Empathy from Left Field – Part II

To support people in being able to reach a true empathic openness, I have often in the past conducted role plays in which I assumed the role of a much maligned figure, often George W. Bush, and asked people to enter dialogue with me by offering me empathy and understanding. Independently of people’s success in the activity (spotty), entering these roles has transformed me, because I now have a felt sense of what it might be like to be someone so different from myself. I was most moved when I imagined being the former president just about the time of September 11, 2001. I felt the weight of the responsibility, of having to make a decision about how to respond to the situation. I felt how awful it was to be hated by half my country.

Another time I engaged in a similar role play in which I was a soldier returning from Iraq only to face the judgments of others. As this soldier I was able to feel the outrage, the experience of not being understood at all for my profound willingness to sacrifice everything in order to protect the way of life of this country that’s so dear to me. I was able to feel what it was like to be together with others, risking my life, knowing I would do anything to protect theirs.

I feel less separate as a result. My own positions and views have not changed. But I now have a complete appreciation of the shared humanity of people who are far away from me on the political spectrum. I know that we have different worldviews, and I can hold that knowledge without losing understanding for the other worldview, even when I am frightened by the consequences I associate with it. I know that the fear is mutual. Conservatives are just as worried about my views, and what would happen if everyone espoused them, as I am about theirs. Knowing this helps me increase my compassion and understanding.

Opening Dialogue
Thursday night, on my TV show (posted on www.youtube.com/baynvc), I worked with the cast on a couple of “hot topics” of major differences. The first one was about the health care bill that just passed. I wish I had a true conservative in the studio. Instead, one member of the cast took on the role of a woman who thought of the bill as “Un-American” and undermining freedom. The other cast member took on the role of a Brit (which she is) who is strongly advocating for health care as a universal right. Together we worked on how to reach mutual understanding instead of arguing and trying to convince each other. Both were surprised, in the end, to recognize that they had shared values despite opposing views.

If Helen Smith, or anyone else who is Conservative and sees this post, is up for dialogue, I would be honored and touched. I mourn the fact that, as she says, I live in a bubble, with little that would bring me in contact with Conservatives. I mourn the fact that in order to teach empathy for Conservatives I must conjure up role plays instead of live dialogues. I hope she takes me up, because I want what I have learned about empathy to support healing the rift between the Right and the Left in this country. Yes, there are core differences as Haidt points out in his careful research. Yes, it may be that Conservatives are more able to empathize with Liberals than the other way around. I still maintain that we can connect across our differences. We may not immediately find ways to come closer on specific issues, but we can see our shared humanity, appreciate the struggles we face in understanding each other, and emerge with more humility and goodwill.

Empathy from Left Field

I love a good challenge, and Helen Smith’s recent article immediately called my attention. As someone who’s dedicating my life, in part, to increasing empathy all around in the culture, I found some of her comments painful, because they matched my own experience with liberals.

The Missing Empathy for the Right
In the social circles in which I find myself, and in much of the Left media, conservatives are regularly referred to as stupid (at best), backward, uncaring, or unevolved. At every opportunity I have, especially in my workshops, I invite people to look at what might be the underlying values behind conservative positions, to imagine how a decent fellow human could arrive at such opposing views. I wish I could contradict Helen Smith, but my experience only confirms what she says.

I see a complete dearth of genuine, open-hearted empathy towards conservatives. I regularly hear jokes at the expense of conservatives in my workshops, and I cringe. I am not conservative myself. Far from it! I find most liberals to be more conservative than me. I cringe because if I were a conservative, I would not experience Nonviolent Communication communities hospitable. I worked for several years with volunteers who are part of the campaign to create a department of peace in the US. They have not been able to cross the Democrat-Republican divide. As I see it, the obstacle was not the Republicans, but rather the challenge these activists had in being able to hear their opponents, listen with respect and care, imagine their values and deeper longings and aspirations, and be open to be affected by what they hear. What is dialogue, after all, if we are expecting others to change their views, positions, or strategies, without a comparable willingness on our part to be affected and changed by what we hear?

(tomorrow – more on cultivating empathy)

Power and Grace

When you think about power, what are some of the words or images that come to mind? More often than not, I’ve heard people associate power with domination, coercion, or extreme force. For many, their relationship with power is at best ambivalent. What if you were to think of power as the capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs? What happens when you imagine increasing your internal resources, bringing more choice, decisiveness, and resilience to your life and work?

Wouldn’t you want a way to work directly on cultivating power?

Despite my clarity and strength, even relatively minor obstacles often interfere with my access to power. Since I hear similar experiences from many people, and since sharing my own experiences sometimes inspires others to live more fully, I decided to share with you in this post how I have been working to access more of my power.

Blocked access to power looks different for different people. My particular version looks like collapsing in the face of obstacles; paralysis and helplessness; giving up and resigning; or becoming abrupt, intense, or unpleasant as a way to scramble out of helplessness. Sometimes powerlessness shows up as waiting, just waiting – for the right person, the right circumstances, the right opportunity, the right project – so life could start, finally.

