Nothing’s personal
I’ve been struggling to articulate an insight that’s been erratically making its way into my life recently. The best I can put it is that “nothing’s personal.” I touched on a theme related to this in the last part of this blog post, and wrote about how it manifests in my parenting on a blog post on Wildmind called The play of causes and conditions. In that post I wrote:
But the most profound thing I’ve been learning is to accept the truth of impermanence and not-self (anatta) when I’m dealing with [my 2-year-old daughter]. I’ve been reflecting a lot on these topics as part of my researches for a book I’m working on. Sometimes, when she’s frustrated, my daughter will try to strike me or will do something like spit at me (honestly, she’s a very sweet kid — it’s just a phase she’s going through and it doesn’t happen a lot). When a baby does that kind of thing you just shrug it off — you don’t take it personally when a one-year-old clonks you on the head with a building block, because you reckon they’re just learning to coordinate their actions and aren’t aware that they’re really hurting the person they’re doing this to. But at a certain age you stop regarding your child as a bundle of joy and start seeing them as more of a person.
And this happened in my relationship with my daughter a couple of months ago. She’d hit me or spit in my face in anger, and I’d find I was taking it personally and I’d get angry. But then I started reflecting that she was really a stream of “causes and conditions.” Rather than seeing her as a “person” (which implies something rather static) I started thinking of her as an eternally-unfolding stream of causes and conditions. She doesn’t know why she acts in certain ways. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing all the time. She’s experiencing new emotions (imagine that!) and having to learn to deal with them. And so she’s just going through phases of development as she tries to make sense of the world around her and of herself. Oddly, I found that I could face her tantrums not just with equanimity, but with love and compassion, when I let go of the assumption that she was a “person” and saw her more as a stream of causes and conditions.
It’s funny, isn’t it? It sounds dehumanizing to regard someone as not being a person. But actually it’s the opposite. When I see her as a “person” I start immediately thinking (even unconsciously, I think) in terms of her having a fixed nature that I have to mold into the shape I want. And that brings about judgements, because molding a living being isn’t easy. There’s “resistance,” and “uncooperativeness” and “bad behavior.” And it’s hard not to be angry when you’re faced with those things (even if they’re just judgements your own mind has imposed on reality).
But when I see my daughter as a stream of causes and conditions, I see her as an evolving being, and instantly I feel compassion for her, because I see her as a struggling and growing being. And my heart opens to her, because deep down we’re all struggling and growing beings. And perhaps somehow my heart knows that the best conditions in which to be a struggling and growing being are love and compassion from other struggling and growing beings.
When I was being interviewed last week and was trying to explain this, Tami Simon, the interviewer, picked up on the phrase “taking things personally” which is what we often do, seeing things as about us when they’re not. That’s led me to the phrase “nothing’s personal.” In that regard I want to mention a brilliant article on relationships that was recently in the New York Times, Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear. In it, the author, Laura Munson, gives a very clear and honest account of working through the same insight with her husband, who was having a mid-life crisis.
Here’s a visual: Child throws a temper tantrum. Tries to hit his mother. But the mother doesn’t hit back, lecture or punish. Instead, she ducks. Then she tries to go about her business as if the tantrum isn’t happening. She doesn’t “reward” the tantrum. She simply doesn’t take the tantrum personally because, after all, it’s not about her.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying my husband was throwing a child’s tantrum. No. He was in the grip of something else — a profound and far more troubling meltdown that comes not in childhood but in midlife, when we perceive that our personal trajectory is no longer arcing reliably upward as it once did. But I decided to respond the same way I’d responded to my children’s tantrums. And I kept responding to it that way. For four months.
“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”
His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.
He drew back in surprise. Apparently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a custody battle. Or beg him to change his mind.
So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”
Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.
Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”
You might be tempted to think that getting your ego out of the way like this is a sign of weakness, but it’s not. Here’s Munson again
I know what you’re thinking: I’m a pushover. I’m weak and scared and would put up with anything to keep the family together. I’m probably one of those women who would endure physical abuse. But I can assure you, I’m not. I load 1,500-pound horses into trailers and gallop through the high country of Montana all summer. I went through Pitocin-induced natural childbirth. And a Caesarean section without follow-up drugs. I am handy with a chain saw.
I simply had come to understand that I was not at the root of my husband’s problem. He was. If he could turn his problem into a marital fight, he could make it about us. I needed to get out of the way so that wouldn’t happen.
You might also think that “de-personalizing” a situation like this is heartless, but actually it’s the most compassionate thing you can do for another person. Taking things personally makes it “you versus them” (“he could make it about us”) while not allowing it to be personal keeps it about the other person.
The big insight for me is that a tantrum in a child, a mid-life crisis in a spouse, or any other interpersonal crisis, is not actually personal, even for the person who’s experiencing the tantrum or crisis. It’s just their inner struggle for happiness manifesting (as Munson said, “He was in the grip of something else”) in a way that’s likely to to make them even more unhappy — if we take it personally.
I’m not sure what makes this practice of “nothing’s personal” do-able. I’ve been meditating for years and reflecting on not-self (anatta) a lot in various ways as I work on a book about the six element practice. I’d love to hear more from other people who are finding that “nothing’s personal.”
5 Responses to “Nothing’s personal”
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You’re currently reading “Nothing’s personal,” an entry on Bodhipaksa's blog, bodhi tree swaying
Published: Aug 11 2009
oh Bodhipaksa….you have great insight and it truly is one of thee most difficult roles of parenting! i have just returned from a 2 week intensive retreat/teachings and struggled enormously with the 5000+ people whom attended! i too had to come to a point where my aversion of humans was coming from my side and that it was “nothing personal” unless i made it so! we are ALL refugees in some form searching for peace within and suffering all the same. compassion is the key to any and all humans whether family, friend or foe. it is a simple path but not an easy one.
our minds are no different than any muscle in our body…we just choose to ignore it or react out of ego instead of “training” our minds to be thoughtful. thanks for sharing…your words are always clear. hazel
Thank you, Hazel. I’ve found that I just no longer believe I have a self. It’s a peculiar thing and hard to explain, although it causes me to burst into laughter sometimes when I remember. I check in with myself and it occurs to me that the “self” I have at the moment is not the same one I had earlier that day or even a few moments ago. It’s not the same one I had when I started typing this comment. So I realize I don’t really have one. My experience seems always fresh and new, and very relaxed, happy, and energized — well, mostly!
Great post.
You’ve really opened my eyes. I’ve been trying to practice “non-self” in my own pitiful way for some time now. You always have a way of offering a unique perspective on things.
Thanks. I’ve been checking in again this morning and I still don’t have a self. I keep looking for a sense of self and all I can find is ever-changing experiences. I have no sense that these experiences constitute something continuous and permanent. In fact my “self” is life a kaleidoscope image — there’s always something there to experience but in every moment the contents of the experience are shifting and so there’s no static picture to look at. This is still very enjoyable, despite my only getting four hours’ sleep because of the baby.
I really love your crystalline recognition of your daughter, and all of us, as eternally-unfolding streams of causes and conditions. It makes me want to grip my chair for a moment, as if I can hang on to some solid self. But it makes me laugh, too. Between the 2 of those responses comes a lot more ease and compassion for others.
(I, too, read Munson’s New York Times article. I was thoroughly impressed by the path she made.)