The Faces of Infinity

Living in community always brings new and interesting experiences to my everyday. One particular facet of my life that’s completely opened since my work with Action for Life (starting in 2005) has been on the relational/emotional front.

One of our partners in work in Taiwan is a group called EQ that works primarily on just that – the Emotional Quotient. Developed out of some Western psychology/counseling coupled with an Eastern understanding, the center hit at the heart of an often unspoken issue in Taiwanese culture: family relations. In an effort to build a better society, a small, dedicated group decided to work on the issue . They have been highly successful and well-recognized for their work in Tainan. Their vision is that the city of Tainan will be not only nationally recognized, but internationally recognized as a city where families flourish.

Some of my colleagues have been involved with taking this work to other countries including Malaysia and South Korea. They hooked us up one afternoon and we were invited by the director to attend a session on grief healing.

When I first encountered this type of thing (kind of a group counseling vibe) several years back, I scoffed. I didn’t think I would gain anything new, or at least nothing that I couldn’t have figured out on my own. To be honest, some of that thinking has been validated. In attending a few sessions with my various teams, I’ve found little fresh in terms of intellectual concepts. It’s all fairly straight forward. But what catches me is that a) it forces me way outside my logical paradigm and comfort zone and b) its about real people and their real lives.

If you are like me, you might find it easy to tune into your own world; well aware of you’re own feelings, reactions, thoughts and experiences, but often unaware of others. As a highly self-interested person who is also happily and often aloof, years passed by me without much of a developed sense of empathy. Yes, I could sense another person’s joy and pain, but it wasn’t a gripping kind of connection – the kind of connection that can be a cornerstone understanding in a relationship.

But working with other people to process experiences and relationships has meant a couple of things. For one, it’s meant opening up parts of my life I’m often unwilling to share with others. For two, it’s meant learning about love and how to love in an incredibly new way.

Some people wear it all on their sleeve and they will gladly talk to you about deep feelings and relationships without hesitation. Others dig in and gladly set up their walls to keep certain things private. I’m more the latter, long ago figuring it would give me maximum leverage (read: power) to keep my hand full of my own secrets and others’ secrets ready to play when needed. Rarely has this been malicious. More self-interested.

Since learning that I don’t want to be part of those kinds of power games, I’ve slowly opened up. I’ve found that it can be helpful for someone to provide a specific format for doing so – someone who knows how to work with a group in this specific function. I find this particularly helpful when I’m working in team or community, as I don’t often offer much information without a helpful prompt or question (nor do many others). This type of experience (along with a number of others) began to bring out a great happiness in my heart – to share my experiences and adventures and feelings with people. If there was any obvious demonstration of this new leaf, you are reading it right now.

As I’ve opened up about myself, I’ve also learned to be more open in my reception of others. This has brought me great joy, enriching my understanding of the human experience through more personal relationships. It has also brought difficult challenges, requiring me to struggle with the deeper sufferings of human life and forcing me to adjust my own understandings of how and why existence is the way it is. Despite the difficulties, I wouldn’t trade my now-complicated canvas for the myopia of my old shoebox dioramas.

Last week I worked with my team to look deeply at the grief each of us carries around. The hurts of days past that still mark our souls and influence our actions today. I heard about the impact lonely family members had on their families. The response of children to parents who tried to love them, but didn’t love them the way the kids needed/wanted. The toll of a sibling’s death. Friends who let circumstances drive them apart.

When I hear one person’s experience, I’m shaken at the intense reality of their life. It can overwhelm me to think that each person I pass by on a city street lives with the same kind of deep existence – an ever-changing cloud of feelings and relationships, reactions and events, physiology and psychology, banal and sacred. We all share that.

But what comes of this? I’m moved by it. To learn about another person at a deep level allows me to transmit that understanding to each new person I meet. I can see that depth in all things. I an look into their eyes and see the infinity therein.

Levinas writes exquisitely on this subject. I loved reading his philosophy in college, but now I’m finding new ways to explore its practice: the challenge to radically experience the depth of life in the face-to-face encounter. And then to love.