Experience Over Accuracy

I really don’t like being misunderstood. I really don’t like conflict. You put those two things together and you can get a really good picture of what my therapist and I talk about every week or two. When we lived in England I usually started a conversation asking about culture with the phrase, “I’m not trying to be offensive or question the way y’all do it. I’m just wondering….” Before long my British friends would interrupt me with, “WE KNOW!!! JUST ASK!” (Okay they’re British so they probably said it much more quietly and politely…)

Those who know me really well know I often finish a conversation with, “Does that make sense?” I want to be sure I’m understood; I want to be sure I’m not offensive; I don’t want any conflict, so….

Yesterday’s post was a true test of my unease, but I think an important one. I wrote about an incident that happened almost 2 months ago. (Accurately Accurate) Obviously since it happened 2 months ago and I'm now writing about it, the incident has stayed with me. As I was writing I thought to myself, “I’m not going to publish this until I fact check—re read emails, listen to podcast and look up dates so I can make sure what I remember is accurate and not just seen through my lens and my less than stellar memory.”

As I was walking through the early morning in the most peaceful place, I was struck so suddenly I had to stop—(so it wasn’t exactly St. Paul’s conversion, but it was a conversion nonetheless.) The incident I wrote about has stayed with me because it impacted me; it has stayed with me because it has become part of my experience; and as I relive it over and over in my mind I am both shaped by it and it has been shaped and reconstructed in my mind. Whether or not I can quote people correctly or explain their statements with 100% accuracy; whether or not I can remember names and dates is irrelevant to how I take the experience into the world. The experience lives in my memory.

Over these past weeks I have had other interactions with people and this particular incident has journeyed with me; it has been a part of what has informed me; it has challenged me. I have tried to make meaning of it, and it has changed some of my perception of the world.

Yesterday I wrote about the need for relationship and conversation; I wrote about misunderstandings and lack of trust. I wrote about my deep desire for the world to interact assuming trust and good intentions. Today while I still have that desire, I am more acutely aware of what prevents us from doing so. Today I realize as we approach others we come with our own experiences, our own memories, our own stories, our own values, our own morals, our own faith, and we hear others through those lenses. We take experiences, conversations and we try to sort them and mold them to fit with what we already know about ourselves or others or perhaps believe we know about ourselves or others. We do this regardless of the accuracy of our memories.

One of my favorite prayers by Thomas Merton that I pray often when in discernement is

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And the fact that I think I am following your will

Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

And you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Today this is my prayer for the world….desire, pleasing, good intentions.