eThoughts : May 1, 2008: Our Yes and Our No, Part I

I’ve been reading and thinking a bit about 1968. There is no question that it was a tumultuous year—riots, war, assassinations, circling the moon, weird elections, etc. Some are saying that it was the year that shaped who we are.

Okay, it was a seminal year, even if there have been many years before it and after it that shaped us. Nonetheless, I wonder, since we still seem to be so far off track, just how our lives would be different if we approached two small words in different ways. This effort doesn’t require new and astounding technology or great leaps of intellectual achievement, it simply requires a small but significant look at how we approach yes and no.

Let’s start with no.

What if saying “no” was not about rejection, but about affirmation? I mean, geez, does saying no to the devil mean we have to feel bad about the impact on the devil’s psyche or our own when what we really might be saying is yes to God?

Maybe we don’t like the rejection in hearing “no” because of our concern with abandonment. And how did we come to feel/think that possibility? Is it because we experience abandonment or, via interpretation, create that abandonment?

Interesting set-up.

What I’m advocating here is attention to the positive in the negative—the power of negative thinking, as in how it positively affects thinking/feeling. I’m not advocating such thinking/feeling in place of everything else, I’m saying, as I have written before, that the practice of ignoring things in the long run is the practice of ignorance—and we tend to do best what we do most. While there is a difference between ignoring the devil and inviting him/her in, the art of no is such dealings could be to back the devil off, rather than enclose ourselves in.

Okay, we want others to say “yes” to us, but they don’t. Crummy stuff that. No date, no job, no promotion, no movement, no, no, no, and more no. So perhaps we contract to find a yes somewhere. Yes, we can brush our teeth, wipe our butts, comb our hair, get our dog to like us—those things/beings don’t say no to us (well, not mostly anyway). But people and their policies—good grief it’s like a constant policy vs. policy gambit. And if we find a key-in-a-lock fit, we are good to go—home at last, home at last.

Really?

What if one sorry view runs into the same sorry view? Eureka, eh? Affirmation that we’re not alone, eh? Any port in a storm, even if the port wrecks the ship of us and renders us stuck?

How do we distinguish the signals, how do we know when “no” is good and “yes” is not? How do we hear no and learn to rejoice and hear yes and learn to squint suspiciously?

I dunno, I just ask questions. To answer them is too much responsibility.

Okay fine—at the risk of rejection I shall sally forth. If we’re trying to change patterns, yes to the old may likely be no to the new. If we’re trying to deepen our patterns, no to the deepening is, well, no and yes is yes. That might take a 3×5 flash card.

That’s us saying stuff. How about us hearing stuff?

When we want and we hear no, we affirm the negative when we feel the pain of rejection. When we want and we hear yes, we affirm the positive and feel the joy of acceptance. However, neither of those is the end of the story—as I trust you might know by now. What if we heard the yes in another rather than the no in us? Someone says no to us because of some reason/feeling—even if the primary purpose is to hurt us. Whatever the case, hearing their yes in their no puts our attention on their motives, rather than ours. And it has the additional benefit—if we adopt this strategy—of refining our wants as well as recognizing another’s. Nice.

Yes, it’s all easy to say and much harder to practice. Given the state of our world because of our interactions in dealing with yes and no, maybe e we should practice something different, unless feeling rejected and needing anger are our real motives.