Sometimes I become unsettled by something someone appears to have said or done, or by the way they seem to be living, and I have the impulse to fix them or their situation.
When I am unsettled, that impulse to fix things is always coming from a place of JUDGMENT (categorizing the world into “good” and “bad”) and whenever I let judgment spur me to action, the actions I take to fix things never work. They usually make things worse.
Because when I’m judging people, I am wrong. 100% of the time. Because nothing is good or bad. Everything is whole.
There’s judging people and there’s knowing people. They are opposites.
When I truly know someone, I don’t judge them. I see that they are too complex for a simple “good” or “bad.” When I’m judging someone, it’s because I don’t truly know them. And how can I fix what I don’t truly know?
Knowing people increases understanding and dissolves tensions.
Judging people increases tensions and dissolves understanding.
Judging people means standing apart and noticing and evaluating differences. It highlights discomfort and assigns blame.
Knowing people involves moving in, learning names and listening to stories. It means standing together and sharing experience from a common perspective. When I do this, I see things I can’t see when I’m standing apart.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “Everything is interesting if you look into it deeply enough.” It’s an amazing phrase because you can substitute ANYTHING for “interesting” and it still works. Try “worthy-of-love” for instance. “Everyone is worthy of love if you look into them deeply enough.”
An adaptive feature of the human mind is that it considers that which is familiar and understood as “good.” Even the things we consider “bad.” We prefer the “devil we know” over the promise of improvement at the risk of the unknown.
As I get to know you, I come to understand you and become more familiar with you. When that happens, I begin to see you as “good.”
Which means...
Until I see your goodness, I do not know you.
I haven’t gotten close enough. I am standing apart, staying at the surface and maintaining a judge position, out of fear.
Which is totally understandable…
AND the source of all war.
Knowing someone is the end of war with them. And the beginning of peace. And the only place war and peace reside is within me. It is my choice.
When I understand this, my fear fades and I can risk getting to know someone. I can risk moving in closer because my reason for standing apart is gone.
The result of truly knowing someone is to see and gain access to their goodness. And I can work with anyone’s goodness.
IMPORTANT: this does not mean agreeing with their every thought or action: it simply means that, by experiencing their perspective, I witness the humanity at the core of what they’re thinking and believing and I recognize the “good” they hope to effect with what they’re saying or doing. The “good” (to them) that I’ve been going to war with and so destroying our peace.
When I come to know someone, I can now hold both of our perspectives in mind.
When I can do that without judgment, I become a bridge.
Which doesn’t mean I abandon anything I hold dear. It means I can clear up what I TRULY hold dear and what the other truly holds dear (which so often turns out to be the same thing).
For instance: when I don’t know you, I may hold dear certain protections to myself that separate us, but when I know you, it may clarify for me the impact of these protections on us both and I may no longer find them to be in alignment with my values. I find that, when I know you, I do not, in fact, hold them dear.
If I really want to fix things, I have to get these things straight.
So before considering how to fix things I must first know the people involved because of what is illuminated through the knowing and what problems I will discover are already solved through the process of knowing. And so I move onto “fixing things” only AFTER “knowing people.”
So when I find myself unsettled by someone:
Step 1: Get to know them (because if I think they’re the cause of my suffering, I can be sure I don’t).
Step 2 (if still necessary): Fix things.
This goes for problems that arise with people I’ve “known” my entire life.