My Own Worst Enemy

As I've mentioned before, learning is like a spiral.  I keep encountering the same issues over and over again, but I usually get to approach them from a slightly new perspective.  This week, it was the idea of asking for what I want (which seems to have been on my mind about a year ago as well).  The challenge hasn't been in knowing what I want or how to articulate it.  Rather, I have this sense that people who are bold about stating what they want are jerks, to put it mildly.

Actually, that's not entirely true.  I respect people who state what they want clearly, and I appreciate knowing what matters to someone.  The option is to play guessing games, and that often winds up just being an exercise in frustration.  So really, my belief about stating what I want is that people are going to think that I am a jerk.  So, it's more about vulnerability and opening myself up to other people's judgment.  And if I'm honest about it, this means I often fear that other people will be a threat to getting what I want rather than a boon.  When I think about it intellectually, this is a silly fear, but it's still a fear.

So, even though I appreciate it when people are clear about what they want, the prospect of clearly expressing what I want has been intimidating.  The way I often perceive it, stating what I want puts me at other people's mercy.  Other people can determine whether I deserve what I want or not, and they get to decide whether they are going to help or hinder.  Of course, the irrational fear is that people are more likely to choose to hinder me than help me.  So, when I state what I want, I have to be strong about it.  Defiant even.  No wonder I'm afraid of coming across like a jerk.

But I don't want to come across as being a jerk, so I just keep my mouth shut about what I actually want and complain under my breath about not getting it.  When I really think about it, there are other options.  Stating what I want doesn't place any responsibility on someone else to make sure I get it.  Creating what I want is still up to me, and being clear about it can make all sorts of decisions easier.  Other people can play a part in that creation, but the responsibility for making what I want important is mine and mine alone.  While a few people have chosen to put obstacles in my path from time to time, others have been invaluable.  And although I don't know this, I suspect that the people who chose to make a situation more difficult than it could have been probably would have done so whether or not they knew what I wanted.

The best way for me to get what I want is to ask for it and trust in my ability to create it.  In personal relationships, this looks like what some people would call defining the relationship, being willing to say what I want clearly and being willing to listen to what the other person wants.  With the music I compose, it means creating without second guessing my vision for a piece, and diligently building relationships with performers so that the music can be heard.  Being honest with myself about what I really want in any given situation might mean setting the bar fairly high.  Personally, I would rather reap the benefits of dedication to a high standard than spend time complaining about not getting what I want.

Being Wrong

At one point, I worked with an organization whose members endeavored not to make other people wrong. It was an actual agreement among the leadership of the organization, but it was also a practice encouraged among its members. Not making other people wrong may seem like an awkward turn of phrase, but it essentially means accepting the validity of someone else's feelings and perspectives without insisting on being right. When we get into a right and wrong mindset, it is usually ourselves we would prefer to be right and the other person we'd prefer be wrong, so agreeing not to make another person wrong is a way of saying, "I don't need to be right. I'm open to other perspectives and ideas."

The intent, of course, was to encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, as well as receptivity and open-mindedness.  If I won't be criticized for what I say because no one going to make me wrong, then I'll be a lot more likely to contribute my ideas. The problem is that sometimes people are wrong.  Sometimes, people have faulty or incomplete information, and sometimes people draw erroneous conclusions from the information they have.  There are people and groups that continue banging their heads against proverbial walls because no one tells them that they're not looking at useful or accurate data. 

Now, you may conclude that there is a way to indicate that data is inaccurate or incomplete without insisting that an individual is "wrong".  That may have been the whole point of the agreement not to make other people wrong.  But when a person is on the receiving end of that communication, it can be pretty easy for our minds to translate even well-thought-out criticism as, "I'm wrong".  On top of that, one can spend so much effort verbally distinguishing a belief from the believer that any real meaning is lost. 

Of course, belief is the whole issue.  Once I look at a set of numbers and draw a conclusion, that conclusion quickly becomes a belief of mine, whether it's accurate or not.  Challenging someone's beliefs is a big deal.  It's understandable why a person would feel attacked when personal beliefs are on the line.  As you might imagine, many discussions degenerated into whether or not someone had made someone else wrong and never really got back to meaningful topics.  Sometimes everyone just drew different conclusions, and there was no way to reconcile them all into one perspective.  Even when you know that someone's information is inaccurate, if you don't want to be accused of making them wrong, you have to come up with just the right way to convince them to reexamine what they believe without having the tables turned back on your own beliefs. 

The result of that seemingly noble agreement was that everyone's ideas and perspectives were not equally considered, and everyone's conclusions were not equally scrutinized.  Nor should they have been necessarily, except that the claimed framework for interaction suggested otherwise. Just having a policy of honesty and maintaining an open forum where being wrong was OK would have been much easier and, I think, more effective.

