As Part 4 was about recognising the stories that we tell ourselves, there is another important consideration; we have to understand that everybody else is telling themselves stories too.
Every person we meet is experiencing reality from a perspective that we can’t fully see; they have their own memories, experiences, insecurities, beliefs and emotions influencing how they interpret what is happening around them, just as we do.
We touched on this previously with family, but when you have a conversation with a parent, there can sometimes be more than just the adult you in the room; the child you once were can be there too. However, the same is true for them, the child they once were is in the room. Their parents are there through the influence they had on them, as are decades of experiences that occurred long before you were even born.
In a sense, when two people have a conversation, two entire histories are meeting in the present. This doesn’t mean that we should excuse somebody’s behaviour simply because we can understand where it may have come from; understanding and agreeing are two different things. Somebody can behave badly and we can maintain our boundaries whilst still recognising that we may not know everything that contributed to their behaviour.
This principle applies to disagreements; two people can experience the same situation and walk away with completely different interpretations of what happened. Each person remembers different details, places importance on different moments and interprets the other’s words through their own experiences.
The problem comes when our objective stops being understanding what happened and becomes proving that our interpretation is the correct one.
Often, we don’t listen to understand; we listen to respond, while the other person is talking, we’re already preparing our defence, looking for holes in their argument or waiting for an opportunity to explain why they’re wrong.
At that point, it can be worth asking ourselves whether we want to be right or if we want to understand.
Of course, being wrong can be uncomfortable, particularly when our opinions have become attached to our identity. Changing our minds can feel like losing, but there is no shame in changing your perspective in light of better evidence. In fact, the greater mistake would be discovering that something isn’t true and continuing to believe it simply because we don’t want to admit that we were wrong.
This doesn’t mean that every perspective is equally accurate because there are still facts and sometimes one person simply is wrong. Another thing to consider here is that empathy doesn’t require us to abandon objectivity. Instead, it means remaining open to the possibility that our own perspective is incomplete.
Think about an argument from years ago. At the time, you may have been absolutely certain that you were right. Looking back now, with distance, experience and information you didn’t have at the time, perhaps you see it differently. Reality didn’t change; your perspective did.
Perhaps this is another reason why awareness is so important. If we can recognise the stories that we tell ourselves, we can also recognise that other people are constructing their own interpretations of the same reality.
As mentioned in Part 2, we all develop filters through our beliefs, experiences and influences, through which we interpret the world around us. Being aware that these filters exist doesn’t necessarily remove them, but it can remind us that what we see through them may not be the complete picture.
The same is true of everybody else. We may be looking at the same reality, but we aren’t necessarily looking at it from the same place.
We don’t have to agree with them and we certainly don’t have to tolerate harmful behaviours, but understanding another person’s perspective can give us information that insisting on our own perspective cannot.
Reality doesn’t care who wins the argument. In Part 1, I wrote about the faculty of attention and how easily it can be placed on the wrong things. So perhaps attention isn’t only about noticing what is directly in front of us; it’s also about noticing where we’re looking from. So perhaps the question shouldn’t always be who is right. Sometimes the better question is ‘What am I not seeing?’