Tag Archives: kindness

Sinners, Saints and Mental Shortcuts

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Heaven and Hell
Every day I drive past the Methodist church in my town. Of the six churches in town, (yes, six- I live in New England) it is not the most beautiful, but I look forward to passing it nonetheless. Why? Because this church has in its congregation (and/or employ) a playful individual who is always putting up inspiring little sayings on the Church sign.

Several weeks ago the sign read “every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” The quote is from Oscar Wilde, but its literary origins are less important than the message and the location.

When I drove past the sign the first time, I was not familiar with the quote but its simplicity and kindness struck me. In our lives we are quick to judge others and, at times, ourselves.   We place labels, easily categorizing individuals and situations. Part of this is the result of using what psychologists call heuristics- mental shortcuts that allow us to make decisions and problem solve when we are faced with incomplete data. We rely on these shortcuts, basing decisions off of past experience and impressions.   Although efficient, these heuristics do not guarantee the best or even accurate decisions and assessments.

Using heuristics, we make assumptions about people we see. We categorize them as hard-working or lazy, virtuous or morally compromised and a million other shortcuts we have in our minds. We encounter them in a moment and having made a quick judgment, we see that judgment superimposed over the individual’s past and future. In this way we see an individual as born a particular way and living in the same manner until their death.

Of course, we know this is not true when we stop to think about it. But part of the point of heuristics is that their use means we are not really stopping to consider at all. In this way, our perceptions of others are incomplete, and if we are not careful, risk ossifying. We risk freezing someone in a single moment in time, or defining them perhaps, by their worst moment.

We do this to ourselves as well. We often believe that the way we have done things in the past is the only way we can do things. We let past behaviors, misdeeds and achievements define us. We justify unethical behavior in the present by coasting on earlier honesty. We discount current success, acutely feeling inadequacies from failures in our past. We begin to feel that we cannot change- that “we are who we are” however incomplete or biased those assessments may be.

Oscar Wilde’s quote points to the possibility of redemption- the most radical type of transformation. It asks us to see beyond a momentary mental shortcut and see the long arc of a life and the many choices that allow us to redefine ourselves over and over again.

I liked seeing the quote on the church’s sign. In a time when religions are often strident in their denunciations of the “sinner” but uninterested in helping those in need, the placement of the quote at a Church is welcoming. It is a recognition of the ways in which everyone we meet is merely at one moment in their journey and that the trajectory of that journey is not always discernable.

So wherever you are on your journey, know that the choices you make can continue or alter your path. You and the people around you are not frozen. We all have pasts and we all have the opportunity to change our futures.

The Call of Stories

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Storytelling
The first time I taught an interpersonal communication class I assigned the opening chapter of The Call of Stories by the great child psychiatrist, Harvard professor, and writer, Robert Coles. In the thirty pages I assigned, Coles lays out a compelling argument for medical practitioners to hear the stories of their patients and not just reduce them to jargon and theory. I asked my students after reading the chapter to tell me a story about themselves that would let me get to know them (without disclosing deeply personal information.)

We are all born as storytellers. Some are more skilled, more descriptive etc, but we are each the protagonist and the narrator of our own lives. In trying to make sense of the day to day and the random, of the trajectory of our lives, we build narratives. Our stories are filled with primary, secondary and tertiary characters, characters who play pivotal roles and then recede and characters who stay in our lives, changing and remaining constant.

At the time, I conceived of the exercise for my students as a way for me to get to know  them and for them to engage in some introspection. And I did learn some fascinating things about my students- I got to know them much better than I would have if I had asked a more directed question. But what I also learned was that many of my students did not trust their own ability to be story tellers.

My students, who had undoubtedly told friends and families numerous stories in their lives, had difficulty crafting a story about themselves. Some came to me struggling with such an open ended instruction. I began to feel that somewhere along the way my students had learned to accept other people’s narratives about them and lacked confidence in their ability to construct their own. Throughout the class I encouraged them to find their own voices, craft their own narratives and I knew that part of my job was to listen.

I learned a lot about my students that semester.  I also learned the importance of listening to stories. When I saw each student through their stories- in their own voices- they were more vibrant and alive than my gradebook suggested. When my students were empowered to tell their own stories, they grew in confidence and as people.