I am sometimes wrong.  Everyone I know is sometimes wrong.  We get information and draw conclusions.  When we get more information, we confirm or adjust those conclusions.  We're doing this constantly.  There's no way that anyone can go through life without believing something that's a little bit off at some point.  The challenge for me is not to avoid making other people wrong; it's to be willing to accept when I am wrong about something.  It's not the end of the world.  If it's a big deal not to make someone else wrong, that becomes a threatening situation.  If someone suggests that I'm wrong, I have to defend myself because they're out of line?  Not really.  If we never figure out where we are wrong in our conclusions, we can never improve anything, unless it's sheer luck.  

There isn't necessarily a right and wrong in every situation, and some people will point out a perceived mistake when they don't have accurate information themselves.  Sometimes, there is absolutely a gentle way to let someone else know that they've jumped to a conclusion that doesn't quite make sense, and I'm all in favor of providing more useful data to someone if they're willing to hear.  I think words spoken in love will always be easier to hear.  But the biggest thing is not being afraid to be wrong.  It will happen.  Best to have trustworthy people around you who will send up the red flags rather than perform semantic acrobatics.  

Poem for Memorial Day

[Initially, I had a rather complex indention scheme for this poem, which does not work well in this particular electronic interface.  I learned a bit about indenting lines in html, still was not pleased with the rendering on the screen, and so made some adjustments and adapted.  In any case, it was a short lesson in recognizing when an ideal may be a bit precious when creativity meets practical reality.]
 
Memorial (for soldiers known and unknown)
 
I honor you, O soldier,
who has fought and died with impassioned conviction.
I honor your commitment to a purpose, to an unassailable belief,
whether that belief welled up from within your soul
or manifested through intense indoctrination;
I honor the hard and fast lines of your truth,
even as I vehemently disagree with them.

In honoring you, I do not endorse the military industrial complex,
that hydra god
which can never be memorialized in its undying profits.
I honor your humanity,
your finite strength and infinite fallibility,
I honor your humanity,
your reckless courage and poorly hidden fear,
I honor your humanity,
O soldier who has fought and died.

You fought and died
for that elusive ideal labeled Freedom.
You fought and died
for inalienable rights
which can neither be conferred nor revoked by any human endeavor,
you fought and died
that power should remain in the hands of those
with the loudest voices and the deepest pockets,
you fought and died
that people who are as safe as anyone can possibly be
might believe that they are more secure than anyone can possibly be;
you fought and died
that the unborn might have the right to choose oblivion
over childhoods of poverty and neglect;
you fought and died
that consenting adults
might follow their sexual proclivities with impunity;
you fought and died
that any who prefer to do so
may wish a person Happy Holidays without fear of reprisal;
you fought and died
that the wealthy might entice the desperate
to orgiastic acts of depravity,
filmed and broadcast for the working class on pay-per-view;
you fought and died
with a steadfast devotion to people who never cared to know you,
clutching your military rosary beads, the chain of command.

You fought and died,
and the time of accountability for your actions has ended.
You are exonerated, if such a need exists.
You have served well and fully,
and though deserving of rest, you shall instead be immortalized
in the spittle of screed-spewing politicians,
and on the forked tongues
of those power hungry paragons of talk-radio buffoonery,
who confuse hatred for patriotism
and rhetoric for wisdom.
They offer fruit from a tree of jingoism
cloaked in the black-and-white moral absolutism of religion,
fruit to cure the unashamed nakedness of those who believe
that they are free indeed.
You are the branch from which that fruit is so often plucked.
In becoming a shibboleth for national pride,
however warranted or undeserving,
you have become sterile,
automaton, holy, stylized,
inhuman.

I honor you in your frailty,
for in that human susceptibility we are united.

I honor you in your frailty, O grandfather,
who called himself a soldier of the cross.
You fought in no national war, but your battles were manifold.
You were the serenity of Christ,
You were the joy of Christ,
You sang mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy
in the voice of Christ.
In honoring you,
I do not endorse the conservative evangelical Christian institution,
for which hatred and bigotry are justified
toward infidels and nonbelievers,
which cries out for justice for others and grace for itself.
You were the mind of Buddha and the love of Buddha
and the passivity of Buddha,
You were the delight of Krishna and the passion of Krishna
and the wisdom of Krishna.

Buddha Krishna Christ,
whose lap I sat upon to read;
Buddha Krishna Christ,
who spoke love
when others spoke admonishment;
Buddha Krishna Christ,
who cut down trees with a chainsaw
for his wife to have a better view of the mountains;
Buddha Krishna Christ,
who was walked upon
by those whom he loved;
Buddha Krishna Christ,
who knew that people never listen
and who spoke anyway.

When you were old, you stretched out your hands
and someone else dressed you
and led you where you did not want to go.
Instead of security,
those whom you held dear placed stones about you
and cast you into a river whose surface you had never breached,
a river with many names,
the foremost among them Ignorance and Greed.
You were the sacrificial lamb for the sake of a few.
You did not rise again after three days,
yet your absolution was immutable love.

I honor you, O soldier,
who fought and died in another’s war,
your true dignity arising not from uniform or adornment,
but from human perseverance and conviction.
I honor you, O soldier,
who has fought and died.
We are not united by cause or belief,
but by something much deeper.

--Randolph Partain
May 29, 2011