Just Like Me

Bill and I sometimes read to one another in bed.  At this point, we're reading Pema Chodron's Welcoming The Unwelcome, which Bill has heard me talk about again and again.  I discovered When Things Fall Apart several years back and then learned of her more recent book.  Sometimes, when I'm blue or feel ethically and emotionally lost among the vicissitudes of daily life, I find myself reading the books over and over, sometimes just picking one of them up where I stopped reading it a week ago and beginning there. Her advice is very simple and very hard; her books are simple and yet complex. She is Buddhist to the core, but her works contain strong threads of psychology and philosophy. She is wise and kind. As I read and re-read, I think I get closer to the ideals she holds for feeling lovingkindness for others and for myself--one of her favourite words and principles.  Certainly she has made me more patient and more mindful.  

In Welcoming The Unwelcome, published in 2019, Chodron links, with uncanny insight, the unwelcome in ourselves with the people, events, and cultural values that are unwelcome in our cultures and in the larger world.  Even before the threat of the pandemic widened the differences between us, she was attuned to the divisions that have riven our societies. 

The night before Hamas attacked Israeli citizens we read about her practice called "Just like me."  Chodron encourages us to observe the people around us, maybe in the line at the grocery store or as we're drinking our morning coffee in a coffee shop or in a traffic jam to 

"zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as 'Just like me, this person doesn't want to feel uncomfortable.  Just like me, this person loses it sometimes.  Just like me, this person doesn't want to be disliked.  Jut like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.' We can't presume to know exactly what someone else is feeling and thinking, but still we do know a lot about each other.  We know that people want to be cared about and don't want to be hated.  We know that most of us are hard on ourselves, that we often get emotionally triggered, but that we want to be of help in some way.  We know that, at the most basic level, every living being desires happiness and doesn't want to suffer.  If we view others from the standpoint of 'Just like me,' we have a strong basis to connect with them, even in situations where it seems most natural and reasonable to polarize." 

She tells the story of the mother of James Foley, a journalist beheaded by ISIS, who said of her son's executioner "We need to forgive him for not having a clue what he was doing." Chodron acknowledges that this kind of forgiveness and acceptance is nearly inhuman.  She goes on to observe that "Those who believe in violence are desperate to get some kind of ground under their feet, desperate to get away from their unpleasant feelings, desperate to be the one who's right.  What would we do if we felt so desperate?" I doubt this understanding is within reach of the families of the Israelis who were executed, raped, and kidnapped by Hamas last week.  And I doubt that Israelis and Palestinians are going to come to this detente anytime soon.  

If you are like me, you have been reading endlessly in an effort to understand and feel the same kind of dread for the suffering that is to come. Of course, we want this situation to be simple.  We want to know who to blame when something so horrific happens.  I liked an essay written by an Israeli soldier who said that he is fighting for Israel but that Palestinians are not his enemies.  Rather, he thought, both Israelis and Palestinians know what has to be done but neither has started the hard work of doing it. 

I felt completely knocked off balance by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  When I described how I was feeling to my empathetic niece, she told me "That's exactly how I feel when I'm having an anxiety attack." Yes, the dread had invaded not just my mind but my body.  I somehow thought we had gone beyond the age of Cold War duck and cover and the smell of pencils and erasers and glue that lingered beneath my desk when I was a child.  The conflict between Hamas and Israel feels worse because it's much more complicated and "victory" will not be something to celebrate. We can celebrate if there's a conversation about how to rid Gaza of Hamas and how to govern it effectively. We can rejoice when there is space in both Israel and Gaza for human flourishing.  

I'm frozen with dread and anger.  But here, again, Pema Chodron gives me insight.  When we cannot find empathy for the Hamas soldiers, we can do something else:

"As a precursor to this level of empathy, sorrow--simple sorrow--is often  more accessible.  For instance, in this case of the violence committed by extreme militants [she's talking about ISIS here, but what she has to say is applicable to Hamas] we can tap into a deep sorrow for the situation as a whole. Along with our sorrow for the victims, we can also feel sorrow that young men find themselves hating so much, sorrow that they're stuck in such a pattern of hatred.  Since things have such complex and far-reaching causes, we can feel sorrow for the circumstances where ignorance or suffering in he past created the hatred that is manifesting in these young men now."

As we hear governments and individuals lining up beside one of the sides, often blindly, with only their own ideologies for evidence, we can appeal to sorrow and the open-heartedness that comes with it.

And maybe we can muster some anger that leaders, rather than seeking the well-being of their citizens, make the increase of their own power their defining principle.

That's where we come in, guided by Pema Chodron.  There are some practices we need to keep alive.  Practicing "just like me," we can keep everyone's humanity in the forefront of our minds.  When Bill and I were in Winnipeg this summer, we went to the Museum of Human Rights.  It was an amazing experience, from the architecture to the exhibits.  There's one floor where you can sit and reflect; there's a reflecting pool and upended "trunks" of basalt for you to sit on, basalt because it's a stone found everywhere in the world.  Sitting on stone isn't that comfortable and isn't meant to be.  But while we were there, I read a panel that said this:  "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." I don't think I've read a more powerful expression of that essential principle--powerful because it's so simple.  And that word "dignity" says so much. Wanting dignity for others is an inherent part of Chodron's "just like me" practice.

And here's a whimsical idea for offering comfort for you and those around you.  Make something.  Let's celebrate the human potential to create, not its penchant for angry destruction.  Make someone an espresso.  Make bread.  Take someone's foot measurement and make socks.  Write your aunt a cheerful email.  Make a meal for someone who is sick. That's one place human flourishing can be found, in our creativity and our generosity.