"On Healing" December 2006

Posted on Mon, Dec. 25, 2006
We all seek peace, but how many practice it?
By Dan Gottlieb

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Why do so many of us work so hard all week in the pursuit of some type of security, and then go to our houses of worship for a couple of hours on weekends and pray for peace?

Perhaps I answered my own question. People in cities and suburbs and every socioeconomic group above the poverty line work hard in pursuit of a sense of safety and security, to make things better for the future - their children's and their own. Some work 80 hours a week to achieve as much as they can or maintain what they have. We push our children to excel in everything they do, turning our backs on their stress (and ours) in order to achieve professional and economic security. In our relentless pursuit of security, we all seem to be suffering.

Yet when I ask people to stop and reflect about what they ultimately want in life, most answers are the same. They want peace. World peace, peace at work, peace in their families, and inside their soul.

This is the confusing part. We work so hard for the things we think will bring security but we take a passive approach toward the peace we want most desperately. We pray or wish or hope for peace. And when we do take an active role in pursuit of peace, it often produces the opposite. Almost every day in my office I see families and couples who fight with one another in the misguided pursuit of marital or personal peace. And we know the pursuit of peace through violence has gone on through human history, and it generally has not gone well.

We tell ourselves that peace will finally come when others change. Whether they change by finally hearing our argument, some great insight, or succumbing to aggression, most of us believe that when the other changes, we will have peace.

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

I always liked that holiday song. The words are a beautiful thought, and clinically accurate. World peace must begin with inner peace. But as I reflected on it, even those words are passive, asking a higher power to let peace happen rather than for the courage and ability to make peace happen. Personally, I prefer Gandhi's famous quote about being the change we wish to see.

He suggests we have both the power and the responsibility to create peace. So how does one person create peace? You could enroll in one of the peace studies programs taught at many universities. Or, if you don't have the time to turn your life upside down, you could try to create peace day by day.

Here are some ways.

Use peaceful language:
Don't speak negatively about anyone behind his or her back; it harms both of us.
When talking to someone directly, choose language that doesn't cause pain.

Teach peace to your children:
Talk about it at the dinner table as you eat together as a family.
Illustrate compassion by example: Spend some time each month helping other living beings.
Explain that revenge, retaliation and retribution lead to unhappiness.
Discuss how even justice won't necessarily lead to peace. Only compassion and forgiveness lead to peace. (If you're not sure how, consider it a topic for conversation!)
Teach your children that as the number of people we deeply care about expands, and as the number we fear and hate contracts, both peace and security will ensue. (See above.)

Allow peace into every decision:
This includes the most important ones. For example, will pushing your children to excel academically, and to gain admission to great colleges, help them find peace?
Will your pursuit of excellence at the workplace help you and your coworkers find peace?
I wonder what would happen if we worked hard all week in the pursuit of peace and then went to our houses of worship on weekends and prayed for security. It might be an interesting way to honor the life of the man whose birth we are celebrating today.

Posted on Mon, Dec. 11, 2006
Hatred is human, and springs from feeling vulnerable
By Dan Gottlieb

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung

Don't you just hate Michael Richards for his racist tirade in a California comedy club? And Mel Gibson for his anti-Semitic venom?

Certainly, I hate racists and racism. Incidents like these also bring to mind an encounter I had with my daughter Ali over 20 years ago. Ali was having a difficult time in elementary school - almost every day after school, it seemed she hated someone else. Usually she hated the kids, but she also hated her teacher, the neighbor down the street and the woman who drove her school bus. And, of course, she hated her sister.

I decided we should go out for breakfast and a talk. I knew she was unhappy. She had just endured all the trauma and loss of her father becoming a quadriplegic. But I was especially concerned that her unhappiness was being expressed as hatred. So when we went to eat, I blustered into the conversation by saying: "Ali, I hate your hatred!"

Now if that's not a crazy statement, nothing is. I felt hatred about the fact that my child was expressing hatred! Yet at a certain level it makes sense. Most of us like to think we are above hatred, especially when we see how ugly it looks when it's expressed by others. But none of us are above it. Hatred is part of the package of being human.

Typically, it is a response to fear, anger or a sense of injury. When we are confronted with our own vulnerability, first we feel raw and exposed. Then we look for someone to blame. If blame isn't enough, it progresses to hate. In a crisis, the tendency is to protect oneself and one's clan by finding others to blame or attack.

Think back to the sequence of emotions right after 9/11. The attack exposed our vulnerability, and we felt protective of our brothers and sisters. Over the first 48 hours, in fact, our sense of clan expanded to take in the whole nation. Our vulnerability enabled us to care for and about one another. It didn't matter if we were red or blue. And then our hearts, briefly open, closed tighter than before. When we found out who committed the act, our vulnerability turned to hatred. The hatred grew to include not just al-Qaeda, but fundamentalist Muslims.

I am generalizing, of course, but hatred always feels better than vulnerability. It is pretty easy, too. That might be why we love to hate.

With Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, I initially hated them because in that moment, I convinced myself that they were racist and I was not. And righteous indignation feels so good. Yet it solves nothing.

The truth is, I hated what Michael Richards said because I hated his racism and I hated my own. Mel Gibson confronted me with my own vulnerability as a Jew. I hated him (and still do) because he became the human face of what I fear.

My vulnerability to attack from an intoxicated movie star is nothing compared to what I experienced after my accident. Had I been able to tolerate my own vulnerability better, I would not have stumbled into that conversation with my daughter, and I would have been able to listen to her better. Ali hated all those people because she felt vulnerable and insecure. Because of her vulnerability, her heart closed and she felt hatred.

Our conversation that morning moved beyond its awkward beginning. Ali ended the meeting by making an important observation. "Daddy," she said, "when I talk about 'hating,' I don't really hate. I'm just a kid. I hate like kids hate. I don't hate like adults."

At that tender age, she reminded me of something most of us have long since forgotten. That emotions are just emotions. They come and go and do not need to be reacted to. Oh, to be a kid again.

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