Pairs of Perspectives

The invading soldier said to the Buddhist monk blocking his way "Don't you realize I can drive my sword through your stomach?" The monk replied, "Don't you realize I can wrap my stomach around your sword?"—Zen Story

From an individual point of view, Reflection makes it appear as if each of us is the center of all about us. The people, events, and things in our lives are all reflections of our inner selves, but if everyone in our lives is a reflection of our inner selves then we, too, must be reflections of their inner selves. This is a mind-boggling idea, impossible to grasp with cause-and-effect thinking—yet a lack of understanding of the idea often leaves us confused by our reactions to and feelings about the world around us.

The most common place to see this confusion is in the difficulty we have in deciding who is to blame for something. In a conflict situation, for example, each person tries to establish blame on the other. Yet, I know when I am in these situations I often feel inner doubts. I can see how the other person is to blame but at the same time I feel it is my fault as well. It is confusing and disturbing as first one view, then the other takes control.

Guilt and anger are constantly at war over distribution of fault, not only in individual cases but in society as well. Listen, for example, to the arguments over who is to blame for the impoverished in our society. At times it can seem it is the poor's own fault for not trying harder to better themselves, and at times it can seem as if it is society's fault for shutting off the opportunity for self help. Each view can look reasonable, but we cannot accept both, because, if it is society's fault, then the poor are not to blame, and if it is the poor's fault, then society is not to blame.

Our difficulty with trying to fix the blame is also reflected in our courts of law. A large percentage of our gross national product is directed solely to lawyers and courts trying to determine who is to blame for what. Reflection implies the task is not only difficult, it is impossible. Reflection implies there is a major flaw in our arithmetic of blame.

Our normal arithmetic of blame is based on the assumption that there is a total of one hundred percent responsibility for anything, and that that one hundred percent is divided among those involved. For example, the conventional arithmetic says if you and I have an accident, blame can be proportioned in a number of ways. It can be 100 percent your fault implying I am zero percent to blame; it can be the other way around, 0-100; it can be mostly your fault but a little my fault, say 80-20; or we can both be equally to blame, 50-50.

This arithmetic makes us shy away from accepting responsibility and encourages us to prove the other guy is at fault, thereby making us blameless. Any degree of responsibility we accept lets the other guy off the hook to that same degree.

Among friends sometimes the argument is exactly the opposite. That is, each wants to accept responsibility and you hear "It's all my fault" "No, no, it's all my fault." Again there is an argument because both can't be at fault with the normal arithmetic of blame.

Reflection let's us replace this arithmetic with the notion that everyone is fully one hundred percent responsible—there is no partial responsibility and there is no split responsibility. Each incident is a perfect reflection of the inner selves of all involved.

With this understanding the struggle over fixing the blame and the negative connotation of responsibility disappear. In the case of an accident between two people, innocence and guilt are no longer important if both accept full responsibility, 100-100, not 50-50, but 100-100. If both know that they are simultaneously fully responsible, then both can safely explore and quest after the inner selves that are reflected by the accident.

While 100-100 responsibility does not make common sense, it does make intuitive sense. It completely explains the ambivalent feelings during a argument. Yes, it is all my fault and, yes, it is all the other's fault. It completely explains the difficulty we have in fixing blame in courts of law. It completely explains the difficulty we have in deciding who is to blame for the impoverished in our society.

Accepting the 100-100 arithmetic of blame changes the way we approach responsibility in a way that is both terrifying and freeing.

It is terrifying because it means opening up to the possibility that the full mess of our lives is a perfect reflection of our inner selves, or in other words, that we are fully responsible.

It is freeing because it means whatever we are doing, however we are affecting the lives of those around us, is a perfect reflection of their inner selves as well.

We are responsible, but we are not to blame.

