How would you like me to respond to you when you say hurtful things, especially if you are claiming that you didn’t mean that? Do you not believe that my words aren’t coming from a place of judgment? Wouldn’t you want to bounce your personality traits off people you love to test them before going out into society? Against people with uniquely different experiences and stages in life, as to provide a sounding board, rather than an echo chamber? Isn’t that what we already do anyway? I mean so often we hurt the people we love the most, do we not? And then we go and do it again. The people around us, afraid to hurt our feelings, walk around on eggshells because any criticism is interpreted as an attack on our character insofar that – at the detriment to all - no character development can occur.
In Zen, the master is she who grabs on to the entanglements, the attachments of he who would suggest he had a problem. For it is also said in Zen that he who would suppose he had a problem should receive fifty lashes. To the role of the Zen master, she then takes the individual on a ride of his own suppositions and double-binds, not to hurt them, to aggrandize themselves, but out of a place of love. For if you could only find out what she knows you would be so happy and want to give it to everyone else. The sage then shows the student that what the master has cannot be given away, because everyone’s got it. The point of this mental judo is to show them that they are it! What then is there to get out of life?
You can gloss over these things in a sitcom or soap opera, but in real life there has to be some back and forth. Because there exists a line wherein the receiver becomes conditioned to simply not even voice their opinion lest they be criticized for merely having a voice. As a parent, I am trying to constantly work that line. It changes with my children’s personality which, as a dad, seems like every day. You are fine the way you are, but in the process of conditioning, reinforced by the cycle of socialization, we all go through this process of trying on different masks for which we are inculcated with examples throughout our childhood. They tell us how to dress, how to behave, how to speak, how to interact with and respond to others; the reality police as it were. Whose reality?
And a society which doesn’t really know people, who have been estranged from one another in the wake of COVID and social media and smartphones and all the little gadgets which would claw for our time and attention; all of the endless distractions. And as a culture we just don’t know one another on an intimate level. And who do you hide things from in the first place, strategize against, and assume the worst of? Your loves, or your enemies? In a world that grew into six feet of personal space, how CAN you know anything about people outside your immediate domicile? As divorce rates surged following the lockdowns, it would appear within the home too.
As a culture who doesn’t know one another, we end up developing some pretty nasty traits towards our fellow man. And all so often they become subconscious perturbations, muscle memory as we said in the fire service. But the thing about muscle memory; it may play on or take advantage of inherent human traits such as our survival instinct to notice the negative first, but then co-opt it to assume the worst in people and personal situations and outcomes. Or our ability to work well in groups and under pressure, to form tight social bonds, and co-opt that beautiful trait of cohabitation and brotherhood to commit brutal atrocities and gun battles in foreign or domestic lands over disagreements in political ideation, trade policy, or commitment to war alliances with other nations, the likes of which we have seen, and we are seeing again.
Sounds like us getting involved in other people’s shit. There will always be wars. There will always be bad shit. But when we embody those things all the time, we bitch without any reason other than to bitch, and it has a net negative effect on our overall demeanor. And other people pick up on that and, again in a society that doesn’t trust anyone, they take it personal and assume the worst in you and hold that grudge for when they see you again.
Have you ever offended anyone and thought “what’s their problem?” Well, when that happens enough you have to look at yourself and ask, “Well what’s my problem, man?” Otherwise, you see these childish behaviors played out in old people. And you do.
What is the line for the parent? Do I let you talk to me or even more so someone else in a way that, if we turned the conversation in on itself, you would be deeply offended if you were on the receiving end of your own comments? Or do I, as an independent agent, yield to my own limitations as a parent and let you take those archetypes to their logical conclusions, come what may? The bill can come due now – around people who truly love you; or it can come due when you’re 83, in a nursing home with a bum hip, surrounded by other desperate old people, attended to by overworked and underpaid staff who are moonlighting a second job to make ends meet. Do you really want to take all that unchecked entitlement for 8 long decades into that scenario? Is that where you will see just how much control you can exercise? Wish it away all you want, we all know what happens in those places.