kokoroZendo

“It is the very flexibility of relationships that makes it possible to transform unpleasant interactions into tolerable, even exciting ones. How we define and interpret a social situation makes a great difference to how people will treat one another, and to how they will feel while doing it. For instance, when our son, Mark was twelve years old, he took a shortcut across a rather deserted park one afternoon as he walked form school. In the middle of the park he was suddenly confronted by 3 large young men from the neighboring ghetto. “Don’t make a move or he will shoot you,” one of them said, nodding towards the third man, who had his hand in the pocket. The 3 took away everything Mark had- some change and a worn Timex. “Now keep on going. Don’t run, don’t even turn around.”

So Mark started walking again toward home, and the 3 went in other direction. After a few steps, however , Mark turned around and tried to catch up with them. “Listen,” he called, “I wanted to talk to you .” “Keep going”, they shouted back. But he caught up with the trip, and asked if they would reconsider giving him back the watch they had taken. He explained that it was very cheap, and ho possible value to anyone except him: “ You see, it was given to me on my birthday by my parents.” The 3 were furious, but finally decided to take a vote on whether to give the watch back. The vote went 2 to 1 in favor of retuning it, so Mark walked proudly home without change but with the old watch. Of course it took his parent a lot longer to recover from the experience.

From an adult perspective, Mark was foolish to possibly risk his life for an old watch, no matter how sentimentally valued it was. But this episode illustrates an important general point: that a social situation has the potential to be transformed by redefining its rules. By not taking on the role of the “victim” that had been imposed on him, and by not treating his assailants as “robbers”, but as reasonable people who might be expected to empthasize with a son’s attachment to a family keepsake, Mark was able to change the encounter from a hold up to one that involved, at least to some degree, a rational democratic decision. In this case he was largely dependent on luck: the robbers could have been drunk. But the point is still valid: human relations are malleable, and if a person has the appropriate skills their rules can be transformed.”

– From the pages of “Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience”.

One’s own experience is the best arbitrator. During 1998, I had a once- in- lifetime opportunity to live in a dilapidated condominium near a ghetto in West Haven, when I was working as programmer in USA. The money we used to save most diligently by living in that part of the town was quite often shared with the needy big built black boys quite often. During one cold and snowy Winter night, as I returned home from the movie “Wag the Dog “ ( Robert DeNiro & Dustin Hoff man classic) and stepped out of my car near the apartment, I got mugged by a teenaged Black boy. Even though he surely appeared to be in early teens, he was a tall Dennis Rodman ( Chicago Bulls !) look alike and I did not have any qualms in being an highly intelligent and wise Desi, in handing over my purse most dutifully. As he took 10 – 20 Dollars I had kept in my purse, he looked at the family photo I had kept in the purse , and then taking pity on me threw the purse into the snow and walked away. While searching for my purse in that cold inhospitable night, I did have mixed feelings about the whole episode. Later, whenever I attended a personal development program like NLP, as the instructor asked us to relive one of the unpleasant episode in my life, as part of mental exercises, almost always this incident used to pop up in mind. Some 12 years later, I had the same exasperated feeling, as my builder was haggling for more money most unfairly, holding the registration and handing over of my apartment. When I told them that the black boy who had mugged me had more ethics and values than them, I could see the hurt feeling in their VP – Sales’s face and I did manage to register and get my apartment without opening my purse or letting down myself. Subsequently, even though my antagonism towards the builder continued in abundance, I did have a healthy relationship with this Sr. Executive, whom I thought was quite reasonable and total misfit (as for the value system) working in construction industry. Incidentally he quit them last month.

Human perceptions, relationships and social situations are quite malleable and we do have the power to transform them. IMHV, more than the skills, undying passion for not letting oneself down, attitude of not pitying oneself and inner strength for being “Wholly Integrated & Feeling secured ” are the catalysts and reactants of such transformations.