Is saving face more important than saving your relationships? I have heard it said that good leaders praise in public and criticize in private. Where is that line when no one in the room, or at least one person in the room refuses to take accountability? At what point does the leader become the fall guy? I am not certain of much, but I do believe that it is wrong to force admission in some formal or institutional way. That is what the handmaids were required to do in Gilead. Read the book and the author’s inspiration. This fiction comes from authoritarian governments the world’s over. So to force someone into admitting a wrongdoing or even taking accountability on a personal level feels wrong to me. Is this me, or is this my conditioning? It’s not reality.
Because it is within your ability to do nothing. To accept no blame. To see your antisocial actions only in the eyes of others and to see your inaction as nothing causing direct harm so therefore well within your choice. Because that is the choice that so many people make.
If everyone is working around you, what are you doing? Are you commanding? Good commanders lead with their troops. Are you royalty then? And is that you? Or is that YOUR conditioning?
Who would be able to sustain a lifestyle wherein all the actual work was done for them? Laundry, cooking, cleaning, dishes, and no job of your own to go to? What a dream…. it’s not a dream though. It IS the reality for a few. And to my question earlier, let me ask it another way. WHAT would be able to sustain a lifestyle wherein all of the actual work was done for you? Slavery. Conquest. Good for some, not for others. And this was the zenith of white womanhood, preached in homes and churches throughout the 1950s like their 19th Century plantation wife counterparts. The men would go to work, dastardly work, because to sustain such a lifestyle one must employ processes that are not good for the human soul, like their own counterparts of times before. Work that takes the life out of life. And then the cancer rates soared, didn’t they?
Now the women compete in this system created by and for bloodthirsty men. We, the people, then repeat useful traumas that elevate the oppressors out of oppression. The path forward... This is not sustainable to our environment, our culture, nor to the individuals that make up the stories that provide the context.
Turning away from that can be difficult. And it means doing work that you might have otherwise paid someone to do. It also means that anything you ask someone else to do, you will have done yourself. But to ignore that this work exists is the very thing that allows the laundry to pile up, the dishes to remain dirty, and the home to become a prison rather than a place of inspiration, love, and communion of people.
Denying reality within the home creates a schizoid duality when people cannot agree on “what is.” Or when those realities come into question upon being around other people. Protecting your own ego to maintain the illusion of how you would like things to be - money, material possessions, travel plans, the condition of your home (metaphorically and/or physically) - is nothing more than a projection of your fantasy.
The things you were looking for are there already. You couldn’t get them from any of these things nor could you get them from another person. It is and always was you. But that includes the parts of you that you might not like. Or that other people might not like. And furthermore, denying that within you, especially when confronted for the sake of saving your own reputation, is a decision that carries energy into the people around you who do not live that way. And I can assure you that it cuts deeper than the surface you scratch with carefully constructed lies, omissions, and veils of secrecy. There is a lack of trust there that bleeds through the words. Trust of others. Trust of oneself. Trust of the world to care for you and the obligation for you to care for it.
But this does not come from inaction. This comes from action of words, heart, intention, and actual force. Force is not bad by its nature. It is a law of nature. A brick can either build a school or break a window. Our bodies generate energy and produce force. We have to trust that strength inside of us that it will be used for good. That it will be used for the benefit of others during the time we are allotted in these physical bodies. People are good. It is our conditioning that causes blood to run in the streets.
When the fire department just left me alone, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was working on homework, reading, talking with friends, or taking a nap. Or ya know, going on those calls we had. You know when I had ethical dilemmas? When we filed the paperwork. No, it was all in order. It wasn’t that. When people ask why I left such a good-paying work with people I genuinely loved and enjoyed… that was one of the reasons. Paperwork.
People who do not trust themselves or others will defend their actions and inactions at all costs. They will protect their position first through ignorance, then through deceit, and finally through explosion. In this way, saving face comes at the cost of our relationships. This rips the world apart. This is the shadow extreme of saving face. This to me is not something worth saving.
People by themselves can be trusted to take care of themselves and others. But this does not occur in a vacuum. We HAVE to trust ourselves and treat ourselves well. We HAVE to trust our actions and not confuse inaction for non-reactiveness. And trust the hearts of the people around us. Then we begin to see the symbiosis that exist between all of us and was there all along. We just refused or forgot to see it.
Only then will we see the people around us as our rightful brothers and sisters, wherever we go, finding family on the long road ahead.