"Look for things in them that you might have missed because of familiarity, for familiarity breeds staleness, blindness, and boredom. You cannot love what you cannot see afresh. You cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew."
-Anthony De Mello
I love it when a word becomes more than just a word-when it becomes an invitation and a practice. This past week, I circled back to the book Radical Compassion by Tara Brach. I picked it up at a section on how familiarity blocks compassion—a truth hidden in plain sight. It's hard to offer compassion and draw out goodness when familiarity blocks our ability to see what is truly unique and beautiful in those around us.
De Mello stated in the quote above that familiarity breeds staleness, blindness, and boredom. When life feels stale, when we can't see the uniqueness, delights, and cute quirks of those around us, perhaps familiarity is to blame? But how do we break free from the comfortable and safe enclosure of familiarity?
It's nice to be in places and with people who feel familiar. It feels effortless, or at least I know the path to the landmines and how to avoid them. Familiarity is comfortable and safe. But, it also slowly prevents me from seeing how faded the curtains are. It blinds me to what is unique and special in the people in front of me or their growing sadness and dis-ease.
Familiarity is something our culture has collectively longed for over the past few years. "Soon, it will all be normal again." Normal probably isn't the right word (but it IS the word that gets used. Normal implies a lot, which might not be helpful and healthy.) I think a better word might have been familiar. “Soon it will all be familiar again!”
I used to know what to expect when I went to the grocery store, church, or ordered an appliance. It was all familiar. Now, what I like might not be there, I might have to change my practices to accommodate others, and the supply chain might not bend to what I want when I want it.
Maybe a return to normal and familiar is a misplaced longing? Perhaps it was an illusion all along, and we stand at a threshold with an invitation to embrace compassion through daily working to see afresh? We've spent two years in a universal crash course on seeing with new eyes. What IS the invitation? How do we live differently, with more compassion and kindness?
De Mello and Brach say that the antidote to boredom, blindness, and staleness is curiosity about the familiar other, our familiar thoughts, or our familiar places. (Does that bring us back again to Ted Lasso's sage advice to be curious, not judgemental?)
The antidote to lack of compassion is curiosity. "You cannot love what you cannot see afresh. You cannot love what you not constantly discovering anew." (De Mello)
Familiar is a double-edged sword. We long for familiarity, and familiarity can slowly dampen the sparkle and joy without our knowledge.
Tara Brach suggests three questions to help us fight familiar. These questions work for those closest to us and those we meet for the first time.
What does this person care about?
Am I looking with fresh eyes?
What is the best way to let them know their goodness?
It's hard to see with fresh eyes. It's hard to place ourselves in the mind of the familiar (or completely unfamiliar) other. These questions are easy to read and hard to practice. Start small in your house, with your people; the more compassion we put into the world, the further, farther, and deeper it will resonate.
"We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
A blessing for unfamiliarity.
May you savor what is familiar, while not letting the familiar person or place become stale. May curiosity be your companion as you see with new eyes and fresh delight the people and places that are most comfortable and safe. May familiarity be a doorway, not an enclosure.
Challenge what feels familiar. A place? A person? Pause to see with new eyes.
Choose one of the three questions from Tara Brach and use it this week with people you know, and people you don’t know.
What does this person care about?
Am I looking with fresh eyes?
What is the best way to let them know their goodness?
Recently Finished
Mary Magdelene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & The Christianity we Haven't Tried Yet by Meggan Watterson.
Just the title is pretty provocative! This was another pilgrimage book. The author, who is a scholar, shares her journey to understand Mary Magdelene and her pilgrimage to France to trace what many believe to be Mary Magdelene's final years spent in the southern region of what is now France. This book is provocative, challenging, and beautiful. I picked this up after listening to a fascinating interview with a musician turned scholar who is doing some outstanding scholarship on Mary…stuff that will probably change at least the footnotes in future bible translations and expose the purposeful crossing out of at least Mary, but by association many other women from the bible. This book was a book that caused me to challenge what was familiar and consider a broader perspective. It has resulted in kicking staleness and boredom to the curve!
"If how we see, truly see, is not with eyesight, but with a vision, a form of spiritual perception that allows us to know what's real, what's lasting, what's actually true, if this comes from within us; then no one has power over us."
― Meggan Watterson, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet
I try to pay attention to words or phrases that stand out in my reading and listening. There is a spiritual practice called Florliledgium that collects short, interesting pieces {words that “sparkle” up} and puts them together. This is kind of like that. Watching for things that sparkle. Gathering them and seeing how they work together and what message, mantra, or new idea might arise.
A Practice:
Read slowly.
Notice if a word or phrase stands out to you.
How do the words make you feel?
Is there an invitation?
(I’m sharing the lines that stand out to me in these passages in italics. Maybe it’s the same, or perhaps it’s different. There is much food for thought in each of these passages)
"In those moments when fear eclipses what we want most for our lives, it is crucial to be able to connect to the still, calm voice that has a tight grasp on our greatest potential. It takes discipline, spiritual sweat, and Divine pluck to connect to the unassuming voice of the truth inside us. It takes audacity and courage. This is such a crucial veil to lift. Are you loving you? Are you hearing the voice of love within you, your soul-voice, and believing it enough to act on its directives? This is what the practice of loving ourselves looks like: we do whatever we have to do to hear our soul's voice and believe it. We believe it so much that we make our life about that encounter."
― Meggan Watterson, Reveal
In Zen we have a saying that if you haven't seen somebody for two minutes, don't assume he or she is the same person. Maybe that person has changed, or maybe conditions have changed. The important thing is to see what I can do now. If you and I are not bound by our past conditioning, we can see things afresh. Then every moment contains a new opportunity.
— Bernard Glassman, Rick Fields, Instructions to the Cook
The way to change the world, the most important revolution that will change hearts and souls, takes place when people start dancing in the streets and call for the lifting of our spirit. If you want to change things, start humming, singing, and whistling. Music in the air will bring down the seriousness that maintains the tyrant's climate of totalitarianism. Laugh to melt away the edge of fear. Sing and the moral enforcers are silenced. The greatest fear of despots and dictators is joy. Bring in the clowns, merry tricksters, and sacred fools, and watch the politicians get laughed out of office.
— Bradford Keeney, Shaking Medicine