Deepening the Doubt

THIS IS A LONG ONE.

Twice this week I was able to have pretty lengthy conversations about this stuff with a couple of people (I am deeply indebted, Jon and Lianne!).  Those conversations seem to make it both easier and harder to post something today.  Easier, because the thoughts are fresh in my mind.  Harder because I feel like I've already said what I have to say, and because it was a conversation [. . . electric charge is made to flow along a closed path (a circuit), usually to perform some useful task. - Wikipedia].

When people are engaged with the questions, they generally come to the point where they say, "Okay.  So, what do I do."  And the question has frustrated me.  Frustrated me because I feel like I'm supposed to have an answer and because I've always had the same question myself.

It came to me this week, in both of these conversations (do you have experience of sometimes not really knowing what you know and what you think until you hear yourself saying it out loud?):  the only thing to do is to keep asking the questions.

The depth of our cultural assumptions is so much more than most of us ever realize until we start down the path of doubt.  The depth to which we assume that things are here for us is beyond profound (profane).  Here's the example I used with Lianne yesterday.  When you stand at your kitchen sink and wash your dishes, what is in your mind about the water?  Is there anything in your mind about the water?  Do you just assume that you can reach over, turn on the tap and the water will flow, to whatever extent you want it or need it?  Do you only really think about it if it doesn't behave as you expect:  perhaps the pressure behind the water is less than usual, perhaps there is some unusual coloration in the water or an odor you didn't anticipate, maybe it's not as hot as or hotter than you anticipated.  Maybe you think about how much you're using because the water bill was higher than usual last month or your budget has gotten tighter.

Regardless, notice that all those questions are fraught with assumptions, assumptions about you and your expectations of the water.

What if instead you were being thoughtful about the water, just like you would be thoughtful of a friend or a housemate or partner or your pet or the person who delivers the bottled water to your house or apartment?  If being thoughtful about those others means that you wonder how they are doing, do they have needs you can help with, if it means extending your feelings, your instincts, your intuitions toward that other to make a connection, to bring them into your own feeling space as if they are you in some way, a part of you and you part of them . . . in some way . . .then what does being thoughtful about the water mean?

In my mind it means thinking of, feeling about, treating the water as a living other, no less an other than the person who delivers the bottled water to your door.

We know that when someone comes to us, enters the space we are in, that they are coming to us from some otherwhere, from some other experiences that probably have nothing directly to do with us.  They had interactions that shaped how they are feeling when they enter the space we are in, they are having internal experiences right then and there that may have nothing at all to do with us but which, nonetheless, influence the interaction we are having right now.  We know the same is true about us, and we extend this realization to the other, allowing for their otherness, which includes all the above and more  . . much, much more.

This we call empathy.  This we call caring.  (This, by the way, seems to be all but lacking in most interactions I witness these days; but I assume you all are different than that.)

What would it mean to extend our recognition of otherness to the water we are using to wash our dishes?  Do you own the water?  Yes, you are in all likelihood paying to have it come out of your tap.  But do you own it?  Is it yours?  Where was it before it came into the pipes in your dwelling and out the tap into your sink, onto your hands and your dishes.  Were there others who were at some previous point engaged with that water, too?   Some fish, perhaps, or an insect, a bird, a raccoon, an amoeba, a bacterium.

And what of the water itself?  Is there an otherness there, too.  At what point do we consider, what does the water want?  Is there a livingness, a spirit that belongs to the water.  Is there a moment, when you think, 'Thank you, water, for coming here to help me wash these dishes just now.'

At the point (and it may just have occurred) you find yourself smiling and thinking, this is silly or, at the very least it's a quaint idea, some alternative spirituality . . .that is what points to your unquestioned assumptions about the world, the assumptions our culture has given to you and which, up to this point, you do not doubt.