I woke thinking about ‘otherness’ and of course when I say otherness, I mean the ‘not me’. We are always in the mode of otherness, even when stamping our feet and saying, ‘this is me’. And isn’t that a lovely feeling, when we feel ourselves to be settled and sure - isn’t that bliss even?
What I notice in my 63 years of existence in this form on this planet, is that a blissful feeling doesn’t last all that long. As a bit of a restless creature, I’m often on the move, creatively, physically, geographically. Someone once asked, ‘why can’t you settle?’ My response was, ‘This is me settled’. I feel so much more solid in the world when I am exploring and creating out of some vague idea that organically gains traction.
The ‘Why can’t you settle?’ question set me apart from the other person whilst at the same time their question expressed their sense of what settling means for them: stay put, keep everything steady, don’t look over there. I’ll be honest, sometimes the being curious and exploring has cost me, but that’s the gamble isn’t it - our lives are one great experiment. It takes time to learn how to discern what might be a good move in life, and there is absolute merit in slowing down, letting ideas breathe so that they can find a little life of their own.
Sitting Zazen (Zen meditation) helps me with slowing down and creates a kind of expansiveness - sometimes I can feel I have space to move around even though I am static on my cushion. John Daido Loori would call it coming to the ‘still point’ - in that moment we are the whole world, what else do we need? In that moment, there is opportunity to directly experience the fullness of everything that is ‘other’, even the parts maybe I don’t want to experience!
Otherness is personal, social, political and can have devastating consequences on all three levels. In psychotherapy, we might call it projection or shadow, where we often unwittingly judge the ‘not me’, the bit we don’t like about ourselves, the envy or jealousies, the different beliefs - all these aspects of being human that we turn into moral judgements about others because another’s difference brings up an uncomfortable self-consciousness within us.
Everyone is judging - that is human. We only get a sense of ourselves in relation to others - even when we give a compliment, we are judging. So, don’t beat yourself up when judging someone else. Notice, be curious, explore - BE OPEN to the possibility of having your head turned and experimenting with the fluidity of what this life can be in this world full of others. The ‘not me’ statement can be a way-in to curiosity, where the ‘I and You’ as a kind of separation can be explored.
Just be mindful though, that in Zen parlance, the I and the You are hand in hand; you can’t have one without the other! Cushion/no cushion, me/not me, separation/no separation.
We want to be an individual and we want to belong. It is a constant tension in this lived life of ours: excruciatingly beautiful.