People can really drive you crazy, can’t they? The jerk who won’t let you merge into traffic, the neighbor who lets his dog bark incessantly, the spouse who refuses to acknowledge or discuss marital problems, even the U.S. president whose policies and intentions scare half the population to death (replacing the previous president who scared to death the other half of the population). As Johann von Goethe noted, “We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
Because life is short and it’s a hell of a lot more enjoyable spending time with those we like, we tend to avoid exposing ourselves to individuals who “bring out the worst” in us. Spiritually speaking, this is a big mistake.
“Our ego-self, desiring pleasure and avoiding pain, will tell us that our greatest teachers are those who give us love and support,” says Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira in Take Me to Truth. “[The ego] will not voluntarily identify those people who challenge us and bring out either defensive or offensive behavior in us.”
The result is that most of us surround ourselves with individuals who do not test us. A mate with whom we repeatedly clash is replaced with a more
agreeable alternative; an insecure colleague is avoided; a critical parent’s calls go unanswered. In each instance an opportunity is missed because it is in our reaction to these individuals – not their behavior – that clues to our own growth and healing exist.
Or as Nouk/Vieira point out, “Without these challenging behaviors it is easy for our ego to become blissfully complacent, growing eventually into a monster of gigantic proportions intent on our annihilation. Without these great teachers, it is so much more difficult to become aware of our ego’s existence.”
Think of your typical despot: Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hussein. Each surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants, leading to a growing conviction that they were infallible. Unimaginable suffering ensued because they refused to be challenged by others.
Ironically, while virtually all of us can agree on the evil inherent in such individuals, many of us architect our own lives in much the same way – that is, we avoid those who refuse to placate or mollify our egos. We avoid those who remind us of our own “failings,” don’t want to experience the discomfort in meeting the gaze of a homeless man (we’ll drop a dollar into his hat, but won’t look him in the eye while we’re doing it), tune out the parent who won’t stop badgering us deep into adulthood. If we’re not careful, we create a mini-tyrany of the ego, cloistering ourselves in a happy little world of our own making. Which might help explain the low-grade misery that pervades so many of the nation’s most beautiful neighborhoods and upper-crust ZIP codes.
It’s become something of a cliche that our fellow humans are mirrors to our
own behavior. But that can only be true if we are willing to look into all of the mirrors, not just the talking ones that tell us how beautiful we are.
For virtually all of my life one individual in particular has haunted me, driven me to distraction with his behavior and treatment of me and others. So deep and pervasive was the pain he’d inflicted that even at 46 any new criticism elicited a powerful response in me.
Well-intentioned friends and family urged me to “ignore him,” to “shut him out” or, alternatively, “let yourself feel the hate toward him.” All of these and other antidotes were attempted and none lasted. Again and again I was pulled back into the cycle; again and again I kicked myself for reinvesting myself in the drama. Why couldn’t I just walk away? Why couldn’t I just write him off, feel the hate and then exit stage left? Only recently did it occur to me that I was being called to a lesson; a lesson I’d avoided through my own egoic reactions.
So I surrendered, asked for help, acknowledged as I had so often with other challenges, that “of my own self I can do nothing.” The answer arrived in the form of an old wedding video from my first marriage, in images that I hadn’t seen in years or entirely forgotten. There he was, captured on tape, quickly and discretely wiping away tears, arms uncharacteristically wrapped tight across his normally big and boastful body, the living embodiment of a man deeply uncomfortable in such an intimate setting. Juxtaposed now against the intervening years of my own personal growth, those images elicited a deep compassion, a sense of his immense and well-disguised suffering.
Here was a fellow human struggling with many of the same demons that for so long had haunted me and, while much of my suffering came at his hands, could I possibly understand the origins of his own pain? Could I not relate to that pain and feel compassion for anyone under its grip – even him? Wasn’t it but for the grace of God that I’d still be punishing others with my own unconscious words and behaviors? How grateful I felt at last liberated from such pain; how perplexed and confused I felt seeing it playing out in my own persecutor.
It was an important reminder that powerful lessons exist in our reactions and responses to others. I do not think that a spiritual commitment requires us to surround ourselves with annoying personalities or remain trapped in miserable marriages. But more than ever I believe it is our responsibility to look hard at ourselves and determine why we react to these individuals in the way that we do. They are gifts, master instructors sent to help us grow just as we help others.