The possibility of both sides of 100-100 responsibility can be seen in the driving example mentioned earlier. For me, feelings of vulnerability led to realities of being cut off, but what about the driver cutting me off? Well there are also times when I feel angry and need to assert myself, which is expressed in more aggressive driving where I cut others off. Seeing these two sides in myself, it only makes sense that the same is true for the other drivers as well—and the angry ones and vulnerable ones line up to meet each other on the road.

The best way to begin to understand this 100-100 interconnection between two people is to find someone with whom you can be as honest as you are with yourself. It requires you being willing to take responsibility for the other's behavior, both good and bad. It requires being able to accept and listen to the other's similar acceptance of responsibility.

This complete honesty is safe because in a 100-100 relationship each is fully responsible for everything that happens, including the actions of the other, and yet neither is to blame.

Further, understanding this 100-100 phenomenon makes you much more tolerant of each other's faults, as well as your own. Your partner needs the manifestations of your flaws as much as you do.

Health problems become more complex when viewed in this light. Not only is one person's ailment a reflection of that person's inner self, but of the inner selves of those around as well, clearly requiring a non-cause-and-effect view of things.

For example, a loved one's ailment or problem can reflect an inner need to nurse that person. This pattern was illustrated by H, a mother who expressed feelings of inadequacy, but when her child was sick went into overdrive taking care of whatever was wrong. Since the child's first illness, the child has gotten sicker and sicker, thus getting the love from H that she craves. And H has got her child in the only mold that lets her feel like a loving mother. So the child's recurring ailments are a perfect reflection of both the mother's and child's inner-needs.

My father had two heart attacks that were clearly part of both his and my mother's realities, reflecting both of their inner needs. He had lived a full life but had gotten in a rut in retirement and was worried about finances. The good pension he retired on had been eroded over the years by inflation. He didn't think he could continue to support my mother in the life style they had become accustomed to. Longer life would give him more of the same and added financial burdens. A quick death by a heart attack removed him from the picture.

I was with him in the hospital for the brief time before he finally died. He was at peace.

This was in sharp contrast to a heart attack he had fifteen years earlier. I was with him in the hospital then as well. He was really agitated. He had things to do. He was afraid of leaving my mother. It was clear, in retrospect, that he was tired of being a workaholic and wanted to give my mother some more good years with the pension he earned from years of dedication to a single company.

He was not ready to die from his first heart attack and it served a useful purpose for both him and my mother. It got them to an earlier retirement, and time in the sun in Florida with golf, good friends and the warmth retirement should bring, while they still had a number of years of good health remaining.

But by the second heart attack, he had fulfilled what he wanted to do. He had given my mother the fun of retirement. He was done with the routine, but she wasn't.

For my mother, my father's death ushered in a new phase of her life. While the love for my father was there, my mother, in her early seventies, was not done living her life. My father was slipping into more sedentary old age. He was holding my mother back.

She was ready when he died and did not mourn for a long period of time. She started living her life with vigor. It was time for her to fly on her own and she was doing it. She became more active in many different clubs—golfing, painting, playing bridge, and going to the theater.

So both of my father's heart attacks reflected inner-needs for both my mother and my father. They were in harmony on both and I think they understood each other.

It is important to understand that the terms "good" and "bad" do not apply to my father's heart attacks. One of the biggest flaws with ideas that connect inner-needs with disease are the assumptions that, one, the disease is bad, and two, it is the fault of the person, and only the person, having the disease.

This view destroys all usefulness of the theory. Yes, if my father was more in tune with himself he could have taken early retirement without the first heart attack, but the heart attack was his reality showing him, through Reflection, his inner-self as well as my mother's.

To say it was his fault misses the flavor of what was happening. To judge him poorly because he had a heart attack assumes a superior knowledge of what is good and bad for a person. The heart attack was a point and event in life that was tied to his inner self and directions as well as the inner self and directions of my mother. It was neither good nor bad. He was not to blame, but it reflected his inner needs as well as the inner-needs of those around him, specifically my mother.

