New Eyes
Humans love to make up stories. We make up stories about everything and everyone we see. It’s a human trait to want to find meaning, to figure things out. If we don’t understand something, we’ll make up a story to make it understandable. Sometimes our make-em-ups are harmless, but more often, especially when they are about other humans, they are harmful. Even when we make up stories we think are kind, we are still doing harm. Why? Because, when we make up stories about other people, we assume we know them better than they know themselves, and we believe we are the arbiter of all that is right and good.
The recent incident at the Academy awards is a good example. I have read a hundred Facebook posts, blog posts, articles, and emails. I’ve read posts that assign blame to Chris Rock, to Will Smith or to Jada Pinkett-Smith. I’ve read posts and articles that claim this is all a distraction to keep us from looking at Hollywood pedophile rings run by Reptilian aliens. I’ve read posts that say the whole thing was a publicity stunt orchestrated by Rock and Smith. All supposition, all made up stories.
Here's the thing. There are facts and there is fiction. There are no alternative facts. Facts just are. Gravity is a fact. The law of thermodynamics is a fact. Think of facts as what a video camera records—no imputing intention or motive, no assigning emotions, no guessing at meaning. Just the facts. Try it. Think of something that happened recently and try to tell what happened using only facts. Can you do it? Really? Can you? If you tell the story and you say, “Bob was mad,” that’s a story. The facts would be “The edges of Bob’s lips were pointed down. His eyebrows were squeezed up.” Assuming that means Bob was angry is a story you have created.
The thing is we’ll never stop making up stories. It’s how the human brain works. It categorizes, uses shortcuts, fills in the gaps. What you can do is become aware of how your stories serve to keep you separate from others; how your categorizations of, and assumptions about, other people limit your ability to be fully present with another. You don’t know what someone else is thinking or feeling unless they tell you. You don’t know what someone else is like unless you turn off your figuring-it-out mind and allow yourself to simply experience the other person. This is crucial for being present with people we know well, and for people we are just getting to know.
What if you approached everything with a beginner’s mind, with the mind of a child, looked at everything with wonder, awe, and curiosity instead of with the mind of memory, the past, and categories? Alan Watts writes:
By tying to understand everything in terms of memory, the past, and words, we have, as
it were, had our noses in the guidebook for most of our lives, and have never looked at
the view…In the widest sense of the word, to name is to interpret experience by the
past, to translate it in terms of memory, to bind the unknown into the system of the
known…Everybody, everything has to have its label, its number…What is not classified
is irregular, unpredictable, and dangerous…That there is a way of looking at life apart
from all the beliefs, opinions, and theories is the remotest of all possibilities from the
modern mind. Watts, Alan, The Wisdom of Insecurity, pp.99-100
What would it really mean to truly see life as it is without the filters we usually employ? It is interesting to think about the story in the Torah, about Adam naming the animals. He saw the animals and got to know them before naming them. This is different than our modern human tendency to name and categorize before getting to know, and then acting from our naming and categorizing rather than from what really is. We are so eager to name and categorize, there are now apps on our phones that can tell us what any plant is if we just snap a picture of it. No more living in the mystery, categorize everything and put it in its place.
Just for today, I invite you to really be aware of your stories, whether they are kind or mean, they are still stories. Saying “bless you” when someone cuts you off in traffic is no better than cursing them. Today, delight in the world like a toddler; see it with new eyes.
