This essay,
I Get
Who You Are
From What They Do,
is the twenty second in the complete group of
Experiences Of A Friend
(click
here
for the open group
Experiences Of A Friend II):
I am indebted to
Robyn Symon
who contributed material for this conversation.
Interimly, the way I get
who you are
is from my experience of
who you are.
Ultimately, I get it directly from
who you are.
That is not a trivial difference, to be sure: rather, it's a critical
distinction. There are many other interim ways of getting
who you are
- for example: from my assessments of
who you are,
from my judgements of
who you are,
from my
opinions
of
who you are
etc. The thing is I'm both suspicious and skeptical of all assessments,
judgements, and
opinionsespecially my own.
That said, differentiating between
direct experience,
and assessments, judgements, and
opinions,
as well as being able to own this difference and accept
responsibility for it, is another distinction worth making. Yet perhaps
even more telling than getting
who you are
directly from
who you are
(which for me is much more immediate than getting
who you are
from my experience of
who you are)
is getting
who you are
from what other people do when they also get
who you are
- in other
words,
I get
who you are,
noticing
howwho you are
occurs in other peoples' lives like a possibility.
I get
who you are
from what they do when they get to know
who you are.
People who've ignored estranged
family
members, people who haven't spoken with old
friends
for the
stoopidest,
ungodliest
of reasons, people who've ostracized exes for years, suddenly pick up
the phone and call or simply
show up
at their door unannounced. It takes a lot to do that. It
takes a big person to do that. Look: there's no guarantee
their new overtures will be reciprocated. In fact there's a very good
ego-bruising
likelihood they'll be met with disdain. But they do it anyway. They do
it because even if their overtures aren't reciprocated, there's an even
bigger reward than reciprocity for their audacious
acts
of at risk bravery: their reward is
completion.
Getting
who you are
(which is easy,
being around you),
they've come to know
completion.
Man! Have they ever come to know
completion
... So it's no longer about being right. It's no longer about
withdrawing
who they areas a passive-aggressive punishment to get even, or as a way of
making a point. It's now just simply about being
complete.
And in particular, being
complete
isn't a selfish
act:
it's a
"we" act not a "me"act.
It's not about you or me or them being
complete.
It's now about all of us being
complete.
That's awesome. That requires real strength. And if they weren't in
touch with their own strength before they got
who you are,
there is always the quality ie there's something
catalytic
in the air
being around you
which turns them on to their own strength naturally, just in the
process of
life itself.
It's uncanny.
People who work with you and
around you,
display a characteristic which, for want of a single
word,
could best be articulated as alacrity or enthusiasm or
exuberance.
They're no longer subject to some arbitrary difference between "work"
and
"play".
To them, it's allplay
- which also means it's all work (clearly, yes?). But it's
not the same kind of work as in "Where are you going?" / "I'm going to
work" ie work which is differentiated fromplay,
or as in work is what I do at the office - whereas
play
is what I do when I get home at the end of the day and / or on the
weekends at the golf course. Rather this is a kind of seamless work /
playwhich is our life's work and which therefore by definition
is always fulfilling and is always satisfying, something "going
to work" may not guarantee - and in fact more often than not, doesn't.
What is so very interesting to me is
observing
the people who really do "go to work". They're keeping one eye on the
clock. They just can't wait for that time to come at the end of the day
when they can go home and
play
at last (and I, for one, have certainly included myself in this group
on more than a few occasions). But when those people who know
who you are,
are working with you and
around you
and at the end of the day the clock is saying it's time to go home,
no one wants to leave.
That's what they do when they get
who you are.
They're complete. They get complete. They live their lives fully,
playfully.
And I get
who you are
from what they do.