Observation of New Things

It's about 30 minutes before dawn.  I hear a wild goose off in the distance, and then my neighbor cough. Now and then a car passing on the distant street. My thoughts come and go.  I feel I should grab one of those thoughts, wrestle it into submission, and present it as a blog post.

But that can wait.  For now, I'd rather just watch the night turn into day.  The refrigerator comes on.  The furnace creaks.  I hear wind chimes from across the yard.

The sky is light enough the trees are silhouetted against it now.  The early dawn.

I think an odd thing about observation is that we so often want to give it a purpose and then guide it. By guide it, I mean we want to weed out some of what's happening because it doesn't fit in with our purpose -- with what we're looking for.  Then, too, we want to hold onto other parts of what's happening because those parts actually fit our purpose.

Yet -- when we observe with a purpose in mind -- we more or less observe what we expect to observe.

I've lived in this cottage for almost a year now, and this morning was the first time I've noticed how many wind chimes there are in my immediate neighborhood.  I wasn't expecting to notice them, though.  I was instead having one of those rare moments when you observe without much in the way of expecting anything. 
 
It seems to me that it can be extraordinarily difficult to observe without any purpose.  For the most part, we're looking for something.  Often, that "something" is beauty, pleasure, or whatever we expect to find because we've seen it before.  But whatever it is, we are actively looking for it.

Still, it's in those rarer moments when we are not looking for anything -- when we do not seek beauty, pleasure, or this or that thing -- that we are most likely to discover the new.

Why are We so Often Untrue to Ourselves?

"Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure."
-- Meister Eckhart

Bronnie Ware is an Australian author and songwriter who for many years worked as a caregiver with people who were dying.  She was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

When she asked her patients whether they had any regrets about how they had lived their lives, she discovered the single most common regret dying people have is that they have not been true to themselves. 

When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

Instead of living true to themselves, they all too often felt they had tried to live up to the expectations of others. And that, to me, is Ware's most interesting observation. Of all the reasons one might fail to be true to oneself, why is that the reason Ware heard most often?

It seems human nature to want to live up to the expectations of others.  Apparently, most of us do it every day in ways both great and small.  A friend of mine -- someone I very much admire -- is a middle-aged woman who is now discovering that she has spent her life living for others. She was raised to put the wants and needs of everyone else before her own.  And that message was both reinforced and justified by her family's fundamentalist religion.

For instance: The notion she was morally obligated to subvert herself in order to please others was so deeply instilled in her during her upbringing that she felt shock the first time someone stated to her that a woman is not required to have sex with her husband if she does not feel like it.

Today she is discovering -- one step at a time -- her own wants and needs. For the fact is, when you have been thoroughly taught to put the wants and needs of everyone else before your own, you most often suppress your own wants and needs to the point that you no longer clearly know what they are.  It is easy to tell such a person, "Be true to yourself".  But that person might have a long ways to go before she knows her real wants and needs, let alone is confident of her right to them.

Yet, we do not need to be first abused before we cast ourselves aside in order to live up the expectations of others. Abuse certainly helps us do that -- the very essence of abuse is that it unnecessarily alienates us from our true selves -- but abuse is not required for us to fail to be true to ourselves.  We are social animals.  Profoundly social animals.  Almost anyone of us, if he or she really thought about it, could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature.

It is deeply ingrained in us to desire companionship, to want the acceptance of others, to value love and friendship.  When scientists ask us what it takes to make us happy, we quite often tell them the single most important factor in our happiness is the quality of our relationships with our friends and family. Most of us at one time or another bargain for friendship by trading who we are for what someone expects of us.

Growing up, I gained a reputation for being among the most independent minded people in my cohort. It came to be expected of me that I would often go against the grain.  And there probably was some truth to that. But I paid a psychological price for it in tens of thousands of hours of loneliness. However, I did not feel lonely because I was alone.  I felt lonely because I was going against the expectations of others.

The loneliest people on earth are not those of us who are physically alone in life. Rather it is those of us who live with parents, siblings, roommates, lovers, or spouses who do not accept us as we are.  Who want us to be fundamentally different than we are.  If you know how, it is easy enough to live alone while rarely feeling lonely.  Yet, it is all but impossible to live with someone who does not accept you without your feeling lonely.

If nearly anyone of us could list a thousand ways in which our species manifests its social nature, anyone of us could list a hundred thousand in which we are encouraged, cajoled, wheedled, browbeat, bullied, or forced to subvert ourselves in order to live up to someone else's expectations.

Allow me to give but one example: A friend once told me he felt he had not fulfilled his promise as a businessperson because he had spent too much of his career compensating for his weaknesses rather than building on his strengths. He then went on to tell me that, as a child, he had done well in math but poorly in English.  However, his strength in math was all but ignored while his weakness in English became the focus of his parent's and teacher's efforts to get him to "improve" himself. In the way of a child, he took that to mean that what he was not (i.e. good at English) was more important to people than what he was (i.e. good at math). Although the experience was far from devastating, and he didn't want to make too much of it, he could see how it was one of many experiences that might have contributed to his life-long tendency to pay more attention to his weaknesses than to his strengths.

Of all the reasons we are so often untrue to ourselves, I think our attempts to live up the expectations of others must rank up there as among the foremost.  But what do you think?  Is there any truth to that?  And what are the other reasons we fail to be true to ourselves?

