I refuse to be a victim of the cruelty of others. They sound like fighting words, don’t they? Well they are but I am not under threat, so I remain calm. Having been a victim for so long, having many justified reasons to not be or do exactly what was true to me, I simply can't be that way any more. I could be traumatised from all of the ways my relating to others has been ugly and unkind but I refuse to be. I am only willing to learn how to be with other people, human and otherwise, and stop complaining while I do it.
I have assumed, based on the complex and complicated explanations of reality and identification of problems of local and global proportions, that we don't need to cover the basics any longer.
Things like respect, boundaries and how to adult, seem far less sexy than having problems, being a victim and prioritising the inner work. Have you noticed that people who have lots to say about inner work, also have all of the criticisms of others?
So, what if we call these basics outer work? Because it is in how we relate to one another on a day to day basis and whether we avoid or confront (a scary word) building relationships, that our lives either flourish, stagnate or toxify. Outer work is the challenging daemon that brings us our desires for relating well in the form of experiences to exercise the atrophied muscles.
Respect is the word for וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ , the golden rule, love thy neighbour as thyself, do onto others as you would have them do unto you. Respect is about love. Respect is about neighbourliness. Respect is the outer work of self love.
As a culture of self hating, othering, blaming and texting (Which are essentially unfiltered thoughts and, I believe, to be a sure fire way to say harsh untruths), is it any surprise that respect is spoken of and weaponised but rarely practiced?
Boundaries are the logistics of respect. People often say that national boundaries are arbitrary lines in the sand of an otherwise seamless world but these people wouldn't tell their housemate that the milk in their shared fridge wasn't purchased for shared use, if you want it to be then keep up with the demand and replace it, please. Arbitrary lines is about as hollow a concept as the assumption that this hypothetical housemate is aware of your milk standard.
Relationships are established, through repetitive interactions, around the fireplace of respect forming boundaries that serve, at least, to avoid annoyance and insult, at best, to create harmony and mutual flourishing.
So, even if you had the conversation ahead of time, before the great milk crisis of '24, there was no actual call to remember the boundary until the fridge-local shortage occurred. Now, the easy response is to write a note and stick it, with all of the exclamation marks, to the fridge but much like leaving a trap for a fox around where they just ate is easy but futile, we are called to the edge of their boundaries when they have transgressed ours. They may well have ignored, dismissed or violated our agreement, if such language is needed to motivate you, but in lieu of respect you keep those kinds of descriptions to yourself.
What happens if they keep doing it? Even though you've given them a timid or annoyed talking to? Then leave. Pack up all of your belongings and disappear in the night, leaving a note that just says 'I drink milk, too!'
Or slip into their room, chloroform them, drag their incapacitated body to a warehouse, chain them up and waterboard them with some of Paul's finest.
The severity of the transgression must dictate the intensity of the response. Which sounds way too extreme for most relationships. But milk...is just milk. If you've spoken to them, then make a show of the annoyance of having to replace milk at 8pm on a sunday night. Buy more milk and pour them a mug of it, take it to them and say 'hopefully this'll tide you over until morning.' It's lighthearted, it's a little confusing and it will make you feel better. ‘Bit pass-agg, isn’t it?’ Depends how you hand it to them…
How to adult is the methodology of rejecting teenage ways of behaving in favour of harmony and flourishing.
Why teenage and not childish? Because children will express in the moment their dissatisfaction with not having access to milk, mind you with a sense of 'do you hate me?'
Teenagers will brood over it. It is this brooding that leads to the suffocation of respect and turns any transgression into a deep violation. Brooding is the interpersonal equivalent of compounding interest. The more there is, the faster it increases.
All that is needed is to turn the childish ability, of immediately responding, into the adult ability, of not taking it personal and yet still immediately responding. And this is done by skipping over the brooding.
Because teenagers, and adults, know they should be adults but aren't (usually) there’s an in-continuity that distorts reality and it becomes an exercise in finding stores of humility that a lack of ceremony has not gifted them. One is tasked with isolating into the recesses of the place of brooding or laughing it off, acknowledging the reaction and still expressing the transgression. Without loving ceremony of coming of age into budding adulthood, we are left with piecemealing some of the equivalent capacities of adulthood.
No one is going to do it for us. That sucks. But so what? We just continue to pretend that brooding, which is inner work of a kind, and feeling violated is acceptable? Packaging minor insults into an IED and unleashing this on our neighbour with the last straw? Forgetting that respect and boundaries are the outer work of self love?
Come on, we can be greater than this.
Ryan Dickinson