Likewise, the second heart attack was his time to die. He left himself a few days to say his good byes, but I could tell, in retrospect, that in the years before his death the life had gone out of him. There comes a time when it is right to die. It was time—for him and my mother both.

At work, the pairs of reflections are harder to see because people are more guarded, hiding their inner-selves as best they can, but still, the stories are there. My first full-time writing job appeared like magic for me and it was clear I appeared like magic for my employer as well.

I had left a normal job situation to try to make it on my own. I was hoping to move from programming computers to writing about them and, while I had one academic book contract, it did not pay anywhere near enough to live on.

I was almost out of savings, and in desperation started to look for a real job. I went on an interview and found a great job, but having tasted the independent life, the thought of being constrained to regular job hours and commuting to work was repugnant to me. I really didn't want to do that again, but I had not been successful at finding sufficient work on my own. The tension and need within me was reaching a peak.

The phone rang. It was P, a guy I had worked with 15 years ago, and whom I had briefly met about 4 years ago. He had started his own company publishing books about computer technologies and he needed a new writer to maintain his growing list of titles. The call came like magic and filled my inner-needs perfectly. It meant a steady income and work at home on my own schedule. It also meant practice at writing which was where I saw my career going.

But my availability, skills, and situation also filled his needs exactly. For him it was finding an individual with an in-depth knowledge of computing and a desire to write, thus helping him grow his company.

Each of us was a perfect reflection of the inner needs of the other at the time.

The example of Mary interrupting my work is a smaller scale example of 100-100 Reflection at work. It was clear that her behavior was a perfect reflection of my own discomfort with the task I was working on. It was also clear that my anger at her was really anger at myself for being committed to finishing a task I didn't want to be involved with. But how was I and my difficulties a perfect reflection of Mary's inner self?

Mary sometimes clings to those close to her and it makes her feel bad about herself. In the example, she was trying to get me to focus attention on her rather than my project, but she also felt bad about the interference with my work.

I got mad at her and told her to stop. It was really my anger at myself, but she needed my anger. It was created by her guilt at interfering and feelings about her clinging behavior.

The timing was perfect. Mary's need to cling and be told off coincided perfectly with my need to express my lack of ability to concentrate on the job and get angry.

Both of us were in the same movie. Both of us can be seen as the center of the movie. Our needs were entirely different, my lack of harmony with my work motivation and her lack of harmony with her clinginess. The two meshed perfectly in the reality we both shared and we were both one hundred percent responsible and neither was to blame.

This balanced view of the interaction makes perfect sense to both of us, but it would be very easy for either of us to feel as if we were victims of the other. I could easily maintain the point of view that I had work to do and my anger was solely at Mary for her irritating interruptions. Mary could easily maintain the point of view that I was inattentive to her needs and boorishly tied to my work. Both of these views would be the ones expressed by our conscious outer-selves protecting our self-images.

As always, however, each of our realities spoke the truth more accurately than either of us could express it. The reality of her interruptions perfectly reflected my inner difficulties with the task—my protestations that I wanted to work in peace did not. The reality of her being ignored and then being snapped at perfectly reflected her inner tension over clinginess—her claims that I was rejecting her by working too hard did not.

Here we see the full 100-100 impact of Reflection. The situation can be explained entirely, 100 percent, as a reflection of my inner-self. It can also be explained entirely, 100 percent, as a reflection of Mary's inner-self. It was not a 50-50 affair.

While it is difficult to get the other sides of work stories it is possible to look at reflections from managerial points of view that might well map to experiences we can all relate to as employees.

K was working for a computer software company that decided to create a product for the personal computers that were gradually taking over corporate computing. She secured the job of building and managing the group of programmers that would build the product. Her experiences as a manager show the management side of Reflection in employee relations.

The company had previously only provided software for the large computers that run big businesses, called mainframe computers. The programming of the large mainframes and small personal computers was fundamentally different, and the programmers of one generally did not understand or respect the programmers of the other, calling each other's machines either toys or dinosaurs.

