I’ve been thinking a great deal about how we connect or fail to connect with one another across our differences. I’ve found myself in any number of circumstances lately where I disagree with a judgement of others, but can see and even value their views. I want to honor that difference, respect individual autonomy, be open the idea of being wrong and having made mistake, but equally I want to be honored and respected the same in return. And yet, none of us get to decide how another human reacts to us. It is wholly out our control. There then comes the decision, what is too important to let go. What interactions require one to stand firm? When is that standing firm part of remaining engaged and when does it require letting go?
I’ve so valued so many relationships that I’ve often over a lifetime remained engaged past my point of personal comfort. That engagement has often felt like a moral value, to be present to and for the other. This hasn’t been the healthiest choice and I’ve got to say that in some cases has required some therapy to give myself permission to disentangle.
I have another character trait that is less integrated into my moral world view, avoidance. When I find parts of life too overwhelming, I just shut it off from my attention which I don’t feel capable of dealing with. Often this has nothing to do with difference and everything to do with my bandwidth. X feels like it is calling for attention, but if I engage, then Y and Z will suffer. Partly this is a result of over-commitment. Partly it can be burn out for staying engaged past the point of personal comfort.
I think of this avoidance as a moral failing. And, yet on a dispassionate morning, now, as I try make sense of all the ways my life is in turmoil and how my career feels as if it is approaching a turning point with a lack of clarity about what next, I see that both my attempts to connect across difference and my avoidance often derive from an inner need to feel safe. One action feels more moral than the other, but at their root the actions are about some primitive survival urge.
We need each other, but we can also hurt each other.
I don’t think I’ve always been the best judge of my own vulnerabilities. I know what it feels like inside my head, but not necessarily what I’m actually capable of doing. I’ve over and under-estimated both, often believing I can foresee the most likely future outcomes.
Hogwash. I am as human as the rest of you.
The peace I seek comes from the inside and from relationships in which the comfort comes with ease. The rest must be taken moment to moment.
I need to trust I will act as best I can and that past actions do not require second guessing, but rather lessons learned.
Do you think this post is about you?
It probably isn’t.
It is really just my morning musings about any number of recent events and my need to write ahead of a day of meetings where I hope to be genuine and true to myself. I’ve had a number of experiences recently where I’ve been both pleased and displeased with how difference of opinion has resolved. Some have deepened relationships, some have caused me to re-evaluate the wisdom of continued engagement.
This is ok.
I can learn from both. I can remain open to finding the connection. Withdrawing my engagement for a time does not necessitate an irreparable rift. Indeed, the withdrawal may be required to hold space for something better in the future.
Honesty and transparency, yes. Boundaries and self-preservation, also.
For those of you who follow this blog not for the inner workings of my mind but for my research (same, same), please know there is material forthcoming. I’ve been holding back on posting as I craft my talk for next Thursday in London, and for a new book project that I’ve started writing on the side. It has good momentum. In the style of my blogging voice but more of a popular accessible history.
May I have more time to write here and there soon!
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A friend asked in response to this post, “what is safety? How would you define it?”
My gut reaction: “it is an illusion! Something we strive for but can never attain. “
This answer helped me re affirm my way I look at life. There is only the now. We use our present conception of past and future to give meaning to the present, the now that flies away just as we notice it. I think this is part of why I love writing. The moment of making the words tangible let’s future me see evidence of a small part of reality as I made sense of it at the time. I can then engage in the future present with the same words by reading and more writing. Flaws and all.
I have a capacity to image innumerable futures and winding paths to them. That tangle of paths is often overwhelming even as I love the constant dreaming of moving into that imagined future present.
And yet more and more I sit on my porch and look at what my beloved calls “the purple moment”, the garden brimming with irises and alliums and columbines, with the bleeding heart holding on. This present in life I’ve made for myself and my family is the peaceful present as well as past and future, I value most.
The purple moment is in my minds eye on the nyc subway. In whatever neural pathways it has fired in my brain.
It feels like a memory of safety but that is an illusion. Instead it is peace. A memory of peace which may also be a goal and even a present emotion.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 