I was telling a friend about a mistake I'd made, a self‑serving oversight that caused someone a lot of confusion and a lot of upset. “I know just how you feel. Why, just the other week,” he began and, immediately, he cancelled me out. I knew his attention had shifted squarely to himself. Of course, he meant well: he wanted to gain my trust, be in the “same boat” with me. But the effect was the opposite of what he intended. I didn’t want him in my boat; I wanted to hear what was true for him in his boat.
Hours later, an African‑American patient asked me to pray. (I'm Caucasian.) I felt I ought to repeat Jesus’s name frequently in my praying because I’d heard black preachers do that in their unique, incantatory way. Shouldn’t I do the same to gain his and his family’s connection? Harmless probably: good intentions. Later though, it bothered me a lot, and I wondered if I too was manipulating things to gain their trust. Couldn’t I have just prayed my way and trusted God to do the connecting if it was genuine?
To feel that I must abandon who I am to be understood by someone else will sabotage authentic relationship. But, at the same time, it’s equally unsuccessful to just barrel down the road, your own “radio” blaring loudly, unaware of others’ ways of being and communicating.
The way out of this dilemma is to balance two alertnesses: inner attention to myself and outer attention to them. If I speak with a little too much emphasis on the “truth” part, I may be rude, invasive, blunt. A little too much emphasis on the “love” part and I come up with watered‑down platitudes or hypocrisy or out‑and‑out flattery.
But it can be done. I’m learning how. It’s like stereo: in one mental “ear” is an earbud monitoring me, and in the other, an earbud listening to you. If a pianist playing a Bach fugue can have different melodies going on each hand, surely I can learn to do this. I CAN avoid having my right hand capitulate to my left hand: my self doesn't have to echo (or ignore) your self.
The process is even useful when “listening” (connecting) to the wind in the trees, your pet, music, books, films, etc. I mean, a part of myself lets go, and enters the experience, while another “stays put,” content to be in my own skin, welcoming the wind or that new puppy into my experience without losing myself entirely into the other.
Some people do this easily, but it's hard for me.
There is much difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.
Ben Franklin
I am I, and you are you. If we meet along the way, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.
Fritz Perls
Gestalt Therapy Verbatim
We love in others what we lack ourselves, and we seek to be everything but what we are.
R. H. Stoddard