There was even a generation gap amongst programmers. The thirty and over programmers worked on the mainframes they had learned on; the programmers in their early twenties, as in K's group, had all cut their teeth on personal computers.

K had a need to prove herself to the world, and the need was filled as the group grew and the product came into being. Her need to succeed was reflected in the people she hired—mostly, like herself, bright motivated young programmers willing to work hard to create a new and better product. The various people in the group filled different needs for K.

For example, J was a free spirit who defied normalcy everywhere he could. He was also a talented programmer and a major contributor to the project. K, who plays by the rules maybe more than she likes, needed J in the group to provide that sense of freedom. He was a symbol of how even if you don't play by the rules, you can be successful. That K was a reflection of J's needs seems obvious as well. K was a manager who would give him the space he needed and trust him to complete his portion of the project without tight supervision.

Another programmer who reflected a need in K was D. The microcomputer programmers in K's group were a minority in a company that mainly programmed large mainframe computers. They were not well respected initially by those programmers who in general thought the micros were toys. Earning that respect was important for K. This need was filled when D, one of the best, if not the best, mainframe programmer asked to be transferred to K's group because of the challenge and enjoyment of programming micros.

While the project was in general a success, and the group functioned well as a whole, there were glitches as well. These too reflected inner needs in K, such as P, the first person she had to fire.

The personal computer product being built by the group required connections to large mainframe computers. K felt confident about the personal computer software, but was unsure of herself on the mainframe connection. P was hired to write that connection and, initially, K was happy to leave it to him because she was afraid of that area of technology. That fear, however, ate away at her as a manager. She wasn't comfortable being responsible for an area of technology she didn't understand.

Her internal turmoil about needing to understand the mainframe connection and being afraid of it was reflected in P's having difficulty building it. Eventually K was forced to fire him. This reality reflected K's inner need by forcing her to overcome her fear of the connection software. She had to jump in, understand the technology, and remedy the problems. The thorn in her side—an area of the project she did not feel comfortable with—had been removed.

As a result of P's difficulty K overcame a fear of an unknown area of technology and learned she had the power to fire as well as hire. Her troubles with P were not just random bad luck, but were a perfect reflection of her inner needs.

From the other side, we can only speculate on P's inner needs, but he was an extroverted person in a very technical job that was probably over his head. (Many of the most technically capable programmers are very introverted.) The firing removed him from that technical responsibility and left him in a support role in another area of the company that required more people interaction and less technical skills. The new job seemed to be a much better fit and the firing for him was probably very similar to my mercy-killing firing from sales.

Here then are three examples of individuals whose style, success and failure perfectly reflected the inner needs of their manager. In each case it also seems clear that the manager's style and presence reflected the inner needs of the employee as well.

Family tensions are reflections of the constantly changing inner-selves in the family unit. Given the heights of emotion and the possibility of more open honest communication, family relationships are a good place to see Reflection at work from multiple points of view.

For example, battles between adolescents and their parents are a well known fact of life. It is also commonly understood as the mechanism by which the adolescent leaves the nest and the parents willingly let him or her go. The issues, behaviors, and fights that happen reflect the inner needs of those involved.

I remember one fight with my son during his later high school years. He was in a school play and it was time for the cast party, one of the more important social events. At the same time he had not been doing his school work and had been grounded. He was allowed to be in the play but not to go to the party unless he finished his work.

He didn't do the work, but on the night of the cast party he said he was going anyway. We had a confrontation and he asserted control over his own life and went despite my objections. Yet rather than being angry or hurt, I felt a sense of pride. I was glad to see him asserting himself and taking a strong position. It seemed a very positive step for him. It also made me feel more confident in his ability to make it on his own in the world. That type of independence seemed more important to his well being than completed school work.

