Identities – Remembering Who You Are

Most of us gain some sense of empowerment and connection to others through the various identities we subscribe to, whether by birth or otherwise: race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, geographic region, religion, etc.  These identities appear on the outside to give us a sense of pride, affiliation and sense of community and belonging – in other words, connection. These various identities have value if they’re not taken too seriously or relied upon too deeply for self-worth and connection to others. This is a double-edged sword however, because it not only creates connection, but it also creates separation by dividing us in creating “us” and “them” characterizations. How people choose to reflect those identities can and often is the source of conflict when they view those of different identities as “them” in a negative light instead of in an appreciation of differences that enable us to learn from one another. Instead, some use these identities to fear, misunderstand and hate one another.

There are lessons to be absorbed on both sides of the “us” and “them” identity conversations. For those believing they are part of the “us” conversation, the more we cling to those identities with

white-knuckle steering, the easier it will be for others to unintentionally or intentionally offend or insult us or for us to fear and hate others. Allowing others – even the perceived “them’s” – to produce a response from you of any kind is giving up your power to another. We all can choose how we respond to others. When someone attacks your national flag, your religious icon, your ethnicity, etc., remember that when someone speaks, it says more about them than it does anything or anyone else. Don’t allow another to pull you off your balance by their insults to an identity you claim.

On the other side, for those who see fault with another identity, whether it’s a race, nationality, religion, gender or other, don’t attack or insult a symbol of that identity, whether it be a flag, a book, a look or other inherent association with that identity. If you have a legitimate complaint or criticism, it will never be heard through the insult they feel from your attacking the symbol of their identity.

Attacking these symbols of identities feels like a personal attack to those claiming that identity. They will react with equal fervor against you and even your message because of it. If you communicate a legitimate concern with reason, respect and without invoking your own “them” mentality, chances are you will find many who claim that identity will agree more with you than they disagree. Don’t make concerns personal by attacking identity icons and symbols.

We must learn to have respectful conversations regarding diverse identities and backgrounds, affiliations and experiences. In the end, we should keep in mind that we are all part of the same

community, and these religious, ethnic, gender, national and other identities we claim are all outward identities that have nothing to do with our spirit, soul or inner essence as beings. These outward identities that we may think define our status as humans in this life are not nearly as important as our inner selves, which is who we
really are as individual beings. Who we truly are has nothing to do with race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, geographic region, religion or other external characterization. Who we are is far deeper than these outward identities or what anyone else says we are. Who we truly are is who we are in our hearts – that’s our real connection to one another. What is in your heart is who you really are at any given moment. Where is your heart?

Key to compassion - shine the light on our own shadows

Our expression of anger, hate, judgment or annoyance is more a reflection of ourselves than it is of anything outside ourselves. Therefore, when we feel these emotions, we must look inside further to see what that the shadow in us is saying. 

We can’t be afraid of our shadows as they are as much a part of us as our light and goodness – just like the white and black symbiotic figure of yin and yang. 

When we look in the face of our darker sides, we take away their power and influence over us. Ignoring our shadows and shoving them under the rugs with rationalization, justification, blame and victim mentalities allows them to grow and feed unchecked and unbalanced.

Only when we stare our shadow sides in the face and see what they are and why can we begin to deal with them in a positive way. This begins our healing and release from their grip on us via our fears and judgments which turn into anger and hatreds. Instead, we will begin to understand ourselves more and feel more compassion and empathy towards ourselves (which is not via the enablers of justification, rationalization or blame). 

Then it becomes easier to feel that compassion and empathy for others. 

Hold up that mirror and look inside. 

That is the key to peace, love and compassion.

It's Time to Stop the Blame Games - The Solution is Inside Each of Us.

We’ve been distracted by and relied upon laws and rules for too long now. Laws of our “religions”, laws of our societies and other “laws” and “rules” we think are dictated by our other various identities, whether they be religious-, ethnic-, gender-, nationality-based
or otherwise. We’ve relied on rules and laws to control us like a parent attempts to control an adolescent. It is time for us to grow up and be adults and take responsibility and accountability for ourselves instead of relying on the laws and rules to be responsible for behavior. This is not to say we shouldn’t have boundaries that we enforce when others impart harm into our society and communities. Instead, we should be accepting our own accountability for our behaviors and not relying on laws to dictate what is good, bad, immoral, amoral, acceptable, unacceptable, etc. Laws and rules cannot dictate goodness or
morality on any level. Only our hearts can tell us this.

It is time that we accept our responsibility and accountability as our humanity moves into adulthood. This means we must start taking responsibility for our own hearts. Our thoughts, words and actions mirror our hearts. How we speak to one another, how we think about one another and how we act toward one another is a reflection of our own hearts. Our thoughts, actions and words are not a reflection of anyone or anything else. We all need to stop playing the

blame game of focusing on the laws, or what others have done or said. What we do, say and think is our own personal responsibility. What do your thoughts, actions and words say about what is in your heart?

