Autumn’s hues are bursting out everywhere now. The ancient, stately maples are drenched in crimson, the climbing vines wear deep red. All around me yellow beech leaves shower down like coins tossed as tokens of good fortune. Beneath my boots fallen sycamore leaves crunch like cornflakes. And along its side, a circus of color makes me stop and laugh, its gaudiness looking as if someone sent the kids out to play with a tin of paints, wholly free of from rules and supervision. It sure looked happy. And beautiful. And I wore the smile it gave me all the way to the end of the trail.
I happened across an interview with Dannion Brinkley this week that presented a new way to look at how I interact with people. (Dannion’s best known for his descriptions of his three Near Death Experiences and what they taught him. You can search for his books on Amazon if you’re interested, or find him on Youtube or Facebook.)
One of the experiences Dannion had while he was clinically dead was undergoing a “Life Review.”
We’ve all heard the claim that “your whole life flashes before you” as you’re dying. Dannion says that what we’re not told is that we don’t see our life as if we’re living it again. We see it from the point of view of every person we ever encountered. We experience the thoughts and emotions that our interactions with them created in them—the warmth, the uplift, the comfort, the encouragement, and the hurt, the anger, the indifference, the discounting, the isolation.
It sounds sort of like the 360-degree feedback sessions some companies use for employee evaluations, where your co-workers and maybe even your customers say what it’s like to deal with you. Only the Life Review isn’t a mere report from people. It’s far more intense. It’s actually experiencing yourself from the other person’s point of view—seeing your face, your expression, whether you looked at them or gazed away, hearing what they heard from you, your words, your tone of voice, feeling what they felt during every exchange they ever had with you.
Regardless of what you make of Dannion’s story, imagine that you were offered an invitation to undergo such a ‘life review.’ Think about the important people in your life—your parents, your partner, your siblings, your kids, your neighbors and coworkers and friends. Think about your pet. Would you welcome a chance to see yourself through their eyes? Through the eyes of the person you most recently talked with? Or would you maybe rather not?
What if you did a mini life-review for yourself each evening as you tucked yourself in for the night? Would you be pleased with the way you treated other people in your life that day? Would you be motivated to be more patient, more attentive, kinder, more aware of their needs?
I turned the idea into a game for a day. I imagined that everyone I encountered had the letters “LR” for “Life Review” written in invisible light on their foreheads. It turned out to be a good game. The only rule was the golden one: treat them as I would want to be treated. On the whole, the day was filled with genuine connection and smiles. As a bonus, I got some insights into situations where I need to pay more attention to the way I respond to some people, and that’s always a good thing. More patience, more clarity, more connections, more smiles.
It was an exercise in full-immersion empathy, putting myself in the other person’s position, imagining what they most needed or wanted from me. Mostly they just wanted to seem real to someone, to be recognized, respected as a fellow being, appreciated. That’s what all of us want, I suppose. I know that when you offer someone that much, they glow. And you do, too.
Wishing you a week that’s bathed in a golden glow.
The light dances down, falling in colors on the water, spreading itself across the welcoming faces of leaves. From the earth, the scent of autumn rises, wafting across the mirrored surface of the creek, melding with the season’s first ocher hues. And I, standing ankle deep in asters, breathe in the light and fragrance and exhale contentment and peace.
Beneath a cloud-heaped sky that dwarfs them, the cattle graze, happy for their still-green pasture, the cool air. They may be oblivious to time, but like the autumn trees that edge their world, something deep within them knows the seasons. Perhaps vague memories of winter float through their minds, long days in the dim light of the barn, feeding on hay, soaking in the warmth of each other’s bodies. Perhaps they smell the coming snow. Nevertheless, today the pasture is wide and the grass still green, and they are content, grazing beneath the big sky.
Maybe that’s what all of us are here for: To hold the sun. To step it down to earthsize, to be its outer edges here. They tell me, after all, that it was stars that built us, that tiny bits of them make up our cells. Could be.
One thing’s for sure. These squash have it down. I mean, just look at them there, practically on fire with all those oranges and golds, looking like they held so much sun it was oozing right through their skin. Maybe we’re all meant for that, for holding so much sun that all we can do is shine, baby. Think so?
Here I am, rolling through the corn again, aware that soon the giant green machines will be rolling through, too, gobbling up the ears, shooting them into trucks, bits and pieces of their dried leaves flying through the air, chopped stalks left behind, crows swooping in to feast on missed cobs. But the ripened corn isn’t the only wonder. I mean, just look at that cloudless autumn sky.
