Looking at how you look

Other bright spots through deconstruction and rebuilding?  Awareness.

For me, part of it comes from life experience, some of it comes from a sociological background, and some of it comes from “stepping outside” of your own assumptions.

The ability to stand as close as you can in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes or position is pretty high on the list of good things.  

It also has a negative side, but overall it’s a good thing.

I don’t pretend to believe that anyone can really stand in someone else’s shoes, but you can at least try to have empathy and see life from what appears to be the perspective of others.

With that dynamic or process, you can get a larger sense of awareness than you might have had before.  

Awareness of why people think and behave the way they do, or at least a better understanding of why or what we might call motive.

Awareness of how people think or process information - a reminder of the fact that there are very different ways that people use information, apart from their “why” or their motives.

Awareness of what different ways of defining or seeing information or life exist - the blend between where we get information, the language we use to convey it or think it, etc.

And then there’s self-awareness, general awareness, etc.

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General awareness and awareness of others are kind of like a multi-tool - it has different functions, different depths of reach, different ways to focus or re-frame what you’re seeing.

It’s kind of like a low level universal translator that you see in sci-fi movies or shows - the ability to communicate across cultures, languages, and so on.

But with that comes the knowledge that you’re fooling yourself if you think you’ve “got it” when trying to understand someone or some group.  

In reality, you’re finding what you hope is common ground.  You understand that true or deeper understanding comes over time, through relationship development, and the understanding that your own worldview, culture, and personal interaction style impacts how the other person presents themselves to you.

The Hawthorne Effect is where individuals modify their behavior when they know they are being observed - you can look it up online for more info.  That effect is real!  When we interact with people, they respond to us, and we “interpret them”. 

Having that awareness is important. Knowing that you might “cause” someone to act differently with or toward you than they would someone else is important to remember - it often explains a lot of our interactions and interpretations.

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A basic example is how people see law enforcement.  Some people, because of personal experiences and/or what they were taught growing up, think about or interact with law enforcement negatively. And vice versa.

If you were taught to fear the law, all your interactions will potentially be negative and you’ll be “on edge” when around anyone you think is part of law enforcement. 

The same is true with any role or job or position in life - pastors, teachers, grocery store clerks, pilots, politicians, mail or package delivery people, etc - we act toward people based on what we assume they’re going to be like.

We assume what they’re going to be like because we were told something or experienced something and we stereotype and/or overgeneralize, positively or negatively, from that point forward.

It’s a survival skill, a necessity at times, but a completely trash way of thinking if it’s all you do, but we do it all the time - again, positively or negatively.

Self-awareness is similar to general awareness and/or awareness of others and is tied pretty firmly to them.

By similar, I mean that you probably find that the “you” that you know changes over time and feels and thinks differently based on what’s going on, the topic at hand, who is asking you questions, why you feel you’re needing to know what’s going on inside, and a lot more.

There’s a self-image that we have - a short term “snapshot” of who we are.  

There’s a self-concept, a more longer-term picture of ourselves.

There’s also this discovery that a person can have where they “see” how they see themselves. 

And then there’s the stepping back to look at the “you” that is seeing yourself and realizing that, in a way, it’s a whole other person, in a sense. 

It’s a whole rabbit trail on its own that you can get lost in.  Some people can do that and others can’t.  It can be complicated and confusing.  

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An example of some of that is that I can have a jumpy, high strung nature about myself at times. I usually won't show it externally, but inside there can be a storm going on; an internal wrestling match.

I grew up in a household where there was a lot yelling, threats, uncertainty, and occasionally, violence.

You never knew what was going to happen some days.  Sure there were long periods of “normal”, but they’d be punctuated with craziness.

For years, I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next bad thing to happen, etc - because that’s what life seemed like it was - a constant stream of crappy events with no great hope in sight unless you were just able to get away and start over somewhere else, someday.

But even when you did get away and start over, that feeling stayed with you inside and drove you to be on guard all the time.  If it was honed and shaped up, I learned you could use that insight, that feeling, that survival skill in life to help you with work, problem solving, etc.   And that’s good!

But left unchecked, that feeling, that nature can still sneak up on me and make me have to work hard to remember that life isn’t “that way”.  

You can have it suddenly show up all around and inside you and you don’t know where it came from, why you were “triggered”, or what it was that did that.  

Did I not sleep enough last night?  Did I not have enough coffee or healthy food?  Am I overwhelmed with work or some problem and I just don’t realize it or am I hiding it from myself (‘cause that is a thing)?  Or what exactly?

The neat thing is that you can get to a point where you can step outside yourself and advise yourself, as it were.  You can step away from the emotion or facts and acknowledge them and then coach yourself through it.  

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For me, it was one of those places where God met me to show me things about me from all of my life so I could see the shifting, growing versions of life I went through at different stages with my family, friends, stage of life, etc.

When I think of Paul in scripture and some of the crazy stuff he went through and hear him struggle and still “hang in there”, I can see that we sometimes don’t do justice to what he and other people in the New Testament went through as the truth of the good news of Jesus worked its way through them and then worked them through it.

I can see why Paul said he had learned contentment.  I don’t think he necessarily liked it all the time, but he learned who he was, “where” he was, “when” he was, and why/what he was about.

There were/are times when you don’t know why you think the way you do about certain things, situations, people, etc and, at least for me, it takes time to let God help you unpack what’s inside, how it got there, who contributed to it, and how it’s worked together over time.

I have had friends who are older tell me that they didn’t “get” a lot of things about themselves until they were older and that they’d often ask God why did he wait to show them those things about themselves until later?  Why didn’t he reveal it to them when they were younger and could have benefited more from it?

Those are great questions.

I don’t have an answer for them that is clear and easy.  

I’m guessing there are times when we’re just too stubborn to let go of some things.  Then there are times when we’re just not ready to see some truths and maybe God has shielded us from some revelations until it was beneficial for us or others.  Who knows really?

And probably that’s one of the nice things about awareness.  

You are just aware and that can be enough, at some point.

Peace and goodwill!