Don’t be afraid to look inward. Look at your own heart and decide that you want to deal face-to-face with the fears and animosity and overcome them.

We all have things we need to heal in ourselves to have truer, kinder, more compassionate and loving hearts. Fear is not an excuse. There is no greater law or power than that of love, compassion and empathy. We all impact one another. The more we live from loving and compassionate hearts, the more we encourage others around us to do the same. Ripple effects are powerful. What ripple effect are you creating?

Choose Compassion

Anger is rampant in our world today and it has found a root in the American society on a level I would never have expected. Anger from not being heard, anger from economic stress, anger from feeling oppressed by one group or another – usually a powerful one or a majority, anger for feeling as a victim of either one’s own or another’s actions, anger from a constant “us vs. them” mentalities in everything from politics to culture to religion to ethnicity to even nationality. Everything about anyone else’s thoughts, beliefs, actions or their very nature is something to be angry about these days. Some days it hurts just to be in this world of high tension and hostility. It hits my gut with such sadness every day to see the hatefulness and lack of empathy or even neutrality people show one another in the smallest of things. Social media has become an outlet for our emotions, thoughts, knee-jerk reactions of frustration, annoyance and anger. For many of those with anger still try to control and mediate these hostilities in our face-to-face interactions - thankfully. The attacks lodged against strangers on social media, however, is so prolific that it has become a culture and I fear beginning to feel “justified” in public group gatherings that become a “mob” mentality. A culture that is now expanding into violence and hateful speech in rallies and various circles that have been in existence and that are forming. Tensions are rising, and armies are being created with positions firmly entrenched into deep-rooted strongholds of hate, dissension and hostility. Before too long, we will be a society that cannot have a civil conversation if we don’t take immediate and focused efforts to dial-back our rhetoric and our anger.

I feel blessed that personally I live in a home filled with loving tolerance and generosity and I spend much of my working week in an environment that is similarly charged with appreciation, tolerance, congeniality, collegiality and respect. Social media and public rallies where people get all worked up and emotional – often not in a good way – are having as much a destructive impact as positive one and it is bleeding into other areas of life, thoughts, beliefs and actions. We have to be more mindful of what is productive and what is reactive and more harmful than helpful. There is a lot of turmoil and “bad actors” in our world today. They appear in other countries and in our own. There are very legitimate concerns that people have about what is happening around us – both internationally and domestically. I am not for an instant suggesting we bury our heads in the sand and sing “la-la-la-la” to just make it go away from our minds, looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.  Quite the contrary. Now is the time to be bold in our positive engagement with others and to be strong but compassionate in our communications and actions. This requires the opposite of anger in order to not be that which we despise and want to change. No one can fight anger with anger. You cannot fight hate with hate. All of the great leaders of the world and history who have brought about change and instilled calm in the midst of chaos have taught us that.  

So, we all have a choice to make in whatever we do during this time… we can either add to the hatefulness and ugliness or we can add to the efforts to create something better than can help counter the negative. There are few who haven’t at some point contributed to the hatefulness, anger and hostility by what they thought about someone, said to someone, or action they’ve taken. We all have those knee-jerk reactions in thinking of another as:  “idiot”, “arrogant”, “blind”, “ass” or some other derogatory name-calling. Sometimes those thoughts seep out into our words and actions.  I am certainly no different in my thoughts. I’ve had to stop myself many many times when those thoughts come into my consciousness.  In most cases, the name-calling is lodged at a stranger just because they expressed a viewpoint or engaged in an activity with which we disagree. I implore everyone to just stop before reacting to another with those thoughts and think, “how many times has someone said that to or about me, and it was undeserved…they don’t even know me or what my views or morals are…”  While it may feel gratifying in that moment to lash out with disdain and judgment, it serves no purpose other than contributing to the growing problem we have in our world right now of rising hate and lack of tolerance. Everyone wants and thinks they have the moral or intellectual high-ground, and the reality is that no one has it. Everyone uses the same tactics, thoughts and words against one another. No one is better than the other, regardless of how much you believe your views and thoughts to be superior.

Each side usually will have ideas, thoughts and intentions that can add to a better circumstance for us all (excepting of course those extremists who just seek to harm others for the sake of their nature, which is not the majority). The trick is to find those elements housed in the different sides and perspectives – of whatever the issue might be - and put them together where they fit best as in a puzzle. This can only be arrived at through respectful dialogue and debate that is healthy and has the intention of seeking out the best answer, not just “my” answer. There is a reason that we are all different and have different views. We benefit from diversity in thought as well as diversity in race, gender, religion and other characteristics and traits. We all have something to contribute to the whole.  Individual but indivisible actually means something… something very, very important. Only together can we make a whole body, a whole community, a whole country and even a whole world together. We actually need each other and each other’s differences to be the greatest we can be. No single-minded or single-sided perspective will get us there.

