I have been really angry lately, and like so many of you my usual coping skills aren’t always available to me due to COVID. These days I can pretty much measure my level of affect by how far out of my way I am willing to go to get sweets. Today was a soda and chocolate chip cookie day. The world is tough for empaths right now, and my capacity for holding the feelings of others is wearing thin – thin enough that I have had to set pretty clear boundaries in order to keep loving my family as well as I can and showing up with compassion in my work. This thin layer of emotional capacity with which I skate is why I have been quiet on social media about some things that really matter to me, and I wanted to put some things out there.
First of all, black lives matter. I am heartbroken not only about police brutality (which, by the way, is in no way a new story) but also the continual learning and unearthing of systemic racism, both from within and without, that has taken place for me over the past four years. If you don’t believe systemic racism is real then I don’t think you are hearing the cries excruciating pain people of color and indigenous humans are trying to express here. Listen up.
Second, this pandemic situation is hard. That’s it – it’s just hard. It’s hard for the people who are losing people. It is hard for the people making decisions about school and parenting, teetering on the edge of financial crisis, and drowning in options that feel heartbreaking and impossible. It’s hard for people stuck far away from family where the decision to love means the decision to be apart. We have not all experienced the same amount of loss (as if loss could somehow be quantified) but we have all lost something, and this global collective grief is uncharted territory for us all. We are all learning how to live with this in real time.
Third, good gracious election season is upon us. I can’t open social media without wanting to hurl my phone across the room, and I am sure the people that make me want to hurl probably want to hurl me too. I feel like we are in a sea of crappy options once again – of course I have a really strong opinion of the lesser of the evils – but that is not the point today.
I want to talk about how we listen to each other. I will clarify now that I am not asking you to empathize with the wearer of the boot that is on your neck. What I am asking is for all of us to listen for the pain. When you see something that makes your blood boil on social media, ask yourself where the pain is – for you and for the person/side/party/entity you are in “dialogue” with. We can argue opinions until we are blue in the face, but feelings aren’t up for debate. If someone is feeling hurt, they are feeling hurt. It does not get us anywhere productive to ignore or debate the hurt or the fear at the root of the “argument.” Of course, there is still room for debate and discussion about action, justice, and solutions, but could we do it while assuming the humanity of the other persons involved? Can we assume that if they say they are hurt that we can believe them and learn more about their pain? Can we remember that we are dealing with a person in pain or a person in fear as we process and metabolize their behaviors and responses with this in mind? It’s time we stop reducing people to their identifications. We are not robots, and there are hurts, fears, and hopes that underly all of our behavior.
This is not a “we’re all in this together” and “we can solve all of our problems with kindness” message, because I don’t believe we should expect or ask for people to handle their real pain only in the way that would be most convenient for us. I am simply advocating that as we interact with each other, argue with each other, work together, and even fight hard with each other that we remember the humanity of the person on the other end. Systems are made of people, but individual people aren’t systems in and of themselves.
As I sit amidst the flicker of mosquito torches to give space to the noise in my head, this phrase comes to mind – “Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.” It’s a quote by Stephen Covey, and it took forever for me to remember where I heard it or why it was so quick to pop in my head, but then I realized it was one of the leadership habits taught in my kids public school. Let’s see if we can learn from our first grade friends.
**Even as I type I now there are things I am missing. To quote Brené Brown, “I not here to be right, I am here to get it right.” Here is blanket permission to lovingly call me out on my blind spots.
{re}image 