“These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” ~ William James
It’s hard to know what’s true sometimes. In fact, despite increased availability to information and increased connectivity, what’s really true has become evasive and somewhat problematic to define. Our society is filled with all sorts of political and religious leaders who claim to know the truth. We turn to the gauntlet of the Media Industrial Complex, where facts are often bought and sculpted by special interest groups, paid advertisers, and a host of pundits, who—well, opine for a living.
We come out of the gauntlet firmly crystallized in our various camps of ideology. All of these competing, conflicting personal truths are what makes our culture so diverse, so dynamic. But these differences are also deepening the divides in this splintered world. How are we to hone in on significant ideas, beliefs, and experiences when surrounded by a saturation of noise and chaos?
According to a recent must read article from the NY Times, http://nyti.ms/1NTto2q, people tend to cherry-pick their own personal truths in a society that caters to the fashion of designer realities. While I am not immune to this phenomenon, I still strive to seek deeper truths that lead to meaningful action.
It’s important to understand that when we brand ourselves with a particular way of life, we are all merely identifying with what resonates with us. The real challenge becomes stepping outside of our own reality bubbles and identifying with others’ realities. This is what it means to live with compassion and empathy; to forgo your comfort in order to share another’s pain; to feel connected to another person’s experience, even if you are ideologically opposed to them; to realize the underlying theme beneath these seemingly alien encounters with another person.
The human experience, while widely varied, has some common themes. Regardless of political or religious ideologies, these human needs are at the core of what drives us as a species and individually. As explained in the book, How to Own the World, by Stephen K. Hayes, these five basic human needs are:
- Authority – A sense of being worthy of accessing life’s great abundance; to be in charge of accomplishing our own goals, and to know we set our own boundaries. We want to be important.
- Knowledge – Authentic understanding of who we are and what is true about life; to realize what is true, and to attain personal peace through intelligence. We want to be right.
- Connection – Kinship with the community and the hearts of others; to express who we really are, and to share respect, admiration, and love with others. We want to be noticed.
- Service – A sense of engagement with the adventure process of life; to expand brightness and good over negative energy, and to know we are part of something bigger than self. We want to be needed.
- Personal Fulfillment – Experience of enlightened peace that comes with wisdom; a sense of having the space to live up to our dreams and expectations. We want to experience directly and fully the significance of life.
Not everyone would agree with this list (subjective personal truth again), but these ideas, and variations of, are a good launching point for studying human behavior.
In your interactions with others, try to see the motivating behavior behind a person’s words and actions. What human needs are they driven by? What human needs are you driven by? When engaged in conflict, try to see these encounters for what they are in terms of energy transactions. Try to empathize with them, while also driving the types of self-behaviors that will affect a positive outcome.
Perhaps, if we can approach another person with the strength of compassion, we will find ourselves not so negatively affected by their own version of reality, but closer to an understanding of what is really true.
Chadstract's Beat 