From his point of view, I'm sure the incident had similar meaning. He was making his own decision and taking control. Only by not doing the work was he (and I) able to set up the situation for the conflict. It was one that reflected both of our inner-needs to establish changing roles in each other's lives.

The last chapter contained the story of my fight with Mary over a Christmas visit with my daughter. Mary's behavior, blocking the visit, reflected perfectly my own inner turmoil in regards to my children.

The same situation was also a perfect reflection of Mary's inner self. From her point of view, the loving relationship she had with me went to pieces whenever my daughter visited because I withdrew my love from her and adaptively focused it on my daughter instead. This particular case was worse because the unexpected early start to the visit would ruin her expectations for Christmas.

How did this painful situation reflect her inner self? Well she often demands adaptive love herself, trying to control how she is loved. This is especially true on days like Christmas or a birthday that "require" special treatment. But she doesn't like that behavior in herself, and seeing it in my relationship with my daughter makes her angry. The fact that this incident occurred on a Christmas that was supposed to follow her expectations of what a loving Christmas should be, heightened the anger.

The fight filled inner needs in Mary by giving her an outlet for her anger at my adaptive behavior, an anger she couldn't express when I was adaptive to her. The fact that the fight triggered my anger back at her reflected her dislike at her own demanding behavior from me. Just as Mary's anger at me reflected my dislike of my adaptive behavior, my anger at her reflected her dislike of her demanding behavior.

The fight filled another major need of Mary's by freeing her of the self-induced pressure to make our Christmas together exactly what a loving Christmas should be. "Special" occasions always create stress for her because of expectations of what they should be and fears that they may not meet those expectations. The fight was a perfect way to release that tension.

So, just as Mary's jealous behavior was a perfect reflection of my inner conflicts, so my adaptive behavior was a perfect reflection of hers. Further, having the fight on Christmas reflected all of the emotional turmoil associated with that "special" day.

From both our points of view, the other's behavior was extremely painful. Her jealous interfering with my daughter hurt me deeply; my withdrawing my love from her when my daughter visited hurt her deeply.

On the surface, we could, and did, react in typical ways. I claimed I withdrew my love because of her jealous behavior; she claimed she was jealous because I withdrew my love. We could have each found friends in whom to confide about the abysmal behavior of the other and get sympathy for our plight as victims.

These types of typical reactions to the situation are based on a desire to shift the blame for a painful situation to someone else. The more painful the situation, the stronger the desire to fix the blame elsewhere. This is because the pain is directly related to how far out-of-harmony the needs of the inner-self are with the wants of the outer-self.

The Christmas fight was extremely painful because, for each of us, it was a reflection of deep parts of us we would rather deny. This desire to deny the inner-self is exactly the emotional barrier to understanding Reflection that was discussed in the introductory chapters. It is the desire to deny that leads us to formulate versions of the story that conform to outer-self wants rather than inner-self needs.

This story also illustrates all of the logical difficulties with Reflection, for there are many aspects of it that simply do not make sense from a cause-and-effect view of the world.

My personal insights came from taking full responsibility for Mary's jealous behavior. Does this mean Mary doesn't have to take responsibility for her own behavior?

Likewise Mary's insights came from taking responsibility for my adaptive behavior. Does this mean I don't have to take responsibility?

In fact, we each have to take full responsibility for both the other's behavior as well as our own. My adaptiveness and Mary's jealousy are both reflections of my inner self as they are of Mary's. We are, in a sense, not only fully responsible for our own behavior, but fully responsible for the other's as well. This is the heavy burden of Reflection.

But, because Mary's behavior is a reflection of me, and mine a reflection of hers; neither one of us is a victim of the other, and neither is to blame for the other's misery. This is the wonderful freeing aspect of Reflection.

This situation also illustrates the conflict between free will and destiny. Are we both free to change as we please, or are we trapped by our destinies? The answer to both is yes.

