a recipe for misunderstanding and confusion.

Indeed, misunderstanding, confusion and therefore conflict and difficulty are an unavoidable part of relationships. Relationships not just with other people, but with the world around us and even with ourselves. The template of our understanding is always trying to fit new information and experiences into what has come before. While this is healthy and necessary, it also leads to significant misinterpretation and the general lag of our current understanding with what is actually happening in the moment.

But the good news is that through this necessary confusion and conflict we can actually come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. Some of the things I have learned in the past are accurate and helpful. But other assumptions that guide my thought and behavior, while they may have been true at one time, are no longer true or useful. Relationship with others, especially ones that are challenging, can help us understand and work with the many unconscious assumptions we carry with us.

This is why I think that relationships are, at their heart, a spiritual practice. Fancy words, being nice and looking good are no match for the reality of living with or being in an ongoing relationship for another being. Even fiercely held limiting beliefs about the world can be worn down, cured and even transformed in the crucible of being with each other. Our partners and family, our friends, our pets and even our enemies are all wonderful teachers. Through each person we meet, we can begin to see through our limited certainty about how things are and how things should be into the wide possibilities that are always emerging at this very moment.

Everyone we encounter, in person or through what we see on TV or read in the paper is some kind of reflection of our many selves. From this perspective, we can be curious about each other whether we agree or not. There is plenty of room for variety both inside and out. Even with our partners and close friends (especially with our partners and close friends?) we will not agree on everything. With people from different backgrounds and political perspectives, the necessary differences may be even more obvious.

This is not a problem, but a starting point. When we loosen our expectation that everyone should be just like us we can begin to appreciate the wondrous variation of the world around and within us. Everyone we meet is some important part of who we are.

Mr. Rogers was right, each person we meet is our neighbor and has an internal life of depth, difficulty and value. And today is indeed a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Working Through Discomfort

The story:
My friend was very upset with what I wrote. They let me know in no uncertain terms how hurt they felt and how personally offensive my words were. I felt terrible and foolish. I wrote back acknowledging the truth of some of what they said and apologizing for the hurt my words had caused. They wrote back and said how much my response meant to them. I was surprised and incredibly touched.

My response to the response to the response:
We’re always playing long game in relationships. Relationships unfold over time through multiple actions and reactions. Relationships are an ongoing creation of interweaving responsiveness. And reactivity is just a kind of vivid responsiveness. While many kinds of reactivity feel unpleasant (anger, shame, fear, confusion), reactivity is itself a manifestation of connection. And I’m now wondering if the deep and subtle joy that arose in me in response to my friend’s last communication might also be called a kind of reactivity

Though this interaction over the past couple of days, I’m beginning to see more clearly how my desire not to upset other people is a barrier to my connecting to those same people—especially to the people I perceive as ‘not like me’. This category of ‘not like me’ is utterly elastic and can range from a small subset of ‘those people’ who hold different political beliefs or see the world in a particular way or worship a different God—to everyone who is not me. Some days, even the people who are closest to me feel like strangers and I imagine I live in a world of utter aloneness—trapped in with my own terminal uniqueness.

Though it is may be admirable to care about how other people feel and how our actions impact them, I’m rediscovering that this is not a reliable or effective guide for human interaction. Partly because my intention to not hurt other people is often a cover for my desire not to feel uncomfortable and partly because there is something more important than avoiding conflict. There are things worth feeling uncomfortable for.

A young friend of mine used to play a computer game called Sim-City. The point was to use the resources you had to create thriving interactive cities. The success of your cities could be measured on different scales: population, economic activity, diversity, etc. One measure of success was to have the city with the lowest crime rate. My friend discovered (and this may have been a bug that was repaired in later editions of the game) that you could get your crime rate to zero if you bulldozed the whole city. And effective but self-defeating strategy.

So too, I might imagine that I could realize my dream of not hurting the people around me if I withdraw. There are, of course, many ways to withdraw. We can become hermits and not call or write or see anyone. But we can also withdraw in place by smiling and nodding—pretending that we are agreeable to everything when in fact we are simply refusing to participate fully. We can withdraw into stony silence and respond to inquiries about our internal state by announcing that we are ‘fine.’ We can cultivate an empty neutrality and just not come forward with anything. And these are just a few of my top avoidance strategies. I’m sure we all have our own favorites and infinite variations—all designed to keep us safe—but all having a huge cost.

