Bringing them into focus...
When Diane retired from her 30-year grocery clerk position and left the valley, I bawled like the candy-bar-deprived kid in the next checkout. I was at the store on her last day at 6:55 AM, the first to walk through the doors, with a card and tears and a big, messy farewell. You’d have thought she was my best friend, or an aunt or something. But she was my neutral.
At least that’s how she started out, my “neutral person” in a mindfulness practice that involves sending well wishes to four people: someone you admire, yourself, a neutral person, and a difficult person. Diane’s face popped into my head when I picked up the practice one morning, this seemingly random person I saw when I wasn’t moving too fast to see. That was that. Diane, unbeknownst to her, became the object of my neutral person well wishes each morning: “May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease.” Note: variations on those phrases occur and are encouraged.
As you might imagine, it is impossible to refrain from seeing a human being as human when you cultivate your capacity to pay attention to them. First, you take in their features or their dress. The fact that her name badge read “Lady Di” and that she was always cold. The magic, of course, is that your eyes open to this person who slowly becomes fully human to you. You see her, with her family who loves her, with her own family, her own dreams (including more room for her chickens), the pride she took in her work. Over the months that Diane was my neutral, she became anything but.
I cannot explain or describe the tenderness that wells up in me, even just thinking of her, but I seize it as relevant to the challenges of our times, for correcting our fractured and kneejerk assessments of one another. Because I didn’t do anything special or try harder to appreciate or understand Diane. I only sent her the wishes. . . but the wishes changed me.
There is a master teacher of this particular mindfulness practice, something traditionally called “metta” or lovingkindness. (I know, right? So goofy. Just, well, a lot of sugar.) This teacher, Sharon Salzburg, happened to be teaching near the spot where my husband and I were on spring break, and I may or may not have tricked him into attending a “talk” that turned into a full day of lectures and practice. What struck us both that day, besides my untrustworthiness, was Sharon’s emphasis on the seemingly unimportant people in our lives, the ones who operate in the background of our days — a blur of a face behind the neatly wrapped bagel, the vague shape of the checkout person through the exhausted eyes of the working mom, trying to keep her kids from opening the chocolate milk while she reviews her grocery list for the forgotten items that will start a fight with her husband later. “You go get it. I did the whole list with the kids climbing on the shelves.”
It’s the UPS worker with the on-time package, the dog bone, and the heavy winter coat, the drivers who stay in their lanes and let you get to work safely. Our country is, at very the least, a substantial tapestry of people who are going along, doing their thing, the right thing, so we get our groceries, arrive safely, enjoy a cup, stay healthy. There, in the background, receiving hardly any notice, are people being reliable and decent and accountable.
Two things are worth thinking about. One, if we take a fraction of the attention that we give to news cycles and offer it to the neutral people in our lives, we will do more for healing our country than any president can. If we really pull people from the background of our awareness into the full light of our attention, the world rewards us with a parade of people. Delightful, interesting, trustworthy people. Not neutral or invisible. And here’s the second thing...the byproduct of putting my attention on wishing Diane well invested me in her feeling and doing well. I came to care that she was happy. I loved starting my day with a cup of coffee at her register. When I discovered that Diane and I held very different political beliefs, it was so interesting for me to notice that I was simply curious about her views. Nothing changed my affection for her. I found her interesting, funny, and kind.
As David Brooks wrote in his November 2nd New York Times column, we have lost faith in each other, as citizens of this country. Only a third of us have a great or good deal of trust in our fellow Americans to make competent decisions; just over twenty years ago, two-thirds of us had trust in our fellow citizens. Of course, we all know where relationships go without trust. I wonder how different things could be if we just decided to see the neutrals. To wish them well, extending care instead of rage. It means slowing down to notice how much decency is right here.
Even then, good luck with the neutrals. If you’re not careful, they’ll come into focus and then change, right before your eyes.
With love and gratitude,
Sara and the Becoming Jackson Whole team