Stepping
Into An “Enemy’s” Shoes
We all experience
problems of coming into conflict with others, even if sometimes
the
conflicts take place purely inside our heads in the form of resentment
and irritation.
Finding ways to lessen
those conflicts has the potential to dramatically improve the
quality
of our lives, especially since these conflicts are with people who are
close
to us.
(I’ve used the
traditional term “enemy” above to cover all people we come into
conflict with, even though in ordinary parlance we wouldn’t normally
use that
word for someone we have a generally positive relationship
with, even if we do
sometimes get into disputes with them.)
One way of letting go
of our resentments and of practicing forgiveness is to recognize
that
the other person’s thoughts, speech, and actions are the result of
causes and conditions.
might sound rather abstract, but please
bear with me.
We’re all born with
genetic and epigenetic predispositions toward certain kinds of
behavioral
traits. Most of us know that our genes predispose us to be
more confident, aggressive or
fearful; gregarious, clingy or aloof, and
so on. Fewer people are aware that experiences
our parents and
grandparents have had (and even the food they’ve eaten) can affect the
way our genes express themselves right now.
And then we are all
subject to conditioning early in childhood. The presence or absence
of
nurturing, and the kinds of behavioral modeling we’re exposed to, profoundly
shape
the very structure of our brains, and thus the way we feel,
think, and act.
And we’re all subject
to cultural conditioning that shapes the way we see the world.
These forms of
conditioning affect the kinds of choices we make, and thus what
happens
to us in life. Some of what happens to us in life may change us in
positive ways, but sometimes the effects are to reinforce our early
conditioning.
So someone who’s afraid of intimacy because of childhood
betrayals may inadvertently
choose to be with people who don’t care
about their feelings or wellbeing. An aggressive
person will tend to
seek out conflict.
It’s being aware of all
this that I mean when I talk about stepping into the shoes of an
“enemy.”
Take anyone you get
into conflict with for any reason. It might be a colleague at work
who
routinely dismisses your suggestions, or a spouse who is often so
absorbed in
something else that they forget to greet you when you come
home, or a child who
picks fights with their siblings and drives you
crazy.
Now consider that this
person has been conditioned since before birth to
behave in certain
ways, that their brains have been profoundly shaped by
early childhood
experiences as well as events later in life. That their beliefs
and
values have similarly been shaped by genetics and life experiences.
That it may be very difficult, even impossible, for them to do things
you might
want them to do, like be more trusting, be less aggressive,
cooperate more, be more
logical or more emotionally expressive, and so
on.
The contemporary
teacher Eckhart Tolle wrote, “If her past were your past,
her pain your
pain, her level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would
think and act exactly as she does.”
So imagine you had been
born with the brain and genes of the person you’re
having difficult
with. Imagine you’d had the same (inevitably faulty) parenting, early
childhood experiences, cultural conditioning, education, and life
experiences.
In all likelihood you’d act exactly as they do.
Tolle points out that
this realization that a person is a bundle of conditions, and that
if
you were subject to the same conditions you’d think and act as they do,
leads to
forgiveness, compassion, and peace. And he’s right. It’s also
true that recognizing
our own conditioning leads to self-forgiveness,
self-compassion, and peace.
With love,
Bodhipaksa
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