All of these strategies have been necessary to our survival and are still necessary to some degree. But if we want to live fully and if we want to give our gifts in service of healing the world, we have to be willing to tolerate a lot of discomfort. A friend recently told me they wanted to live a ‘more courageous’ life. I resonate with their words.

For me, tolerating discomfort only makes sense when I remember and clarify what is more important than feeling comfortable. As I think about my friend from the first story and the deep pleasure of feeling even slightly more connected to them, I think that that connection was and will continue be worth feeling uncomfortable for.

And I think of my dream of a more just and free society, where people feel safe and are given the opportunities to cultivate and give their gifts to each other. Maybe this too is worth making mistakes and feeling uncomfortable for.

Working With My Reactivity

I got a very angry email yesterday from a dear friend from the past. I had forwarded one of my blogs to them because of a reference I thought they would appreciate. At the moment I sent it, I wasn’t thinking about our conflicting political views which have led to a decades-long détente of silence. My intention was share a story as a way of building connection. The result was just the opposite.

Their response and their anger was triggered by excitement I expressed in a paragraph at the end of the piece over the then upcoming inauguration of Biden and Harris and the possibilities of working together to heal our divided country. To them, this felt like gloating.  They reprimanded me strongly for my lack of empathy for the pain they and 75 million other Americans are feeling—for being a poor winner. My response to their response was surprise, confusion, fear, and guilt—all arising in a strong swirl that felt like a punch to the gut.

I’m just beginning a thirty-part virtual program designed to build skills for activists who want to have conversations that can lead to a reduction of racism in the U.S. The program seems to have several names: The RACE Boot Camp Method or Equipping Anti-Racism Allies: The Unitarian Universalist Edition or ACT (Ally Conversation Toolkit)   Their stated goal is:

to significantly reduce the percentage of white Americans who think that racism against white people is just as important a social problem as racism against people of color—55% in 2017. The goal of the initiative is to catalyze a cultural shift so that this figure is reduced to 45% by 2025.

They go on to explain:

The RACE Method Boot Camp is based on the finding that conversational approaches using respectful dialogue, empathy, and story telling are more effective in influencing people compared with conversational styles that emphasize factual information, debate, combat, and shaming people.

This all makes sense to me and clearly applies not just to conversations about race, but also about politics, gender issues, religious issues and all other hot button issues that quickly tend toward the polarization that is endemic in our country these days. The program is based on cultivating specific skills to allow the possibility of dialogue where now there is just mutual accusation or the separation of silence, judgment and fear.

Anyway, I’m now on step two which is about learning quick relaxation skills and deep listening. They open with describing the need:

Our hope is that we can do our small part in creating a world where compassion and equity are the hallmarks of daily life. A key requirement is that we find a way to stop the internal chatter and calm our own heightened fear responses so that we can deeply listen to others and understand the deeper human motivations that unite us. We must do this even when others sometimes say things that make them seem very different than ourselves.

So reading this email yesterday, I had the opportunity to practice working with my reactivity. My first observation was how terrible it felt in my body. l felt almost sick. Thoughts came quickly: I had made a terrible mistake that might cost a very important relationship. I was afraid and wished I had not done anything at all. Silence and inaction were clearly better than an unskillful and hurtful action like this.

I focused on my breath and allowed myself to feel the wild amalgam of physiological responses my body was having. I reached out to a friend for support. I sent an email of apology for my unskillfulness. And I have been reflecting on the encounter off and on ever since.

I finally went back this morning to reread their email. I found that most of the anger was directed not at me, but at the many times my friend has felt belittled and called names by voices in the mainstream media. He has felt that he and all the other people who supported Trump have been lumped in Hillary Clinton’s famous and deeply regrettable category of ‘the deplorables.’ He rightly pointed out that we need to stop gloating and calling each other names if we are to enter into any kind of genuine dialogue about our real differences of perspective.

I’m still working through this, but I see that one thing that has kept me from engaging with people with different views (both to the ‘right’ of me and to the ‘left’ of me) is fear of anger. I don’t know many people who like anger, but I grew up in a household where anger and direct confrontation were to be avoided at all costs. I think it was a loving family, but strong emotions and differences of opinion were mostly held in silence to avoid confrontation and the heat of disagreement.