Each of us has the complete freedom to choose whether to attempt to change our basic behavior patterns. I can work on my adaptiveness, or just continue as I was; Mary can work on her jealousies, or continue as she was, but however either of us chooses to continue, our shared reality will continue to accurately illuminate each of our inner-selves.

Once the pain had subsided from the Christmas fight, and we had time to reflect, it became clear how fully we were connected in this most painful part of our relationship. The whole situation, despite its pain, had an incredible, terrible, symmetric beauty.

Reflection is constantly at work during the trivial aspects of life as well as the large ones. Just as deep inner needs were reflected in the Christmas fight, so were inner needs met in the night Mary got more than her share of the Peking Ravioli.

Whenever we get Chinese food, we always order our mutual favorite appetizer, Peking Ravioli, which has six to a serving. We each eat three, and knowing how much we each like them, neither of us would ever think of even asking for some of the other person's share. These understood rules are part of a pattern that we would not consciously break.

But one night, when we ordered Chinese food to take home, after I had had a big lunch during the day and Mary had had none, Mary got four ravioli and I got two. Ordinarily, I would eat my three whether I was hungry or not. Never would Mary take one of mine. Here's how she happened to get four that night.

I only put two on my plate to begin with, intending to eat the third later, and ate some of the other food, which I really wanted more that night. Mary devoured her three, and then noticed the last one sitting in the box. She assumed (wishful thinking?) they had mistakenly added a seventh ravioli, and asked if she could have it. Even though I have never seen a seventh ravioli in twenty years of eating Chinese food, I accepted her comment at face value and said sure, since I wasn't that hungry anyway. When I went to eat my third ravioli, more out of habit than desire, of course it wasn't there.

In this case, Mary felt guilty about eating my ravioli. This is because in her state, she could not imagine me not wanting mine, since she wanted hers so much. Yet, by the full force of Reflection, she did not need to feel guilty, for the only way she would have gotten my ravioli was if I needed to get rid of my ravioli, which, in fact I did.

But she had to get it through misunderstanding because, even though I didn't really want mine that night, I would have forced myself to eat it. I was not in touch with myself enough to say, "I'm not that hungry tonight, do you want one of my ravioli?" Her taking it was not only all right, it did me a favor and got me where I really needed to be.

So our forced behavior pattern with the ravioli was broken that night just as we both needed it to be, but not intentionally. The whole situation with the ravioli can be understood 100 percent as perfect reflections of each of our inner selves.

I had bought a used green Toyota Corolla which was in good shape, had a good radio, but no tape player. I enjoyed music and wanted a tape player, but I could not justify the expense. While not in desperate straits, there was significant financial pressure in my marriage at the time. So I had an inner conflict between my need to listen to music and my inability to justify buying a tape player. This conflict had been working its way into my soul for a few days.

The conflict was reflected in a ridiculous accident. Someone tried to pass me on the right as I was making a right turn into my driveway. They literally went up on the sidewalk to hit my car in the passenger side door. I knew in an instant they had bought me my tape player.

It worked out great all around. I got the money from the insurance company for a new door, went to a junk yard and got a door (yellow), put it on myself and used the rest of the money for the tape player.

There were more positive effects. In spite of what it sounds like, I do not work on cars and often feel machines are at odds with me. This incident broke that mold for me. I enjoyed going to the junk yard, finding the door and installing it.

What about the other side of the story? The person who hit me was a freshman in college who had just learned he had flunked out of school. He was on his way home to tell his parents who lived less than a mile down the road. He was obviously filled with worry, and getting close to the point of confrontation with them. What better way to diffuse the situation than by throwing a car accident into the equation. I'm not sure what was going on inside him, but clearly the accident served some purpose for him related to the stress. Maybe a diversion, maybe a way to incite more punishment, but surely, somehow, his inner-needs and mine were both reflected perfectly in that crash that day.

Copyright ©1992 Dennis Merritt. All Rights Reserved.