Two Cultures, Two Ways of Coping with Miscarriages

"Culture is any learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next."  At least, that was "culture" according to my beloved professor of anthropology.  He was an older man with white hair who smiled and gave us subtle definitions to trip us up.

I'm not sure every anthropologist would accept his sneaky definition of culture. For one thing, it means that anything which is not a behavior is not culture.  And that would exclude songs, books, films, and -- *gasp* -- blogs!

To be precise, the song itself is not culture.  But if it ever becomes a tradition to sing the song, then the behavior of singing the song is culture. The tradition of caroling at this time of year is culture. This blog is not part of your culture. But if you encourage your children to read this blog, then the act of reading this blog becomes part of your culture.

Sneaky, sneaky, eh?  Long time readers will not be surprised to learn I am so slow witted I failed to fully grasp that meaning of "culture" until well after the final exams were over.

My professor had a profound and trenchant reason for his definition.  Unfortunately, I have long ago forgotten what that profound and trenchant reason was.  Yet, I still remember discovering it was very difficult to pick up women in an anthropology class because very few people took anthropology in those days.  That's how my mind works: I only remember the important things.

Using a language, such as speaking English, is "a learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next."  And one thing some anthropologists did -- and some still do -- is study how languages influence thinking and behavior.  The field is somewhat controversial, but there seems to be an agreement that languages do have an influence on both thinking and behavior.  The question is now how much of an influence and on which kinds of thoughts and behaviors.

Last night, I was put in mind of the notion that languages influence thinking and behavior when I stumbled across a blog on which a pastor stated his belief that we are human beings from the moment of our conception. He mentioned that he and his wife had experienced several miscarriages. But he had faith he would "meet those children in heaven".

That reminded me of something I'd read while studying anthropology.  If I recall, there is a language spoken in the South Pacific in which there is no word that matches our word, "pregnant".  In our language -- and way of thinking -- a woman is pregnant from the moment of conception until birth. But in the language of at least one South Pacific people, there is no word that covers the whole period of gestation like "pregnancy" does.

Instead, those people speak a language that would require them to use at least three or four words to cover the period of gestation.  There's a word for when a woman first begins to show signs of pregnancy. A word for a little later on in her pregnancy when her belly has swollen up a bit.  And at least one or two other words for later periods.

The interesting thing is the whole language is like that.  There is, for instance, no word for "palm tree".  Instead, you have separate words for various stages in the growth of a palm tree.  There is a word for "sprout".  A word for a young tree.  A word for a fruiting tree.  But no word that has the scope of our word, "palm".

Now, the anthropologist who studied these people noticed that, whenever one of the women miscarried, she seldom if ever showed any signs of loss or remorse.  Nor did anyone in her community.  There were no efforts to console her.  Yet, the same people would rally around anyone who was injured.  It was not, he thought, that they were callous or indifferent to suffering. Instead, it seemed that neither a woman who miscarried, nor her friends and relatives, thought of a miscarriage as the loss of a child.  Consequently, they showed no signs of suffering from it.

The anthropologist pointed out the often close relationship between suffering and expectations. As a rule, when we do not expect something, we do not suffer its loss.  And he concluded the Islanders felt no remorse for a miscarriage because -- until rather late in a woman's pregnancy -- no one expected a child.  After all, their language discouraged thinking of a fetus as a baby or child.

I think you see a tacit recognition of the Islander's psychology in the battles our society wages over whether to call a fetus a "child" or "baby".  One side accuses the other of picking their terms in order to either heighten or lower people's emotional response to abortion. And if that is true -- if it actually works that calling a fetus a "baby" increases people's negative feelings towards abortion, while calling a fetus a "fetus" lowers people's negative feelings towards abortion -- then that should offer us an insight into the Islander's thinking and behavior.     

I am not at all convinced that the Islander's language determines their feelings towards miscarriages. I don't think language is as powerful as that. But I imagine their language could influence their feelings.   
   
In North America, the miscarriage rate among women who know they are pregnant is about 15% to 20%.  But the real miscarriage rate is probably much higher than that:

Determining the prevalence of miscarriage is difficult. Many miscarriages happen very early in the pregnancy, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Treatment of women with miscarriage at home means medical statistics on miscarriage miss many cases. Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies are miscarried by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's Last Menstrual Period). However, other sources reports suggest higher rates. One fact sheet from the University of Ottawa states, "The incidence of spontaneous abortion is estimated to be 50% of all pregnancies, based on the assumption that many pregnancies abort spontaneously with no clinical recognition."

The thought has occurred to me that, given the high rate of natural miscarriages, the Islanders are wise not to expect a pregnancy to result in a baby until rather late in the gestation period.  It seems to provide them with a sort of psychological defense or buffer against the vicissitudes of life. Furthermore, we ourselves might by the same token be unintentionally cruel towards women, for we -- as a culture -- do almost everything in our power to build up and encourage a pregnant woman's expectations of a child.  But I don't see our culture changing anytime soon.

Indeed, if "culture is any learned behavior passed down from one generation to the next", then our own culture seems to be changing in the direction of increasing a pregnant woman's expectations of a child.  And if there is any truth to the notion that expectations can be closely associated with suffering, that trend might have unintended -- and cruel -- consequences.

In the end, it is hard to sort out how much suffering is associated with expectations and how much suffering would occur anyway.  I find it difficult to believe the Island women felt no remorse when they miscarried.  But then, I am not they.  I have only one account of how they responded to such things.  And I have no way of judging its accuracy.

There are so few things we know for certain.