But there is a cost to silence. When my fear holds me back from speaking of my perspective and asking about yours, then difference divides us and possibility is diminished. I’m now rereading the introduction to the boot-camp and I see there is yet another name for the program that involves the phrase compassionate warriors.    

The wise and wild Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa used a similar phrase. He called us all to be tender-hearted warriors. May it be so for all of us and may we find the courage to take the actions and have the conversations that will lead to healing and connection.

New Beginnings of Our Continuing Work

What an astonishing and moving day yesterday was. To see, at a little after eight in the morning, a lone helicopter rising in the clear sky over Washington, D.C. and to know it was bearing away our not-quite-former President—clearing the ground for something new to happen, was an auspicious beginning. Then the rest of the day, as I was able to tune in after the fact and during the fact to the in-person and virtual happenings, unfolded as a vision of America as a nation of proud diversity and hope embodied in the persons of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and in the artists and ‘ordinary people’ of all ages, colors, backgrounds, beliefs and styles who were part of the ceremonies and celebrations. It was an historic and inspiring day.  Our first female and first Black and first Vice-President of Southeast Asian descent! We have indeed come so far.

During these past four years it has been easy to lose hope. We have witnessed some of the darkest strains of the American Dream. Our former President, just like our current one, was a manifestation, a reflection of who we are. His greed, fearfulness, boundless narcissism are woven deeply into our national history and into us all. He made it impossible to look away from the violence and discrimination that is the history and part of the current reality for every woman in our supposedly great land of ‘equality’. We were confronted with the continual demonstration of how immigrants and people of color and people who are ‘different’ are marginalized, stigmatized and objectified. Seeing the ongoing police violence against Black people, we were horrified and then horrified again as we looked closer at the ongoing history of violence that is indeed a part of who we are.

Anger, fear and divisiveness were the currency of our former President from his inaugural address through his final rallying of the crowd to storm the Capital. And these dark forces reside in every human heart.

But yesterday, amid the pomp, circumstance and celebration, not one speaker mentioned his name. Instead, Biden and his team (because the country is never run by one person, but by a far-flung team working in service of and co-creating that one person’s vision) delivered a carefully orchestrated day that demonstrated and laid out another true vision for America. They did not fight their predecessor, they did innumerate his sins or give him any attention. (I’m reminded here of the coaching adage I always share with my clients: If you fight with your gremlins, the gremlins always win.) The day was instead devoted to expressing, evoking, and embodying our better angels as we come together to meet the very real challenges that are before us.

Biden, in his inaugural address, did not shirk from the difficulty of our current situation. His straightforward language was both unflinching and inspiring. Biden invited all of us to join together and renew our resolve to meet the challenges set before us.  He said:

The American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.

On “We the People” who seek a more perfect Union. This is a great nation and we are a good people. Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go.

 We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility. Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal. Much to build. And much to gain. Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.

I was inspired and reassured. To be able to say, after all that we have witnessed in these past four years, that we are a great nation and we are a good people was to call us to a renewed vision. To hear the voice of the heart and possibility coming from the mouth of our President was tonic to my soul. His acknowledgment of pain and struggle were not the cry of one who is defeated or looking for someone to blame, but a clear-eyed look at the work that calls to all of us. Biden reminded us:  

Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear and demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial. Victory is never assured.

But it was the songs and the poems, the myriad colors and backgrounds of the artists and ‘ordinary’ people that were most inspiring. Our young poet laureate who sang and moved her deep words of inspiration. Jennifer Lopez’s soaring voice claiming a land that ‘was made for you and me.’   In the virtual evening celebration, the variety of musical styles and voices were demonstrations of joy and love in the midst of it all. Even my concern that Tom Hanks would turn into a block of ice before my eyes didn’t dampen my feelings the hopefulness, relief and joy that are present in this current moment.

Of course, now the work begins and now the work continues. The tasks ahead of us all are monumental. As Biden said, there is much to heal, much to build and much to gain.

For this brief and nourishing moment, let us once again touch and be touched by the high dream of this great and eternally imperfect country. Let us find new ways to come together. Let us each give our energies and talents wherever we can to join with those who came before us in creating and embodying our highest ideals of justice, liberty and possibility for all.