It's Not Me, It's You (Hmm. . .)

An opinion on judgment and blame

Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash

There is something that everyone I know (including myself) has in common — we all believe that we are open-minded. We all like to view ourselves as people who treat others fairly, people who are tolerant of others.

Yet, most of us find ourselves talking about other people behind their backs. Not necessarily with a mean intent, but to express our opinions on how they dress, how they support the “wrong” candidate, how they raise their children, how they live on junk food, or how they spend their money on the wrong things.

Humans like to categorize things because it is a natural drive to look for patterns, allocate labels, and arrange things into categories. Humans like to categorize things because it helps them make sense of the world, predict behavior, and establish order through mental categories. (link)

In our conversations with others, we find ourselves explaining our points of view to them, hoping that they will come around to seeing things in the same way that we do. And, when others see things differently, conversations can easily turn into arguments.

Sometimes, conversations don’t get heated, but simply end when one person, in exasperation, says, “Fine, you do you!” This tends to shut down the conversation (which in certain situations is a good thing), but this is not an example of an open-minded exchange of ideas.

Both people normally enter and leave a conversation without having really learned anything about why the other person sees things the way they do. In our media-saturated environment, most people only exchange the talking points provided by their favorite news providers (MSNBC vs. FOX, for example), when discussing politics or wars or budgets, or COVID.

It’s all so exhausting.

At one particularly low point in my life, I turned to the practice of mindful awareness, hoping that I could find some relief from my chaotic thoughts and deep unhappiness. I knew that I had to change something within myself if I were going to go on living.

I picked up some books by Thich Nhat Hanh, and began to learn about inter-connectedness and mindful living.

My early practice was simply observing my environment mindfully. I walked slowly, noticing the different shapes and colors of various leaves on the trees and shrubs, I followed the path of the bees as they sought pollen, I listened to birdsong, to dogs barking, to car horns honking, to lawn mowers roaring. I smelled honeysuckle and I smelled the garbage in the trash cans lining the street.

I practiced accepting all the sights, sounds, and smells without judgment.

Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom. (link)

And through this simple practice of not automatically jumping to my status quo reaction (I hate the sound of those noisy lawnmowers! Yikes, there’s a bee [swat] get away from me, bee!), I learned to accept all sounds as simply sounds, smells as smells, and actually got over my fear of bees when I noticed that they weren’t after me, I was just in their path of searching for pollen.

The point of this practice was to gain an understanding that everything is not about me, and my reaction to things.

It’s not that I learned to love the noise of gas lawnmowers, but I learned not to get all upset over it. (Ugh, that damn mower, why does that stupid person have to be running his mower now! I’m trying to study!)

See what I mean about making everything personal?

I came to see the sound of the mower as simply another sound in my environment. The person who chose to mow his lawn in the late afternoon, didn’t start up his mower with the intention of annoying me. He was mowing his lawn and I was studying at that same time. No one was a perpetrator and no one was a victim.

And in a calmer mindset, I found myself able to put the mower sound in the background of my mind, and to stop the battle in my brain between the sound and my ability to study. The two things could coexist.

(I practice mindfulness daily, and went on to teach others the practice.)

My critical thinking skills would be greatly impaired without my mindfulness practice. Because mindful living has taught me that all things are constantly changing. There is not one set way of doing things, there is not one correct way of thinking.

I’m not implying that there are no facts, or that all opinions should be equally considered. Rather, my point is that critical thinking requires that we become aware of our own biases and pre-conceived ideas before we judge the opinions and lifestyles of others.

I don’t talk as much as I used to, but I think that’s a good thing. I’m much calmer when I’m not “trying to get a word in edgewise” as I listen to someone go on and on, speaking over and interrupting others, as they express their opinion.

Often, I just sit back and listen to the conversation around me. Most people constantly interrupt each other. No one is really listening. I feel no need to add in my two cents, which won’t likely be listened to either.

If someone asks me what I think, I will voice my opinion. And, if they do listen, I will try to explain how I reached my opinion. But, I no longer feel a need to argue my opinion. Because others will either be open to listening, or not open to listening.

And, I make it a point to ask them to how they feel about my opinion. And I listen to them speak. This is how we begin to actually listen and understand each other.

This is what I believe it means to be open-minded.