January 15, 2004

• You and Me

  
  

  There are two kinds of people in the world.  The people who believe that everyone can be divided into two kinds of people, and all the rest of us who wish to slap them.  I understand the attraction of reducing the world to a simple duality, it's simple.  It's either black or white, sheep or goats, us or them.  With the wealth of possibilities comes dread and confusion.  Which is better, which is worse, what if there is no clear line ... We prefer a single choice between two clear options.  *I* prefer a single choice between two clear options.  Walking the path I choose may be difficult, but I want the choice to be easy. 

  
  

  The problem with trying to divide everything into an either/or proposition is that life tends to consist of all kinds of overlaps and intersections that keep things from staying in one neat category or another.  The lesson of yin and yang, that in every darkness there is a bit of light, in every light there is a bit of darkness is one that we have to ignore in order to preserve a dual view of life.  But in reality, every "saint" has the possibility of sin and every "sinner" has the possibility of grace in every moment and in every choice. 

  
  

  Still, we tend to divide things and try to make them fit.  Martin Buber in his incredible little book "I and Thou" talks about two ways that we view life.  The first is to see everything in terms of I-It.  With I-It thinking I approach everything "objectively," that is I see myself as being surrounded by objects.  I'll let Buber take over the description since its his idea . . .

  
  

        I contemplate a tree.
        I can accept it as a picture, a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.
        I can feel it as movement, the flowing veins around the strudy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of hte leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness. 
        I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance with an eye to its construction and its way of life.
        I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law - those laws according to which a constant oposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate.
        I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relationship between numbers, and eternalize it.
        Throughout all this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition. 

  
  

  The opposing way of seeing life is the I-You.  With the I-You construct I don't observe, I relate.  At the core, relationship is reciprocity.  I don't look at, I relate to and deal with in the full awareness that the other is relating to and dealing with me.  Even something so thing-like as a tree.  The boundaries are blurred between us as I inhale the oxygen the tree exhales and it takes in my carbon dioxide. 

  
  

  But of course, I'm primarily concerned, not with the way I relate to trees, but with how I relate to other people.  Buber describes how we objectify other people, making them into He or She which is just another way of saying It.  And then he talks about the difference when we take the other view.

  
  

      When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic I-You to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things.
       He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid of space and time, not a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities.  Neighborless and seamless, he is YOU  and fills the firmament.  Not as if there were nothing but he, but everything else lives in his light....
       The human being to whom I say You I do not experience.  I stand in relation to him in the sacred basic word.  Only when I step out of this do I experience him again.  Experience is remoteness from You. 
       The relation can obtain even if the human being to whom I say You does not hear it in his experience.  For You is more than It knows.  You does more, and more happens to it than It knows.  No deception reaches this far: here is the cradle of actual life. 

  
  

  That's what I'm looking for.  Actual life.  Reciprocity.  Relationship.  And I'll be real honest with you, this is a scary thing.  I'm beginning to understand that the thing I'm seeking is seeking me and it's demanding everything I am if I don't want to be an It.  Seeing through the I-You perspective opens me up to something bigger, more awesome, and more terrifying than I've ever chosen to come near.  If I really see you, I see all of you, and all of the Divine as well.

  
  

   

  • 10:38 am
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