#13: how are you feeling about the future?
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Good morning,
Last week, we finished the most recent episode of the podcast I write/host, Buddhist Solutions for Life’s Problems called The Buddhist Perspective on Racism. It’s a take on the human aspect of racism, told through stories and insights from several Black Buddhists, and a few others. (Below link is Apple but it’s also on Spotify/elsewhere.)
In terms of Buddhist concepts, the key one we discuss in the episode is that human beings need to return to their inherent interconnectedness in order to be able to summon respect for each other. Division, hierarchy, the manipulation of power—these are all things that come about when we view ourselves as members of separate groups that have nothing in common. Which isn’t true.
I’ve been coming across similar thoughts in a number of places recently. One I loved was a recent issue of The Future of Belonging about mutualism. I’ve been subscribing to a lot of substacks lately that I don’t always get to read but she opened with a quote from MLK that’s actually something I also put in the podcast via one of our subjects (Dean Carter of Morehouse College, who is a Baptist preacher with a Buddhist mentor) so my interest was piqued:
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. -MLK
I also loved this bit (as you can imagine) because I deeply believe that care work is how we are going to return our planet, our bodies, our hearts, our minds, to health and *sustainable* prosperity.
The narrative of the American Dream demands the upholding of values that run counter to mutualism: individualism, ownership, competition, winners and losers. This zero-sum narrative sustains systems that are antagonistic to belonging, placing all of the credit as well as all of the blame on the individual for the outcomes that result from interacting with others. Its economic counterpart, laissez faire capitalism, reward winners with more financial assets and punishes losers with poverty.
The work of belonging gets left behind when centering capitalist-preferred productivity. Belonging springs from other types of labor: care work to tend to interpersonal relationships, creative pursuits that shape the narratives that sustain our systems, and the civic and community engagement that ensures we have places and networks that bring people together.
What it takes to bring people together (for me):
This whole bringing people together idea, especially given our current political situation, gets talked about all the time and it made me wonder how I get myself to bring myself together with someone else.
Personally, when I struggle the most, information always makes me feel better.
For example, when I find myself angry, it’s almost always because I simply cannot understand someone’s behavior, because it’s so different than how I think people ought to behave. But I don’t quite get angry at the other person, I get angry at my inability to understand them. It’s almost as if a little radar goes off in me saying, “We’re both people, I want to be able to relate to you, but something isn’t fitting.”
The only solution to my anger is trying to learn everything I can about them. I admit that it’s something of a desperate search for something I can understand, or relate to and my friends and husband think I can be a bit crazy when I decide I need to learn everything there is to know about a topic, but it’s honestly gotten me through life.
The moment I gain insight into the person, the anger is gone, and in fact, I feel a relieving sense of connection or curiosity. Examples:
with a procrastinating colleague who drove me crazy because I assumed they didn’t value their work, I learned more about what they had on their plate as a human and realized given what’s going on at home, work is likely the only place they can take a second to breathe and be alone, so that’s what the first part of their day needs to be about.
with someone who was just plain mean, self-interested and unreasonable, and I learned about a mental health challenge they face and realized they are often speaking from a child-like state of unhealed trauma. It became so much easier to hold space for them and create my own boundaries after that realization.
with my husband’s unparalleled inability to organize time, I read a lot about how ADHD works and that he literally views time as “now and not now” and it completely changed the expectations I had of him. We have amazingly efficient systems now.
There is so much more nuance to these examples, of course, but there’s value in information and curiosity is so helpful. This stuff scales up when you look at social issues and it gets complicated when you bring in the intent vs. impact argument (like of course, open-mindedness is not a reason to let evil go unchecked), but the point is that when I go into tough conversations/relationships REALLY open-minded, (like sometimes I literally have to ask my ego, out loud, to sit in the corner so I can listen before entering a room), I’m able to learn and collaborate better and come up with the best, most creative action to take to move forward if faced with a sticky problem.
Anyway, I didn’t realize that I probably do a lot of these things because I was raised Buddhist and so this worldview of interconnectedness and the high value placed on always engaging in dialogue with a willingness to listen and learn was so engrained in me.
Personally, I think this kind of listening is a skill that all journalists need to have, so I tried to practice it more beginning in j-school, which lead me to some stories I never would have otherwise been curious about — on black powder gun enthusiasts, on Americans who convert to Islam, on why and how we read the news.
In the end, I came to realize that I can relate to virtually anyone who is passionate about something specific, because I am passionate about specific things, too. And no matter how different those things are, we react similarly when other people are interested in our passions, or when they question them, or when they judge or admire us for them.
All this to say, there are so many places from where one can start a good conversation.
Somewhat related resources:
I was recently reminded of this awesome project by Justine Lee, Make America Dinner Again, that she co-created because of the 2016 election, so if you’re looking for ways to have meaningful dialogue across the political divide, have or host a dinner about it!
On August 10, empathy researcher Jamil Zaki is doing a series of kindness challenges that are exercises that can help you develop empathy.
Monica Guzman is writing a book that’s 100% going to be amazing called “I Never Thought of it That Way” (2022) about how to stay curious in divided times and you can sign up here to follow her journey.
How are you feeling about the future?
Someone asked me recently how I’m feeling about the future and at the time I had no idea. Empty?
In truth, all of the above said, I’m certainly not the best at listening. I definitely dig my heels in at times, especially if my own values are violated and it feels like a lot of that has been happening lately, in small and big ways.
So: I’m currently trying to challenge myself not to write people off simply because I don’t have the energy to hear them out.
This week, for example, present-me (who has been more anxious than usual and feels just plain depleted) is scheduling appointments for the next few weeks for future-me (who, through a combination of self-care and determination, will soon have much more energy and grace) to engage with some topics and people I know I need to learn more about.
So I guess my answer should have been:
“I’m bleary-eyed but here’s my 3-step plan:
Pick a worldview to live by
When inspired, engage
When in deficit, plan for future engagements and figure out how to fill yourself up between now and then”
Though I used to call myself an introvert, I’m learning that engagement can actually be really energizing if you curate the engagements (choose people, places, media) to help you chip away at your existential anxieties and Big Questions.
Hope everyone is safe, well and finding their way forward.
Jihii
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