The Other ...
... And the five plights of human relations.
It is when we realize that the other person exists that we really start to exist, beyond the walls of our blinding egos. It is when the other person feels that they have a valued place in our lives that they start giving it a deeper and more encompassing meaning.
We spend our lives talking about our lives. We fill the space and the time with our stories, our experiences, our feelings, our thoughts, our anxieties, our sorrows, our joys, etc., ignoring that the other person has a story too, and maybe if we listen to their story, our own life will gain in depth and meaning. Their story doesn’t have to be about us or anything connected to us. Their story is, as it should be, about them, and because they are telling it to us, then it becomes part of our life and our story. Most people don’t even think that this is a possibility. They believe deep down, without even questioning why, that the only story worth telling or listening to is their own. When, for different spiritual, intellectual or material reasons, these people have enough followers who are listening to them and acquiescing their constant babble, they receive the ultimate confirmation that whatever they are doing or saying is extremely interesting and worthy of being heard by every living soul; so, they continue chanting their own songs about their own merits, oblivious of the other person.
“Ignoring the other” is the first of the five plights of human relations. It is not the most common of the five, but it is the most rooted in people characters and therefore the most difficult to eliminate from someone’s behavior and attitude. I have seen it in action with very intelligent people. Their self-centered, egocentric view of life disallowed them from understanding the nature of their behavior and realizing its true impact on the other. As such, they rarely deployed any effort to change. A question has lingered in my mind about these types of people, and it is the following: “do they know about their inability to see the other, but because they are incapable of changing, they convince themselves that it is not so bad, there are worse things in life, and they end up relegating the issue to their subconscious or even denying it altogether, OR are they really unmindful?” Actually the answer to the second part of the question is always yes. Either from the beginning they are genuinely unmindful or they become as such with time, as it is described in the first part of the question.
For the curious readers, here are the four other plights of human relations:
“Treating the other like we want to be treated ourselves” and not like they would like to be treated. This is the most common mistake people do. It is a very egocentric approach to human relations. Mistakenly, this wisdom has been attributed to Jesus, and Matthew is the culprit. In the same chapter where Matthew related the words of Jesus about the two pillars of Christianity, loving god and loving your fellow human, he felt it is appropriate to complete Jesus thoughts with his own prose and he added: “… and treat others like you want to be treated”. Nothing is further from the way Jesus would think about the other person. You don’t buy a gift for someone based on what you like, but rather based on what they like. It is no different when it comes to treatment. You don’t make love to someone the way you like it, but rather the way they do. Examples abound, and yet this false wisdom has stuck in people’s mind because it appeals to their self-centered view of almost everything. Thus, it became the second permanent plight of human relations, right after “ignoring the other”!
The third and fourth dominant plights of human relations are embodied in the act of giving and taking:
“Asking from the other more than they can give” and making them feel bad about not being able to provide it to you.
“Expecting the other to take all you are giving them” as if they are born to be the sponge of all your feelings, ideas and actions.
I already developed these two ideas in another article entitled: “giving and taking”, to which I refer you for a deeper understanding of the intricacies and small variations of these two naïve and destructive behaviors and how to avoid them, or at least diminish their hold on you.
Finally, the fifth important and very common plight of human relations is: “judging the others, declaring your judgment on them, and making them feel guilty or embarrassed” without knowing what is their history and what is their “salim-stalin” chain of events. Jesus in his immense wisdom addressed this destructive behavior in one of the most memorable stories ever told. Instead of paraphrasing it here it is as it was related to us in the scriptures of John:
“At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Most readers stop here to extract the wisdom of “we cannot judge anyone because we are not worthy of doing it as humans who have also sinned.” But a further read of the story, just few lines, reveal something even more dramatic, more radical, and more fundamental. As you read the few lines below, you will understand the full impact of this story, especially when you believe, like most people who read the bible, that Jesus is God! Here are the few remaining lines:
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
“Then neither Jesus would condemn her…” because only “he who is without a sin can condemn her and therefore throw the first stone”. For those who still didn’t get the fundamental learning of these last few lines, here it is in plain language: Jesus, meaning God (for the believers in that equivalence), couldn’t judge her, and he couldn’t condemn her because he too has sinned! So, according to Jesus, even god cannot judge us!
Now that you know what not to do, can you not do it?
Maybe you are weighing in your minds the upside versus the downside of changing what you are or whatever you do, and that is already a good step into the process of changing. People, when faced with change, they start by denying the need to change altogether, then they resist by finding all the bad things about this change, after that they start transitioning to the new way of doing things and exploring the best ways to do it, finally, they become committed to the change and start to evangelize it. Some of them write articles to transmit their experience to “The Other.”
To close this chapter in human relations, I would like to share with you few words of wisdom once told by a loving mother to her daughter about “The Other”: “every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so always be kind with them”