Robert and I were in DC a few years ago for some client meetings and the Washington Capitals hockey team was in contention for the Stanley Cup. Robert played collegiate hockey -- goalie and selective mover -- and DC not being a hockey town like Boston or Montreal we were able to get tickets the day of the game.
I had fun. I was spending time with a good colleague and friend. He was helping me appreciate the nuances of the game from the point of view of his having spent formative years being attacked by people moving fast on sharp blades with sticks and hard objects, while having no place to hide.
And I'm always stimulated by crowds. A mob of people with their facial expressions, body languages, styles and fashions, ways of behaving, raises my attention and energy.
I don't remember who won the game. I remember walking back through the bright lights of our nation's capital to a stylish B&B near Dupont Circle. I probably couldn't have told you the next day who won even though I had been cold sober the entire time.”
What I do remember, is a young man two rows down and to the right of us. He was oscillating between agony and ecstacy the entire game. Most remarkable to me was at the final buzzer, he reacted as if his dog had just been killed while chasing a car, and it was his fault for having let go of the leash.
The three of us were in the same place at the same time, and our seats pointed us in the same direction, and we had completely different experiences of the same thing. Had I been sitting among strangers, I would have had my own rich experience. Because I was sitting with someone I knew, I had the gift of being let into his experience. I got my circle of awareness significantly expanded by his ability to share his awareness of the nuances of player dynamics and, in particular, the goal tenders' dynamics, that were completely invisible to me. It wasn't that I couldn't perfectly well see what Robert saw; what I saw didn't activate meaning until he interpreted it.
It was sight leveraged by insight.
The fellow who was in the throes of grief from his team's loss was still baffling to me. There was a slim chance he had bet his college tuition money on the game and was going to have to choose between dropping out of Georgetown or having his legs broken by an unforgiving bookie. Most likely though, he had nothing material to gain or lose.
It would be easy for me to dismiss him as a fool for having put so much stake in an outcome that had no tangible meaning for him. In order to gain insight, I had to overcome my reflexive response to the cognitive dissonance. When we're in the same place at the same time with someone -- in a crowd, in a workplace, in a friendship, in a marriage -- and they're having an experience of the surroundings that feels foreign to us, the reflexive response is they are less intelligent, moral, careful than we are -- and we often go straight to all three. These judgments make us defensive and shut down our curiosity.
And here I'll raise my hand to confess to haven't repealed this law of the human condition in my own life.
Even though I didn't introduce myself and we left the arena to our own paths through the universe, I'm going to call him my friend. When we imagine someone other as a friend, it opens a crack of curiosity and openness in our cognitive response. My friend was at this event in affiliation with one of the teams. It opened up his empathetic imagination to the players on the ice and drew the experience of their gains and losses, and the experience of gain and loss shared with the other fans of this team, right up to the high altitude seats. By calling him my friend, I open up my empathetic imagination to his having separated himself for a couple of hours from the cares and worries of his day, to share a powerful and harmless experience of something bigger than himself.
And as quick as I was to scorn his experience, he and I were doing the same thing. I had separated from the cares and worries of my day, drew my energy from the affiliation with a crowd, might not have been wearing team-affiliated clothing, but wore the fashion of the day for sporting event that allowed me to merge my individuality into the crowd. My friend and I had shared a powerful and harmless experience of something bigger than ourselves. At the same time, I reflexively started by othering him. I had to do harder work to bring him into my circle of belonging.
Like every valuable skill I practice. It takes a lot of work to be a better person than I am.