When we see the other people in our daily lives what do we really see?

If you're like me you indeed see something in the persons you see. Very often I see people in some form of relation to myself: against my standards of right and wrong, in comparison to myself, in light of my expectations, in view of my desires or needs, in the measure of my comfort level.

Do I see the actual person? Sometimes, if I know them well enough, but too much I see first an object weighed and evaluated by some yardstick of my making. I see less the person and more a combination of traits, points, elements and visible values.

And, given this understanding, how then do I see my family, my children? Well, I can see my wife and my boys as individuals to a certain extent and I am getting better. But I also must admit that I still see in my family members how they make me feel, who and what I think they are and what I perceive they must become.

Why can’t I just see people, and particularly my family, as they are, and what do I know at all about who someone really is, where they have come from, what they are facing or who they should or will become?

I have spoken much in the past few issues of Words of Caring about self-focus and the article below is yet another take on this topic. So much do we tend to view others by our understandings and acceptable measures without really seeing the people themselves or what is going on with them, and we do this very often even as we work with great diligence not to have other people do the same to us.

And by these various “me-centered” efforts of thought and action unto others we, unfortunately, work to diminish, at least from our perspective, the true nature and beauty of other people and trample points of value and learning that could be of help to us. So sadly do we, thus, twist respect into expectation and love into judgment to the loss of the other, but even more to the loss of ourselves.

I wrote this article some time ago and wasn’t going to use it, but in re-reading it just last month and looking at its message against what I have been dealing with of late I saw anew in it something of value for me. I hope you might find also something in it for you.

I leave you with the paraphrase of a thought I once read. It was rendered as an attribute of God and given as an example for us, “People are not loved because they are beautiful, but they are beautiful because they are loved.”

Enjoy!

-- John Borland --


Change Your Shoes
By John Borland

I have a recurring condition that periodically causes my ears to become stopped up so that I can’t hear well. Today the condition got the better of me, and my hearing was again restricted.

Though difficult, it was also interesting to watch people, even friends, trying to talk to me about things I really couldn’t hear. I asked them to repeat and sometimes I guessed at what they were saying; and it was apparent from their expressions that sometimes I guessed wrong.

I watched the frustrated looks on their faces as they struggled with me to be understood. I watched them begin to avoid me rather than engage in the difficulty of conversation. And I saw some of them at times betray, through tiny hints of body language, their inner thoughts that I may be somehow crazy or stupid.

Though I have this condition treated as needed and though the doctor and I are working to find a more permanent solution to avoid the problem, when it does become bad there is little I can do ahead of getting treatment, but to struggle and endure and accept.

This affliction has, I believe, given me some small idea of what it might be like to be deaf or blind or mute. I can only imagine through my tiny exposure what it must be like to permanently struggle to be understood, recognized and valued by a population that doesn’t comprehend and cannot understand the angst of being everyday truly alive, but truly trapped.

But understand, I am not saying that the people so afflicted are imprisoned of themselves. Perhaps many are, but also many are not. Rather, what I am speaking of are the walls and bars placed by the attitudes of all of us who are not so afflicted and who think we know, but really do not know, what it is like.

As a disabled individual I have had some taste of what it is to be in the eyes of others handicapped, challenged, special – in short, different and so set apart. I have lived the experience of endeavoring to demonstrate to even well meaning people that I am not better, or worse, or braver, or weaker than they are. I am not different. I am really the same as you and everyone else.

And truly I am the same; for despite all of these personal experiences with difference, I have very often not hesitated to impose my own stereotypes, judgments and biases on persons with conditions and situations different than mine.

How blind I have been to see and fear their challenges as something alien and other than mine, for in many ways their challenges are also mine:

-        I have been uncomfortable in the presence of the deaf, but now I am dealing with a hearing impairment.

-        I have felt awkward around invalids and those in wheel chairs and yet I am now coping with a debilitating back ailment.

-        I have felt at times shame and even disdain towards the poor, but by the financial standards of the area where I live, I am also rather poor.

-        I have looked down on persons of minority ethnic or racial backgrounds even while I myself contend as a part of a disabled minority.

How very easy it has been for me to judge people and situations by my personal standards, by my experiences, by where I am in my shoes – what I feel, what I know to be right, what I expect, what I am comfortable with – without ever really considering the shoes that those other than me live and walk in.

I am slowly coming to learn about this failing of mine within the larger framework of my life, but am I learning about it with my family?

For what, I ask, of my children? What shoes do they walk in and how well as a parent do I know and understand them? I grew up from childhood just as my kids are growing up. I was once a teenager just as Troy was and Josh soon will be and yet my experience seems so different from theirs.

My childhood was one of baseball, of building models, of cars and trucks and playing Army. Even in my later teenage years my life was much more simple than I perceive for my kids. Television was a minor attraction. Computers, the internet, CDs, DVDs and video games were nonexistent. My allowance was, at most, two dollars per week, but there were also no malls and so I ended the week with change left over. Drugs, alcohol, suicides and teenage pregnancies had no presence in my life. My parents were law and security and the government could still be believed and trusted. The common enemy was far away in Russia and we lived in the best place on earth.

Was all of this correct? Indeed no. But it was simple and you knew where the boundaries were.

I perceive that for my boys nothing is so simple or easy. In my opinion, probably the biggest problem they face is the loss of innocence. Life now comes to my kids in inconceivable, overwhelming ways and at full bore. They are expected to live and function successfully with awarenesses, issues and challenges I never knew existed.

Of course I could argue that I never was a child as my children are. From the age of three I grew up quickly and soberly in hospitals, operating rooms and therapy centers. My life was a constant series of adjustments, physical, psychological and emotional. Who I was and who I would be, or even could be, was always before me. I learned to see and choose and struggle and flex in ways that my kids, and even most adults, have never had to.

Believe me, these challenges stressed me greatly and have caused me very, very much difficulty, but ironically they also, by grace, helped to build in me a significant capacity for learning and growth to overcome difficulty.

What my kids are learning now from the unique challenges they face I don’t fully know, but I do know that I don’t know the picture of their lives the way they do, or someday will.

I say, “someday will,” because I don’t believe my kids know yet what they are facing or what it is building in them. I know that at their age I didn’t know at all. It wasn’t until years later that the impacts of my early days became known to me – what I had gained and what I had to overcome.

I am coming slowly to understand that my role with my children is not to judge them against my life, to make them right as I expect, or to predict their futures, good or bad. I truly don’t know who they will be or what they will need and I don’t yet know all that they have or what they will gain from what they are going through.

What I believe I can do is to work harder to see them in the same manner I have asked other people to see me. I can work to change my shoes to their shoes, to see their lives more from their perspective, to appreciate them where they are now and so aid them on their journey to where they are going.

I can work to stay with them and to touch them now while they are still close to me. I can work to give them influences – an environment – from which to see their lives as challenge and to find in their lives opportunity.

And I can help them to recognize the gifts and talents they have been given and that they are developing for rising to become what they will be according to what they are meant to be.

And through it all, in helping my family to grow and to see, I myself come to grow and see more. In this way, little by little, we come together ever more in changing our shoes, to love.

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

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Last Modified: September 26, 2004