“Push through!”
“Win!”
“Don’t give in!”
Western culture tends to emphasise these yang life attitudes. There is nothing wrong with them. At times, this approach can be helpful. However, in relationships, these attitudes are the source of much conflict, defensiveness, bitterness, and divisiveness.
We are used to this yang approach. In school, that’s what we learn to rely on. If we behave in a certain way growing up, we are generally met with force to change our ways. As we grow up, we learn to meet this force with counter-force. This way of forcing what we want upon life and “winning” becomes very familiar and soon we forget that there is a totally different way to approach life.
On the other end, there is the yin approach to life. This would be more akin to the Daoist philosophy of going with the flow of life. The yin approach to life is more like a martial art. It is learning to use the natural flow of life to gracefully float with whatever is arising rather than trying to beat it into submission.
Often, that’s what relationships look like on the mental scape. Two minds meet with different perspectives and ideas of what is the best choice forward. These minds then try to prove their case and disprove the other perspective or idea of what is the best choice. This naturally creates resistance — how do you feel when someone challenges you or forcefully tells you that you are wrong?
It’s important to realise that we don’t mean anything harmful by this — it’s just how we have learned to see the world and approach life. That is, there is a right way and a wrong way. A correct perspective and an in-correct perspective. That there are good people making good choices and bad people making bad choices. But is that so?
A far more helpful perspective is to simply take a look at our own choices and see that we are always choosing what makes the most sense to us based on how we see the world at the time. As we grow, the way we see things changes and what makes sense to us changes accordingly. For example, with humility we learn to deeply consider the possibility that there is something we aren’t seeing — we are not seeing the bigger picture. Maybe we learnt this when we were really convinced of something but then later, we saw something which was hidden to perception before and suddenly, we see how foolish we were.
If we notice that we choose what makes the most sense to us based on how we see things, then we can recognise that everyone else is doing the exact same thing. This is a breakthrough in our relationships.
From this perspective, we naturally take a greater interest in understanding where they are coming from. With compassionate curiosity, it becomes interesting and fun to see things from their eyes. Moreover, if we are to truly understand where they are coming from, we also must feel what it is like to be them; their emotional state at the time.
With expanded perspective and a deeper willingness to feel where someone is coming from, the whole dynamic of right and wrong tends to dissolve. When we really see where someone is coming from, suddenly their choices make sense to us and we see that if we were in their shoes, we would’ve chosen the exact same thing.
In seeing that we are all just doing our best, we tend to be less defensive about ourselves. If we make a mistake — so what? With deeper understanding, we see that we can’t really help but choose what makes sense to us. We also see that sometimes, we just aren’t seeing something.
As we see through the dynamic of right and wrong, suddenly our relationships open up so much more than we thought possible. Now, every interaction is seen as an opportunity to broaden our perspective of life. And when we make mistakes we are naturally more forgiving with ourselves as we see the source of that error and allow ourselves to curiously open up to a deeper perspective in which that mistake is less likely to happen again.
At the same time, when our partner is saying something we can actually listen to them. What do they really mean by that? Where are they coming from? How are they seeing the world in order to say that? Our relationships become a fun exploration of life together rather than a boring game of right and wrong.
Who cares!? Why not just have fun and enjoy life either way? Why not learn and grow from every interaction together? Life is a joy if we are willing for it to be. Sometimes, we are just so caught up in wanting to be right and not wanting to be wrong that we forget that none of that actually has any significance.
I guarantee that when you look back upon your life, you are not going to care about that time you were right. What will be most important to you are all the beautiful moments of love and enjoyment together. We all already know this in our hearts. It’s just that we forget.
Let every moment together in every relationship be a beautiful catalyst for deeper perspective, understanding, and love.
Thanks for reading this.
If you enjoyed it, you’ll probably enjoy my book “A Practical Guide to Extremely Loving Relationships” here.
— Nick
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Previously Published on medium
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