Micro and Macro

There's the world inside and there's the world outside.

El mar adentro, el mar afuera. That sea inside you, its own weather, its own profundity, its own superficiality. Then there's the outside, the sea outside.

The brother of a Canadian friend posted on facebook about the continued plight of the Native Canadians, the "First Nation" people, in a country I often find morally superior to the cocky warmongering country I claim my own.

The people in northern Libya continue to have to endure the tug-of-war civil war that is slowly becoming forgotten by us.

Even more forgotten are the African economic and political refugees who use Libya as a springboard to a better life in Europe, now suffering even greater pains and facing greater risks of death with their route cut off by that war.

And even here, in the land of supposed plenty, more and more Americans are finding it hard to meet their basic needs. They aren't living in refugee camps where torture and rape occur in dark corners ignored by the rest of the world, but still, because they are here, their plight more approachable, their story therefore not less moving.

These are the storms, just a tiny set of examples, in the sea beyond, El Mar Afuera. It's easy to read the headlines, on facebook or on the New York Times, about all these depressing events that leave us all roiled up but really in the end we do nothing about it, and that doesn't count those who don't care at all. In my last weekend post, I mentioned discussion with my art buddy regarding the hypocrisy of the self-declared left or progressive people who in the end really do nothing more than venting their frustration and helplessness, and that many of them belittle those who seem not to bear that same frustration and feeling of helplessness.

What about the sea inside? The sea inside seems different and connected in not quite so obvious ways to the violent sea outside. Last night I spent the evening with this woman discussing mostly about he sea inside, though I didn't use that term. The turmoils inside us have everything to do with our inability to cope with the storms outside. To make this claim more concrete, when you haven't found the connection within yourself, you won't find the connection with others, friends, family, or strangers on the beaches of Lampedusa where the North African refugees are stranded between Europe and Libya. Or put it even more simply, when you haven't fallen in love with yourself, you won't really fall in love with another human being, be it a partner or a Palestinian boy born and raised in a refugee camp in Lebanon.

The evening was at times very tough. I realized how much strength is needed to listen. By "strength" I mean really love. Love for a human being, love in the form of self-confidence. The first part has always been obvious to me. When I listen, I put away all my own issues, embrace the person in front of me, take in what they say without being distracted by analyses or worse, judgments. I don't always do a great job, but I get a B+ overall, I think.

But the second part, it occurred to me last night, is tough. It wasn't a new challenge to me, but this time it became very obvious to me. Enough to make me want to re-evaluate my listening capabilities.

This challenge of listening is when the other person is so overwhelmed with the topic that she can't trust I am on her side. In this case, she began to turn defensive, felt very ashamed, felt pain that she couldn't tell if it was caused by me or if it was simply resurfacing. She started accusing me of reaffirming her fears, in this case, the fear of being rejected by people, being a freak, an island. At some point it became a fight, instead of a way for me to be supportive through listening. That's when I realized it was going to be difficult. The major storms in her that were picking up now were also causing weather changes in me. I couldn't just listen; I ended up feeling I had to justify my questions, or even just my presence, my listening to her. It was hard not to feel disheartened when she wanted to give up because my listening was causing so much pain in her. At the same time, my feeling of needing to justify my presence undoubtedly disrupted any sense of safety she originally felt.

In the past this was a problem already when I tried to listen to someone who for whatever reason started talking about difficult issues. They end up challenging me, the listener, causing me to doubt not only my abilities but also my motives. Was I really there to listen or to challenge her? Did I really believe she was a good person as I kept saying or I just wanted to show how bad a person she was? I know my motives are loving, but at the moment, when the person manages to corner me with her own demons, I don't always succeed in realizing it wasn't about me. That the only thing I could really do is be present, listen and show my attentiveness, and not take it personal when a volley of assault drops on me.

To be a good listener can't just be about loving the other person; it has to start with loving yourself first. Maybe sometimes I overestimate my abilities. Still, last night, at the end I walked her home, during which she fell even deeper in her self-hatred and she continued to blame my attentiveness as the reason for this drop in her mood. But I held my ground, I didn't retreat by arguing with her or throwing my hands up. I just listened and told her repeatedly that I was saddened to see her suffer like this. I could see that she didn't really feel alienated from me. She didn't walk into her apartment and left me out there. She stayed a little longer to try to sort out her feelings in front of me. I knew at that point that finally I did something right by not interfering while still listening, not to take anything as a personal attack even if it felt like it, to really stay with her while her storms crushed through the fragile landscape of her world.

I remember one time with my best friend (now ex-best friend). She was the person who taught me over the course of a few years how to listen. But one day she was feeling really down. Felt rejected by the world, extremely hopeless. I didn't know what to do. I just listened but then she said why I was so quiet, why I said nothing. How do you say something without interrupting their feelings, without turning it about yourself, without making them feel defensive? I was nervous. I had no confidence with my listening skills in front of more or less my guru of listening. She asked me to leave. I didn't know what to do. Did that mean she was just giving up on me but really hoping I would stay to challenge the age old pain she had regarding people always leaving her? Or she simply at that point wanted her space? Or both. But when she repeated again in a shout that I get out of her apartment, I left. I was angry, ashamed, hurt, and sad. That was the hardest day in my days of listening to friends.

When you put your ear to a conch, you can hear the sea inside, the sea whence the conch when it was alive had come. When you put your ear to the heart of your friend, your partner, your children, your parent, you hear the tranquility of the sea inside, the sea full of love, the sea that welcomes you to its chest. But when you are standing in front of someone you care about, and you hear only the storms raging inside her, when do you have the strength and the wisdom to hear your own sea?

When you read about the atrocities, the injustices, the brokenness of the world, again, when do you have the strength and wisdom to hear your own sea? Today is a nice day in this little city. I will be leaving soon. And I won't have a place to return to. I will walk around downtown that I know so well. I was driving through the medical campus where I spent many of my years. I remember the drama, I remember the smiles, I remember the sadness, I remember the gratefulness. Nothing changed except that the people in my memory no longer work there.

Whether I am trying to connect to the sea in another person or the sea out there in the world, always, I need to spend some time on the cliffs over my own sea and look into it, look beyond it, smell its wind, imbibe its azure. Every now and then, I take a dive into the deep blue.