One of my inner divisions

Hi there.

A reminder: my vision for the future is “a world no longer divided by religion.” This is the context for everything I’m writing now.

There are so many things I could write about this week. I’ve had some wonderful days, some valuable insights, and some impactful experiences of feeling totally lost (in exactly the way I’ve been searching for).

But then I was confronted with my little reminder that I start my emails with, so I’ll try to relate things back to the vision, then see if I can walk that forward to incorporate some new thoughts this week.

A world no longer divided by religion.

I am not the world. Clearly. So how do I imagine I might bring this vision into reality?

Let’s take a simpler example as a comparison. Imagine my vision is something less grandiose. Say: “I dream of having a well-behaved family.”

Now, in pursuit of this vision, I could put a whole bunch of effort into disciplining my children. You can imagine how poorly that would go, especially with strong-willed little Imogen.

Or, I could put a whole bunch of effort into becoming more well-behaved myself. I am, after all, a part of my family. If I become 15% better, my family—which, for now, I am a third of—is 5% better.

There are lots of ways I can do this. I am often an ass. The other day, for instance, I arrived early for an appointment, thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal at all for me to wait. I didn’t give a second thought to whether that would be an inconvenience for the person I made the appointment with. In fact, it didn’t occur to me to think of him until a couple weeks later. That’s not good behavior.

So if my goal were the more modest one of having a well-behaved family, then I contribute to that goal in a substantial way by becoming more aware of my own behavior and how it might impact others.

In exactly the same way, any efforts I make toward reducing religious division within myself will contribute to a world less divided by religion. It may be a miniscule contribution. Or, it may not. I don’t actually know because when we’re talking about thins like behavior and division, things like “5% better” and “15% better” are as good as meaningless. The things I’m talking about aren’t measurable in that way.

Let’s be honest here, though; it’s probably miniscule. But that’s ok, because in the long run I know I’ll benefit personally from healing my own inner divisions. If that ends up having an impact on the rest of the world, that’s great! If not, that’s ok, too. It won’t have been for nothing. And from what I’ve seen in my life and relationships in the past couple weeks, it’s already not for nothing. It’s for a big ol’ something, even if I can’t articulate what that something is very well.

Anyway, let’s get concrete. An inner division I’ve noticed in myself recently is that there are quite a few rather important things about which I don’t know what I think.

How do I know that I don’t know what I think? Because I observe myself constantly questioning them, trying on this perspective and that perspective, unsure of which interpretation is better, waffling back and forth.

Let’s get even more concrete.

I was recently elected president of my neighborhood homeowner’s association. We’re a small neighborhood with a number of older retirees, and as a result we contract with a lawncare company to do all the mowing and such. Since I was elected, we’ve entered into a dispute with that lawncare company. We didn’t feel they were treating us very well.

I’ll spare you the details, but this week I wrote a letter to the owner of the lawncare company, listing a number of specific things they did that contributed to the breakdown in trust. I thought it was a very well-written email, honestly. We aren’t in a particularly strong bargaining position, and I was trying to appeal to the business owner’s desire to maintain a good reputation for his business.

But, well-written or not, I found myself reading and re-reading the email almost obsessively before sending it. The words themselves were eloquent, but I realized I was asking myself this: “do you actually BELIEVE what you’ve written here, Michael?

And to be honest, I still don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t know if I think the lawncare company violated the spirit of our agreement. I don’t know if I think their reputation should be at stake. I don’t know if I think they treated us unfairly (as opposed to this just being an unfortunate series of misunderstandings that came at an inopportune time).

In short, I should be on the neighborhood’s side, but I don’t know if I am. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what I should think instead of acting on what I do think.

Disputes probably aren’t the time to be that way. But it’s the way I am, not only in disputes but in a number of important areas of my life.

I don’t know what I think.

And that’s a problem.

I talked to my coach about this, and he shared a piece of wisdom: he said, when you don’t know what you think, there’s almost always a conflict of commitments at the heart of it—and one of them is usually unstated.

So if I’m trying to lose weight and I find myself in a debate with myself about whether I should eat that entire chocolate cake, then I’m caught between my commitment to lose weight (stated) and my commitment that chocolate cake is the food of the gods and that I will never experience greater bliss than when I have a mouthful of unbelievably rich chocolatey light and fluffy moist sponge cake (unstated, obviously). I don’t know what I think because I’m trying to hold onto conflicting commitments. I’m trying to have my cake and eat it, too (ba dum duh).

I’m not yet sure what my competing commitments are in the neighborhood situation. But I have an idea of what I can do: instead of reading and re-reading an email over and over and over, I can make a quiet time to sit down and try to observe what’s going on inside me. My stated commitment is obviously to work for the best possible outcome for the neighborhood. But something is obviously keeping me from doing that. And until I discover that something and renegotiate that commitment with myself (or simply let myself of the hook for it), I will continue to not know what I think.

In other words, one thing I learned this week was that I’ll never figure out what I think by thinking more of the same kinds of things. But what I can do is go down into myself to discover the division that exists in me. What is the tension where I am trying to hold onto two mutually exclusive ends? It may be that the only way to resolve that is to let go of one or the other of them. And then it will be obvious what I think, the same way it is obvious to me that a frying pan is a good tool for cooking eggs.

So there you go. A concrete example of a division within myself that I can, and will, work to resolve, as a part of my larger effort to create a world no longer divided by religion.

“But wait,” I can almost hear you ask. “What does a dispute with the lawncare company have to do with religion?”

That’s a great question. Let’s tee it up for next time.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to, I invite you to share with me some area where you aren’t sure what you think.

Until then, Peace and Love to you.