Secret training
Things go wrong. All the time. Every day and night. The odd thing is that we are still surprised by it. Think about your life. It is doubtful that every waking day you have seen so far has been perfectly suited to what you had in mind. I know things can go wrong quickly because the first time your diaper needed changing, you cried until someone corrected the issue. And then you did it again and again until you trained your people. Then you mysteriously trained them to feed you only food you liked, or so you thought. That one day you looked up and saw that odd food on a spoon flying toward your mouth, you clamped down and you started to have suspicions about what part of your plot was going south.
Gradually you got past those screaming fits on the floor at the grocery store and being left off anywhere you really didn’t want to stay. You managed to temper the outward signs of distress (mostly) at school, but only because everyone else seemed willing to put up with the same treatment. In high school, it was easy to be dissatisfied since everyone else seemed to be also. By college, it became easier to go along with most endeavors because you were under the impression that you had chosen them. That’s where the lie was reinforced.
Personal viewpoint
Life seems to be a series of choices. Go left or go right. Speak to this person or ignore that one. Dress this way or that. Eat one type of food or be the person with some special eating needs. These choices define us to those around us. We are able to make our own choices; they make theirs. We judge their silly ideas and we continue to think our thoughts are the only right ones. It seems like such a huge dilemma to remember that we all have our own point of view. Individually. No one has mine; I share the point of view of no one else completely. We can interpret and judge others but we may never really feel anyone else’s viewpoint. The complexity of this minor truth about each of us is why it is so important to understand it completely. We need to know it because we cannot feel it.
My own secret society
I have my own secret society. You need to start your own society also. It can reside deep inside of you and its only task is to make sure that we are being our own true selves. You can certainly hide feelings and thoughts there. It’s a safe spot to quietly examine them and judge them for yourself. Despite what is thought in proper society, it is easy to change our own thoughts. You just toss out the old thought and start thinking the new one. You don’t have to catalog the old one either, it’s wash and wear. When a task is this easy, it seems deceptive. I think it is meant to be this easy so that we can pivot and change directions without having to call in heavy equipment. It is more graceful this way.
Can you share a secret?
So the next time you are perplexed by someone else’s seemingly unbelievable thought or action, stop. It might be better just to look a little more deeply and try to determine why their thought is so much different than yours. Yours may require updating. It may be possible than theirs need to be updated. But that is up to their secret society. They must examine and educate themselves on those thoughts. You may feel you have the most persuasive arguments in the world, but until they can toss a thought and exchange it for a new one, they may just smile pleasantly back at you. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t share thoughts; on the contrary, that is where and how I have found my best new thoughts. It’s a little like taking a chance and trusting someone to help you learn. You don’t have to clamp down your mouth when you see or hear something new. You may actually like the taste of that new thought.
Can you let down your guard enough to listen to someone of a divergent view? Can you share the beauty of your thoughts with someone well enough to encourage them to grasp your thoughts? Are you comfortable with just yourself wondering if everything you know to be true is really true?
