The Other Is Not Wrong.
Living in a Bubble
What does it mean, the phrase “we all live in our own bubble”?
What does it feel like when we ‘know’ we are right and the other just doesn’t get it and won’t admit they are ‘wrong’? How frustrating that we cannot see eye to eye (or is it ‘I’ to ‘I’) Why do some people always have to be right?
Who is right?
Is it our duty to tell people when we “know” they are wrong and they “need” to be corrected. “I know how the world is, what is needed here, and I can’t let you go on thinking that way” I will persist until you admit your were wrong. Only then can I relax. If not now, then I will wait for the next opportunity to help you understand”
I can explain gently or forcefully, but you still need to understand that I am right! How hard it can be to let things go. If I back down the Other will think they have won. What about my integrity? And justice ! And should we allow The Other to be right when they are clearly wrong (to me) What a thought!
Stories of our Lives
I am preparing for a biography workshop in a week’s time and have been reflecting on the value of retracing key life experiences using personal timelines through the phases of life. Such enormous questions and realisations about our lives can be unearthed in biography work.
Who am I and where am I going? What is my purpose? Why do I keep getting stuck? Why do I repeat the same mistakes? Some people don’t understand, if only they had not acted in that way, how different my life would have been; and some people are my saviours. As I look back, I see I didn’t realise how important they were to me. I need a stroke of luck soon… could I be guided by angels or is someone always out to get me? There is nothing I can do... it’s fate…
How uniquely we feel our experiences and what is it that seems to lead us into developing in such different ways? Why is one person’s reaction to an event so different to another’s? Is there a reason why one person can cope with an adverse experience and another seems to give up? Where do I discover my resilience? If only x had happened then y…
All these questions feel overwhelming. I find it so remarkable how easily we forget that our numerous and individual life experiences shape us so uniquely and form our particular view of the world. When I listen to another tell me their stories of their life experiences, I notice the urge to immediately find similarities in my own. Or the urge to share that I understand what went wrong and how they can fix it. I have the solutions! Yet, really whose story is this?
That thought alone is sobering.
I Just Want to Help
I have, in the past, and sometimes still do, fall back into assuming that I fully understand and begin quite quickly forming ideas about the “right way” to go about resolving situations. This is based on the idea that their story appears so similar to mine, or that I learnt from a similar experience, and this is what I would do, I read something, somewhere, I heard something and therefore I know - this is what they should do. I really believe, in good faith, that sharing my thoughts about a person’s next step is the” right” thing to do. I have a desire to help. But I cling to my own thoughts in my own bubble of experience… it is so easy to feel frustrated when the Other doesn’t listen, doesn’t follow my advice. I know I am right.
I am in danger of not understanding the view of the world as seen by the Other. I live in my bubble and the world makes sense to me in my bubble and forms the ways I respond to the world. And the Other lives in theirs - and to each of us it is our means of survival, it is what shaped us to act as we do, and to feel as we do, and to think how we do, at least up to this point.
So, how can the Other be wrong, when how they act, feel, and think is formed from their journey this far? How will it better for them if I can recognise, “You are not wrong” ? Then there is nothing to defend and new space can open up.
How to cross through the barrier of our individual bubbles to truly be with and see another? How to free someone and allow them the possibility of seeing me? I have more to say…! The inspiration comes from Active Practical Love, The How to Love Course, where we can actively find exercises to help us move beyond the sense of separation and the need to be right. In this way we can enter a greater sense of ease, releasing tension and frustration towards others.
See more info under Courses - Active Practical Love
Truth Seeking
After the Biography workshop on 16,17, 18th October at Highgate House School, I hope to open my eyes a little more and loosen my grip on needing to correct and put right just a little more. With reverence for The Other immersed in their own experience…as I guide our group of participants with my colleague through exercises to reveal more of their own Truth, as we listen to each other and share our stories. We can only speak of our own Truth. This is awe inspiring. I uncover my Truth whilst the Other can be my witness. I witness the Other so they can understand and discover their own Truth. After all, the journey towards our Truth is what unites us as human beings.
In that open space we created through listening, I meet you, I see you…
I am thinking of the famous words of Rumi:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about”
TBC
With love
Julie x