This Person, Just Like Me......
There is a meditation practice that has, at its core, the phrase, “This person, just like me, ….” In this practice, we bring to mind different people, known and unknown, and remind ourselves for example, that, “This person, just like me wants to be happy, wants to be healthy, wants to feel connected, wants to be free from inner and outer harm.” We are practicing seeing people as having the same basic human needs that we do. Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, the father of non-violent communication, noted that conflict usually occurs around the strategies we employ for meeting our needs, not at the level of the needs themselves.
Often we focus on one strategy someone may have for meeting their needs and, if it differs from our strategy, we write that person off completely even though there may be many, many things we have in common with them. In doing this, we are selling ourselves short, missing out on rich opportunities to connect with people.
Two of the most compelling tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week came from Chris Scalia, Justice Antonin Scalia’s son, and Eric Motley, who met Ginsburg when he was working for the George W. Bush administration. They both spoke of how she focused on what she had in common with others, and and how she was willing to hear differences of opinion because she cared about the people, and their views helped inform her own thinking. Motley writes, "We never reduced the complexity of ideas to partisan labels. We always discussed issues, even potentially divisive ones, from a cultural and historical perspective, more nuanced than the Democratic versus Republican dichotomy allows. As it so often turned out, our views on those ideas were not as far apart as our nominal party affiliations might have suggested.”
Even the story of how Ginsburg responded to her nickname “Notorious RBG” underlines her willingness to see points of connection, rather than differences. When Ginsburg, the diminutive, white, Supreme Court justice was asked what she could have in common with Biggie Smalls (aka the Notorious BIG), the Black, physically large rapper 40 years her junior, Ginsburg replied, ‘Well, of course. We have one big thing in common….We were both born and bred in Brooklyn."
This week we invite you join us in exploring the points of connection we each have with others, particularly those with whom we believe we have major differences of opinion. We can challenge ourselves to find all the different ways we could finish the statement, “This person, just like me, …… (plays _________, loves to eat _______, grew up in _______, survived ______, studied ______, speaks ________, likes to _______....)."
May all beings, without exception, become aware of all the commonalities we share with others and rest in a felt sense of connection,
Your CMP Family
