Another issue when evaluating good and bad behavior is that what we experience from others (and what they experience from us) as "good" and "bad" are in a constant state of flux. Our relationships always get mixed reviews. We're happy or not-so-happy with our friends, families, co-workers, chance strangers, depending on the most recent interaction. No one "is" good or bad, we all just react to each other depending on our current mood, their current mood, the weather, the phase of the moon, and the state of world affairs.
The personalities and characteristics that make up this ever-changing persona we call our "self" are constantly swirling around inside each of us, reacting to everyone and everything we encounter. And, depending on the particular configuration of characteristics we happen to be experiencing at that moment, our encounters with the similarly turbulent personalities of others can be favorable or unfavorable, comfortable or uncomfortable.
But with some people we always seem to have the same bad reactions. I'm not sure that this means the other person is bad, or that we're bad. It's just that the particular characteristics that are manifesting in each of us apparently attract an incompatible set of characteristics from the other person. We're destined to always step on each others' toes.
And what do we each mean by "behaving better" anyway? What's "better" for one person may be totally horrible for someone else.
Some people think it's more important to be intelligent and educated, others that it's far more important to be kind and thoughtful. Some place the emphasis on being effective and accomplished, others on being healthy and fit, still others on having a good reputation. Mostly people just want to be happy and think each of these "better" things is the way to get there.
We each have a tendency to think of our way of going about life, our way of behaving as the better way. So if we're educated and intelligent we behave in a way similar to others we consider to be like us in that respect. And we agree with each other that we're all behaving better than "those" people who are ignorant and uneducated. And if we're just ordinary folks who love our kids and work hard and enjoy life, we look at all those stuffed shirt intellectuals so full of their own importance and think that we're so much more in touch with our humanity, our lives and our world. Who's to say who's "better"?
So it appears impossible to even come to agreement about what constitutes behaving "better." Plus, as we noted earlier, the process of evaluation is itself biased by each of our individual perceptions at any given moment. The personality which is currently making the evaluations isn't even a constant stable personality, but one of many which are constructed at every different moment from the plethora of mental, emotional, and physical component elements coming into existence and going out of existence continuously.
The best we can do is recognize that we all behave in ways that both please and displease the other people in our life, and they do the same with us. We can't control - or even modify - their behavior. But we can do a few things to improve the quality of the water in our shared environment.
More in the next blog on helpful habits for the ponds we're swimming in
No comments:
Post a Comment