I know that there are very legitimate concerns swirling around about the worst of one side or another. Those fears that are expressed from one side about another are not unfounded, they are legitimate. That’s why each side needs the other to balance out those outliers to weed out those perspectives that aren’t as productive and helpful as what can be achieved with more balance and some of the other side’s perspectives. But that takes listening to each other and respectfully challenging the other side on those areas of concern with facts, real scenarios and real solutions, not just attacks and screaming at one another. There are good things to be taken from each side…In my many years of experience in negotiations, I’ve learned that so much forward progress is made by simply asking “what are you intending to accomplish with this….?” instead of flying off the handle with “Are you kidding me?! No way!! You have to be crazy to think….” At least 3 out of 4 times, the answer to the question was not what one side thought was the intention. After exploring what each side was really trying to accomplish, we narrowed the debate to a very small topic, having realized our objectives on most of the seeming conflicts were not in fact contrary to the one another and we could easily arrive at a compromise position on most of it that met each side’s objectives.  Yes, there was always that 1 out of 4 who was really trying to take advantage and get everything possible, but you can always tell that person by the way they respond to that question and whether they are reasonable and willing to work with you or not. Then you deal with them with a firm and dispassionate hand with very firm boundaries, but never a disrespectful or hateful hand.

Even in today’s often rancid social media environment where everything is an “us vs. them” mentality, and so many are ready to pounce at the first hint of a “them”, you can use a similar approach to diffuse that knee-jerk “Are you a crazy idiot” reaction. I’ve done that several times now, where I’ve entered into a conversation of several like-minded people expressing a different perspective with a question and an open mind. Sometimes I’ve suggested that there is another legitimate perspective to people and in those cases, I’ve gotten “you’re just a …..(idiot, liberal, conservative, blind, or other negatively-intended label).  Instead of name calling or engaging in debate, a possible reaction is to ask them a question about how they view things differently than those they accuse of being part of the “them” group. At some point, we find that we actually have an alignment on some topic.  That immediately creates some connection despite all the other differences. This one small connection usually diffuses the animosity and hostility, and now a real conversation can take place. I’ve done this a few times, and I have to say that not only did it help me see something in their perspective, but it helped them see something and diffuse another hateful and hostile conversation. Any hostile situation that is diffused helps all participants in that conversation (and those who read them that you don’t know about who are likely to perpetuate whatever cycle is being created in that conversation). We all need to see the humanity in the other side and realize we’re all part of this equation and we all have at least 1 good idea that could be helpful to our community. We have to be willing to accept that fact and be willing to engage in productive dialogue to find what the other side has that can contribute positively to the whole.

Some may say, “We just need to force ourselves” on the other side because they won’t listen otherwise. Both sides can say that of the other. We’re back to the notion that there is no moral high ground here when each side is using the same tactics of hate, animosity and obfuscation against the other trying to keep all they say and think down.  Yes, you may have an imbalance of power, which makes the dialogue even more important. Yes, resist what you believe is wrong, but add to the conversation, and you can add when you’re contributing with positive energy and intention. Don’t just resist others by telling them what they have wrong, resist respectfully with what you believe to be true, without hate, animosity or hostility.  Always, always be ready, willing, open and offering dialogue, not war. War and “us vs. them” scenarios never work for anyone. It is a downward spiral, and we’re pretty far down that spiral now. We have to stop the downward spiral and start an upward movement. You may think that you can’t change anything and can’t single-handedly withstand the force of the movement against you, whether in a single conversation or on a larger scale, but you can. Ripple effects are powerful…and effective.  Be a positive ripple starter. We all reap what we sow…start planting those seeds of tolerance and dialogue.

Everything we do, say or even think will either be part of the solution or part of the problem. Choose wisely, carefully, and thoughtfully, and choose to address conflict, hate, anger and activism in a way that doesn’t just create more hatefulness and anger. The most valuable advice in suffering through the attacks that you might receive is simply to not take it personally. What people say is more a reflection of them than it is you. You must also remember this of your own communications. Your statements are more a reflection of you than anything else, so remember that before you type, write or speak. What are you projecting and reflecting? Is that who you are? Is that who you want to be? Are you filled with destructive hate and anger, or are you filed with the desire to be solution driven and compassionate? You cannot be filled with hate and anger and be solution driven or compassionate…they are mutually exclusive. Every statement you utter or write will either part of the problem or part of the solution. You must choose. Please choose wisely. Our community depends on your choice...every one of you.