Everyone’s Doing Their Best – Even When They’re Not Doing Their Best!

Everyone has wondered why the world is the way it is.

Much love and joy, but so much pain and suffering and disease and chaos.

We also wonder why people are so wonderful and kind and caring and loving and yet so erratic and crazy and betraying and deceitful?

I’ve wondered about it too and I’ve also noticed how we all go into to judgement when things don’t go the way we want them to and when people don’t behave the way we want them to.

I’ve noticed how superior we feel when we are judging others.

What’s also fascinating to see is how good it feels when we do this.

I’ve also seen how this is also very painful and it’s painful because it creates a separation between us and life and this separation is isolating.

But we don’t tend to notice the pain.

I really think that much of the loneliness in the world is created by this separation created by judgment. Not all of it of course. There are other reasons too.

When you and your friends are agreeing about your judgements, it’s very connecting but that connection doesn’t last. I think it acts like a drug. A quick high and then the crash, the point being that we are addicted to it.

Judging Minds

We are addicted to our judging minds.

Have you ever noticed how, when someone behaves in a way you really don’t like, you start a dialogue in your head after the incident, where you are rehearsing a discussion, telling someone else, very self-righteously, about what happened.

It is a very painful thing to be always judging and of course it feels painful to be judged and to live in fear of being judged

If you listen to peoples conversations you will see the extent to which these judgements happen.

“He is unkind, he’s disrespectful, he doesn’t listen, he’s selfish, she’s an erratic, she is manipulative, she is controlling…” our eyes and mind searching the world for what is wrong and when we don’t like it we judge it.

This judging and the separation it creates, calcifies our sensitivity, shuts down our hearts and becomes a painful way to live.

It is a barren and dry land, empty and bitter and soulless.

Madiba

There is that beautiful Nelson Mandela quote, “Revenge is drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die!”

Judgements are a poison and we all drink from the cup.

So what’s to be done about it?

Some years ago, when pondering this dilemma, I realized that everybody is doing their best even when they’re not doing their best, which is really saying that what is happening is what’s happening and it can’t be any different until it changes and becomes different.

Donald Trump called the Las Vegas killer Stephen Paddock’s behavior “an act of pure evil.”

Most people would probably agree with that. (Not that I would want you to think for a moment that Trump is in tune with our better selves! Perhaps he’s only in tune with the worst of us!)

Maybe we’re wrong in our assessment of what evil is.

Just over 50 years ago the University of Texas Tower Sniper, Charles Whitman killed 16 people.

An autopsy revealed that he had a tumor pressing against his amygdala, which regulates anxiety and is hence linked to aggression. Anxiety often leads to aggression.

His killing had perhaps little to do with “evil” and a great deal to do with the tumor, unless of course you think that tumors are evil.

You might argue that this is anomalous, an outlying incident.

Perhaps not.

Let me illustrate.

The Hunger Children

In 1944, the Germans blockaded Holland.

It’s estimated that 22,000 people died of starvation because of this. What is remarkable is that it was found that the children of pregnant women exposed to the famine were more susceptible to diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and other health problems. They were also smaller than average.

So when you are judging someone for overeating because they are fat or because they are eating the wrong foods and so have diabetes, it may have nothing to do with anything over which they have control.

The cause may lie in their in-utero experience.

Developmental Trauma Disorder

A new diagnostic term has arisen in the trauma literature recently. It is called Developmental Trauma disorder – DTD.

It refers to the emotional neglect that millions of children experience when their parents can’t contain or hold or simply be with their child’s emotional pain and hurt and anger and suffering.

It’s been estimated that 75% of Americans live with unmanageable stress. These over stressed parents are going to struggle desperately to contain and simply love, truly love their kids when they are so stressed out, apart from all of their (the parents) unresolved emotional issues which make it difficult to deal with a fragile and sensitive kids problems.

So, when you are judging someone for being deceitful or selfish, or whatever it is that upsets you, you might want to reflect on the fact that, in that moment, that’s all they can do. They also might be wishing they could be different, or judging themselves, but what they have done, is simply what they have done. It is now history and hence immovable.

No judgement on your part or theirs can change that.

When we aren’t doing our best, that’s the best we can do!

We might change, but until we have, that it, that’s what we are.

If you get this, deeply, if you have a truly deep and deepening emotional insight into the truth of this, it will liberate you and your relationships beyond the telling of it.

If you would like to work face to face or via Skype on any of these issues, please drop me a mail at realmark@icon.co.za.