Practicing Power

Power would look like maintaining connection with what I want, and with a sense of possibility about moving towards it even in the face of obstacles. Power would look like choosing to live life fully now. It means choosing the circumstances in front of me instead of waiting. It means bringing all I have to life, to the world. It means risking disapproval and continuing to live the truth inside. That freedom is the power I want to have.

I have written previously about my gratitude practice at the end of the day. Now I start my day with an equally simple, almost mirror practice to work towards power. I review my day, what I know of what’s coming, not counting the unannounced, unplanned forceful flow of life. The next step is simply asking what I can do to be more powerful in each situation. What would bring more leadership? How can I be more intentional about attending to each moment to everyone’s benefit?

I slip away from the practice. Much of the time I lose my focus and wander. Or I don’t foresee the obstacles. Or I don’t know how to respond to them any differently from how I have in the past. This is the beginning of a practice, not the report on mastery. The whole point of practice is that when we start we are usually not good at what we are practicing. Still, even this early in my practice I can more easily imagine having a life that works for me. I can picture myself strong enough to face opposition on my way to share what I am called to share. I can see the possibility of being more relaxed, less challenging for some people. I am filled with curiosity about how it will be to face what life places on my path.

What about Grace?

This new practice creates an arc that balances power and grace. The morning, the power practice, is about thrusting myself into the world. I prepare myself to meet life. I gather my strength, my inner resources, all I have, to create, to bring my gifts to fruition. The night, my gratitude practice, is about surrender. I let go of any illusion that I by myself can do anything. I entrust myself to life. I focus on receptivity, on the gifts that life brings to me. I sink into other people’s kindness, their power to affect me.

Gratitude, nourishment, relaxation, inspiration, and beauty serve as fuel for life. Challenges, when we can meet them with our inner resources, serve as the fire that strengthens us. We become bigger, stronger, more able to face life, to prevail, to imagine new strategies to address obstacles, and new capacities to accept life. Without fuel, without grace, the challenges become overwhelming. Without the stretching, we run the risk of losing vitality, clarity of path, or our compass. I want both, in ample measure, for me and for everyone.

What Shall I Write about?

Today marks 3 weeks since I started this blog. I can barely keep up with the new ideas that come to me to write about (9 more in store). So why am I turning to you? Because I want more! I want your involvement. I want to be responsive to your ideas, visions, and wishes. I want to co-create this blog with you. Here’s grist for your thinking mill.

Reaching for Vision, Understanding, and Inspiration

I often hear from people that they are nourished by hearing me weave a vision of how we humans could live on this planet. Others tell me how much relief they feel from being able to hear my perspective about what makes human beings tick, about relationships, about social structures, or about power relations.

So, shall I write more of what I’ve been posting so far? I have enjoyed the mixture of personal reflection and larger ideas a lot. Here’s what’s in store. I could write a piece about how we can learn and grow through feedback even if it’s scary. Or maybe something about how we can embrace more of ourselves by bringing tenderness to our internal conflicts. Or maybe about how I’ve seen conflicts within groups become opportunities for deeper bonding and commitment.

Lessons from My Own Humanity

I also hear from people how inspired they are to witness my transparency about the places where I falter, struggle, or am unable to live my intentions in full. Giving voice to my vulnerability, fallibility, and human frailty seems to give people “permission” to be their own full humanity.

So, shall I write more about my own journey, including my struggles, insights, uncertainties, hopes, lessons? Shall I talk about the many times when my actions generate the opposite effect of my intention, and describe what I have learned and continue to learn from these occasions? Or shall I write about my regular bouts of despair about where the world is going and my helplessness about contributing sufficiently, and share how I transform despair to arrive at vision and determination? Or maybe I could write about how tenderness towards myself and support from others are helping me learn to respond, in moments of difficulty, with a sense of choice instead of reacting based on trauma I carry?

“Dear Miki”

Lastly, I have heard from many people how much relief and strength they receive from me support them with empathy and coaching for their questions, conflict situations, and challenges. Others have expressed how much they enjoyed the Conflict Hotline (available as a CD or DVD, and freely accessible on youtube). Even though what they see or hear are not their questions, they find them meaningful and relevant.

So, would you like me to start a “Dear Miki” feature as part of this blog? That would be fun, too. You could ask about challenging situations in your life. Or you could ask to make sense of people’s actions that you don’t understand. Or you could get support to live more in line with your values.

Turning to You

So, what would you like me to write about? What questions do you have? What visions inspire you that you want more of? Write comments with your ideas, topics, and questions. No worry, I won’t wait until I hear from you. I will keep writing what comes from my heartmind – planned, or unplanned (the last 3 entries), regardless. I just would like to be responsive to what you want. I appreciate your presence in this corner of my world.

Bob Niederman, organizational consultant, Miki, and Yumi Kikuchi, Japanese peace activist, at a recent BayNVC Leadership Program residential training.