This is one of those scenes that froze me in my tracks, not daring to move until I had taken in as much of it as I could hold. The longer I looked, the larger the mystery of it became, seeping deeper and deeper into the forest, into the very trunks of the trees, and yet floating as well on the whispering air that surrounded me, brushing my face, my skin. My mind is entranced; the choreography is perfect. Nothing is haphazard, nothing is by chance. Everything is music, and the never-ending dance.
I hadn’t intended to pass by the lake. I meant to take the highway. But then I got distracted by my thoughts and missed my turn and here I was, right in the midst of this absolute splendor of a perfect autumn afternoon. The fisherman in the boat near the far shore is so still he doesn’t even make a ripple. Here, four geese etch the lake with their fine silver wakes, disturbing nothing, silent as the water, slowly floating through the reflections of the brilliant, turning trees. I blend into the stillness, too, softly breathing thanks.
As the sun dipped behind the tops of the pines to her west, the meadow felt the warmth of its powdery golden light, pollen and seeds floating in the glow of it. From her grasses the song of the crickets rose, floating across the whole of her, down to the lake and to the forest at her edge. So soothing was the song, that for a long, soft moment the meadow drifted into a dream about all the flowers and birds, the butterflies and spiders who had danced for her since spring. Soon the last of them would be gone. And with that thought, she woke from her reverie, glad to see asters swaying in the early evening light, because you never know, she reasoned, when a migrating hummingbird might stop by.
If you’ve been reading these Sunday Letters for a while, you may have heard this story before. I tell it from time to time because it’s a favorite of mine. And as we slide into the holiday season with all the high emotions it brings, it feels like a timely reminder. So here we go:
One day, while riding in the car, my teen-age son and I were listening to the radio. Some guy was explaining that we don’t always feel warm fuzzies toward someone we love. “We like each other because,” he said. (Because she made you laugh. Because he did the dishes. You can imagine any “because” you like.) “But,” the radio guy continued, “we love each other anyway.”
We love each other even when. That’s because love can embrace even those things in each other that drive us batty, or that conflict with our own cherished viewpoints or beliefs. Liking usually can’t go there; it stops at the differences.
My son and I loved the radio guy’s statement: We like each other because; we love each other anyway. It was so true that it made us laugh, and from that day on we often said to each other, as a kind of affectionate joke, “I love you anyway.”
I thought about that this past week when I ran into a difficult situation with a friend. She was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition and when she asked me to pick up a certain snack item for her, I said I would feel uncomfortable doing that and asked if maybe she could make a different choice. Later, I gently suggested that she see a dietician for help in changing her eating habits so her body could stay as healthy as possible as long as possible.
She told me that she knew I was trying to help, but that it was up to her to choose what she wanted to eat and what she didn’t, and she didn’t want any more of my advice on the subject.
I thanked her for telling me that, and promised that I would respect her wishes. And I will – even though in my version of reality, the things that she’s eating are killing her.
What do you do when someone you love is, in your view, choosing to do things that may cost her life? Things that make you furious, that make you feel helpless, that, according to everything you know and believe, are potentially deadly mistakes Do you abandon your relationship because it’s too painful to see your friend’s choices? Because she’s refusing to accept what you (of course) believe to be superior information?
Nope. You love your friend anyway. You love her enough to honor her free will to make her own choices about her own life. That doesn’t mean you consent to enable clearly self-destructive behavior. You can draw lines and say what you are unwilling to do. Your free will counts, too.
You can work to find compromises. You can even do things for her that you strongly disagree with, as long as you’re clear that you’re helping only because you honor her right to make her own decisions and not because you‘re condoning them.
In essence, it all boils down to the Golden Rule – treating others the way you want to be treated.
Yeah, it gets difficult when you and the other hold strongly conflicting beliefs. You have to face the fact that each of you has plenty of evidence for what you believe, and that, in the end, beliefs are just that.
Whether it’s which foods to eat or not eat, or what political party to support, or what treatment to choose for a medical condition, or what God to believe in or reject – each of us must choose for ourselves. And each of us has the right to expect those who love us to accept our choices – whether they agree with them or not.
Because, in the end, it’s really true. We may like each other because, but we need to love each other anyway.
Wishing you a week where liking triumphs almost every minute.