A common coaching tool is to ask clients to write their own stories- designing a narrative that stretches from the past into the future. The practice of consciously telling your own story can be transformative.

But as we craft our own stories, it is important to remember that everyone else is engaged in a similar act. Everyone you meet has a story- with joy and pain, triumphs and defeats. Being aware of this fosters greater understanding. The first step in creating that understanding is remembering that each person is a product of their stories and the second step is remembering to listen.

Fighting the Zombie Apocalypse

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This weekend I went to the see the newest X-Men movie (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and after sitting through endless previews for depressing action movies and the dark vision of the film itself, I found myself feeling pretty hopeless. Our entertainment environment is filled right now with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imagery. We conjure flawed super heroes to fight cunning and powerful villains or watch the “everyman” fight off a zombie mob. You might say “it’s just the movies (or TV),” but the truth is that our entertainment feeds and expands upon our fears.

Our ultra-violent and dark popular culture speaks to and from our collective anxiety. A jobless economic recovery, a world overrun with war, shooting sprees that leave children and young people massacred, a government that spies on its enemies and citizens alike, corporate cultures that demand long hours with increasing job instability- all of these conspire to make us feel vulnerable. Our entertainment is filled with stories of heroes (either super or home-grown) who are able to survive and conquer these forces. We turn to fiction for heroes because they seem so elusive in our own lives.

There is no better distillation of this fear than the zombies who inhabit our entertainment- from The Walking Dead to World War Z to any number of video games. Zombies are people who have ceased to be human. They are unstoppable mindless drones who have the ability to turn healthy independent people into the shuffling undead.

Zombie movies are a fun house mirror of our fears- that our world has spun out of control and that we are being turned into zombies. Schools prepare our students to be good workers and work demands that we surrender our autonomy and creativity and become mindless drones. We fear that we and those around us are becoming zombies. We fear that we have become the shuffling undead.

In popular culture the only way to resist the zombie horde is to resort to hiding and violence. The siege mentality of zombie films is again a mirror of our own mentality- looking out only for ourselves, pitted against our neighbors and friends for scarce resources- fighting over the division of the pie and not attempting to make the pie bigger.

Our zombie entertainment reflects our fears. But we have choices. We can, of course, surrender and become zombies ourselves or we can resist. But we do not need to resist as our entertainment counterparts do- by building fortresses and stockpiling weapons. Rather the way that we can fight is by becoming more intensely human.

We can reach out to our neighbors and to strangers with kindness and not suspicion. We can seek out moments of connection with one another. We can stop and appreciate the arts- by listening to music, reading a book or creating something (paintings, sculptures, collages- whatever!). We can stroll calmly and slowly out in nature. We can turn off our cell phones when we come home and make the office wait until tomorrow. We can insist on our own humanity and we can resist fear.

It is not easy. Zombies have captured our imaginations because we live in dangerous and uncertain times. But if zombies are the undead, we must fight them and what they represent by becoming more fully alive.

Marathon Day

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Today is Marathon Day in Boston and this year there are people gathered together for many different reasons. Some people are here to run in one of the greatest athletic events in the world- testing their endurance as they make that climb up heartbreak hill- some hoping to win a title, other striving to prove to themselves that they really can. But for many others in Boston today they are here because of the tragic events of last Marathon Day. They are here to honor those who cannot be here. They are here to prove that they have endured. They are here to show the strength of a city and its resilience.

Some of the people show physical scars- battered bodies and missing limbs, while for others the scars may not be visible; emotional and psychological scars – the despair of loss, the trauma of having been touched by violence.

Which is to say that the people in Boston today are very much like the people you meet everyday. Some of the people you meet carry the physical scars of life while others seem untouched by its cruelties. And yet, just because you cannot see the scars- does not mean they are not there.

There are parents caring for children with disabilities or children caring for sick and elderly parents. There are people for whom the pain of mental and physical illness is so crippling that every day they get out of bed is a personal victory for them. There are those who are haunted by trauma from their pasts and those who worry where their next meal will come from. The variations of human suffering are great and the resilience of the human spirit inspiring.

So as you go through your day, and indeed , through your life, be kind to those you encounter. You have no idea what burdens they carry or the path they have had to walk. For many of us, every day is marathon day- a day of remembrance, endurance, triumph, and pain.