 

What Is “Nonviolent” about Nonviolent Communication?

One of the most frequent questions I hear when I talk about Nonviolent Communication is “Why Nonviolent?” People feel uneasy. They hear the word nonviolent as a combination of two words, as a negation of violence. They don’t think of themselves as violent, and find it hard to embrace the name.

For some time I felt similarly. I was happier when I heard people talk about Compassionate Communication instead of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), because it felt more positive. After all, isn’t the practice of about focusing on what we want, where we are going, instead of looking at what’s not working? Why would the name be any different?

Like others, I was unaware of the long-standing tradition of nonviolence to which Nonviolent Communication (NVC) traces its origins. Then I learned more about Gandhi. I became more acquainted with the story of the Civil Rights movement. Then I fell in love with the name Marshall Rosenberg gave to this practice, and more so over the years. Here’s why.

Nonviolence as Love
The word nonviolence is the closest literal translation that Gandhi found to the Sanskrit word ahimsa. Although in English this word appears as a negation, in Sanskrit naming a concept or quality through negation instead of directly is sometimes a way of suggesting it is too great to be named. Indeed, avera, the word for love in Sanskrit, literally translates into “non-hatred.”

Hinduism is not the only tradition that honors the unnamable. As a friend pointed out to me when talking about this, Judaism has a similar practice. The name of God is unsayable in Hebrew, being letters without vowels, without instructions for how to read them. Some things are beyond words. And nonviolence is one of them.

Gandhi said: “ahimsa … is more than just the absence of violence; it is intense love.” (Gandhi the Man p. 53)

What is this kind of love? It appears to me that Jesus and Gandhi and those of us following their tradition through the practice of NVC think of love as the full radical acceptance of the humanity of every person, regardless of how unhappy we are with the results of their actions. This love is a commitment to act in ways that uphold that humanity; to care for the wellbeing of the other person even when we are in opposing positions; even when all that we value is at stake.

For the past 15 years I have been dedicating my life to this quest. I want to keep learning and exploring what nonviolence means. I want to live this intense love; model it as best I know how, and more; expose and seek support for the places where I falter; and support others who want the same, who want to grow their capacity to love everyone, including themselves. This blog is, at heart, an attempt to do just that.

Two Medical Moments

On Tuesday morning I had the unusual opportunity to offer coaching and support to two women, one from Egypt and one from Sudan, who are heading a unique program in cultural competence for medical students in one of the Persian Gulf Emirates. Across cultural differences (I am, after all, from Israel), without any training in NVC, we connected, and they learned how they could change outcomes by imagining from the inside the experience of people with whom they were in conflict.

Why were they here? The students in the program they teach are generally open and receptive. But the doctors in the hospital, themselves from many countries, have been consistently expressing doubt and impatience towards the concept of cultural competence, even towards the idea of medical interpreters being present when there is a language barrier with the patient. What could they do, these women wondered, so that their students could get support when they are doing medical rotations at the hospital?

Can Conflict Be Transformed into Partnership?

I invited the head of the program to enter the shoes of a doctor, to say what they have heard them say so many times, and together to understand what their experience is. They learned, with astonishment, how different it would be for the doctors if they tried to form a partnership with them in addressing concerns rather than trying to convince them that the program is essential. We learned that the doctors are struggling with an immense load of patients who are often migrant workers and can’t see how they could take the time to engage in understanding the patients beyond just figuring out the symptoms and reach a diagnosis.

Then I invited the other woman to offer empathic reflection to the doctor that the head of the program was inhabiting. This took us deeper into discovery. We now, through listening carefully, discovered that the doctors wanted to be trusted in their ability, despite difficulties, to understand and carry out their mission to support the patients’ health; that they care about the patients; that they wanted respect; that they wanted choice about how they and their students would practice medicine. These women found out that the doctors would more likely be open to support them if they expressed directly and clearly what the experience of patients was that would lead them to create the program rather than by using the language of rights.

Increasing Resilience through Connecting with Vision

Then we talked about how they could nourish themselves and have more hope and resilience and less stress by connecting empathically with each other, understanding and being with the vision of what they wanted to create instead of “venting” and maligning people who didn’t support them. They experienced how the vision could be a source of energy, fuel for the work that is less likely to be toxic to them than the anger that sometimes arises in them in response to the obstacles they have been facing. Lastly, we equipped them with some materials and ways of learning NVC from afar, and with tips for how they could support and empower the students in these difficult conversations.

Dignity

That same evening, I visited a friend’s mother who is dying. No longer able to go home to die because the transportation would be too painful and too stressful for her frail body, she was in a hospital bed, surrounded by loving people. I walked in the room, let her know I was there, and she opened her clear eyes and smiled fully.
I talked to her, but she was no longer able to respond except with her eyes and her smile. She is a woman of immense light, and I felt blessed to be in the room with her. There was dignity and love in the room. This is what I know the women I saw that morning want for all patients. I was glad to experience it.