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beginner's mind?
According to research cited last week by CNN, 70 percent of American adults describe themselves as angry. Anger can be addictive because it blocks feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.
With the housing bubble burst, the TARP trap sprung, the Obama jubilation spent, the health and credit bills passed but confusing as ever - helplessness and hopelessness are indices to watch closely. As we once counted on real estate holdings to be unfailingly lucrative back in the day, the swell of anger seems the new constant. The new black has been about not being in the black for a while now. The new black, being in the red, has sparked a fire beneath the calm that once fed our great American vanity.
Can we take the hard look at ourselves that we famously dread? Who can represent the face of American optimism now? A face without a scowl can be hard to find. Who can clear the bitterness from the air and illustrate our forging ahead regardless of what's preceded?
Has Justin Bieber been set before us - from within every media device imaginable - as a reminder of a less jaded-jaundiced-cynical time? To recall an innocence lost? To distract us from despair that the worst has not only occurred but that the best may have been and gone as well?
Well, that's too tall an order to place on Justin's - or any young person's -- shoulders. But we all, in our outlook and in our looking within, must strive to cultivate what the Zen boys of the 50's, the bright lights of the Alan Watts contingent, call beginner's mind.
Where angry eyes see red all around; beginner's eyes apply curiosity instead to issues at hand. That curiosity is balm; a self-and-other soothing patch that we can intentionally apply as needed when inflamed issues or communication breakdowns occur. (See exercise below.)
Chronic problems develop a history tainted with disappointment. We often argue about the grievances associated with the history rather than focusing on emotions connected to needed solutions! Curiosity can lead us away from rage and back towards cultivating points of connection.
A rudimentary optimism, an attitude that embraces the possibility that solutions can be fashioned, is requisite for this beginner's mind. Without belief that things can improve, odds stack high against improvement.
Relationship healing turns - not on blind optimism -- on willingness to entertain the new, the invented, the discovered, and possibly even the ingenious. Ingenuity, America'a take on joie de vivre, applies traditionally to business; but we need it in the living room, the bedroom, in the community centers, schools and in our intimate conversations.
Key Point: Anger and criticism need to be balanced. A willingness to place anger and criticism within a context that emphasizes discovering productive outcomes is essential for rebuilding hope and trust where they have been damaged. Solutions that legitimately take into account anger and criticism must also take into account more than anger and criticism! Skewed - in other words, unbalanced -- perspectives produce skewed solutions.
Zen
No shared experience, in itself, can substitute for a meeting of the minds. When a couple seeks relief from mutual estrangement, communication - common understandings -- and nothing else, can deliver the balm. Communication originates from the point at which minds meet.
Exercise: Think of a situation that exemplifies a stand-off between you and your partner. Is there a situation in which you feel that you are absolutely right about what you feel and think and your partner is absolutely wrong? Now take that situation and rather than mounting an attack against your partner, or building a case for what you believe or against what he or she believes, apply a mega-infusion of curiosity into thinking about how he or she could possibly hold the opinion or belief that they do. You are NOT being encouraged to give up your point of view. Not at all. But to understand your partner's as well as your own. That's the goal. For example, you may be unable to understand how or why it is so hard, seemingly impossible, for your partner to pick up after themselves. It may surprise you to learn that picking up after themselves is not how they define the issue. They may see it entirely in terms of whether or not they feel they are being controlled. You, in all likelihood, couldn't unravel this issue without FIRST establishing a meeting of the minds. And the first step in this diretion may be to adopt a little of what I playfully refer to as Justin Bieber's greenness: his beginner's mind.
Caveat: Where and when abuse is the issue, immediate resolution, not beginner's mind, is the priority.
I have been so pleased to have you join me here with questions, comments and suggestions. Please let me know how this piece strikes you. I thank you for reading and, should you join the dialogue here: advance kudos to you! Remember, love and good feelings are plentiful yet elusive; I'll be around to help you locate and develop them in the Middle Ground.
