Bonds That Make Us Free, Part 7
by C. Terry Warner

Slipping Away
It is possible to observe a person slipping into the hardened, self-absorbed way of being. The process is apparent in the following story, told by a young teacher in the South named Jennifer.

When my widowed aunt was in the hospital for major surgery I thought I ought to visit her. She needed some company, and I guess I was one of the few people who was likely to come around.

But I didn't go. I was going to go this one night, but there was something good on TV, and I decided I'd only watch a little of it and then go. When I was watching I started thinking about how hard it would be to talk to her. I'm young and she's old, and it was pretty obvious I wouldn't be able to think of much to say.

Another time I was going to go and I realized when I was thinking about it that it wasn't really my fault that I couldn't think of anything to say. She was just plain hard to talk to. She never spent a lot of time talking to me when I was growing up, and that's the reason we don't have much of a relationship. Besides, I knew she didn't think too highly of getting a college degree, which was what I was doing.

So why should I feel guilty that I didn't visit her? I'm just as alone as she is, with my folks in the service and all. I figured it would be best if she went her way and I went mine. I guess we don't take to each other much.

Trace with me the germination and growth of Jennifer's accusing emotions-and her transformation into a somewhat different, I-It kind of person. The first pivotal moment came when she decided to watch "only a little" of that television show. A second one occurred when she failed to jump from the couch, grab her jacket, and head out the door. These were self-betrayals. They got her noticing defects in her aunt and other reasons that would explain why she was not getting up and going to visit her.

One of these reasons was that Jennifer and her aunt didn't know one another very well. Another reason was that her aunt had never reached out to her and made her feel welcome. "I started thinking how hard it would be to talk to her." It is clear from the tone of Jennifer's story that this thought brought with it an irritated, somewhat offended feeling: How else can a person respond when a relative treats her insensitively? The more Jennifer reflected on her history with this aunt, the more fussed she became.

Thus, by her efforts to defend her self-betrayal in her own mind, Jennifer blunted her sensitivity to her aunt-almost as if she had replaced what she knew of her aunt with a fictional picture that excused her own unwillingness to care.

We need to remind ourselves that Jennifer's urgent, self-absorbed need to justify what she was doing sprang into being when she betrayed her sense of what was right to do in regard to her aunt. By this act, she transformed her attitude and thus herself. That is an astounding thing to contemplate.

We might be tempted to take this fact as a reason for discouragement, supposing that a moral slip can plunge us irretrievably into darkness. But in actuality it is a source of hope. It means that by desisting from self-betrayal we can cease having any need to justify ourselves. We can escape our self- absorption. We can release ourselves from the I-It condition.

Many will recognize that self-betrayal, which is my term for the pivotal act by which we indirectly choose our way of being, captures what was once in more traditional terms meant by the word sin. For those who understand its meaning- and many in our culture do not-sin suggests something about our being, whereas the more superficial description that I have been using, "doing the wrong thing," does not. Because this act of sin or self-betrayal, properly understood, alters how we are, we do not simply act falsely when we betray ourselves or sin; we are false, false in our being.

This may explain in part why few people nowadays speak of sin: it lays responsibility for the kind of people we are becoming squarely upon ourselves and therefore challenges us, without tact or subtlety, to examine ourselves. This idea can be frightening when not adequately understood. Who wants to face up to the fact that they have themselves to thank for their present muddles and messes? Yet this idea is a key for solving the deepest and most difficult problems that we struggle with from day to day. If we care about one another, we must understand and teach it.

So as not to put people off unnecessarily, I have adopted the term self- betrayal to express in an acceptable way something of the meaning of the word sin. But ultimately the truth needs to be told. Everything depends upon what we are becoming, and what we are becoming depends upon how true we are to the deep, gentle, and irrepressible invitation to do right by our fellow beings and before God.

We All Know the Difference
When I read that line in the Overstreets' book-"To the immature, other people are not real"-the words smote me so swiftly and deftly that I felt sure I was being reminded of something I knew already. It had the ring of a truth I had been trying to remember, even at that tender age, a truth I was ashamed to have forgotten.

I have come to believe that every normal person has this knowledge, for the simple reason that our relationships with others cannot be separated from our identity as individuals. Though some of us may not have given any thought to it or been willing to admit it, we all have a sense of the two ways of being and the differences between them.

Sometimes when I teach these ideas I start out by explaining just a bit about the two ways of being and then ask those present to call out the words they might use to describe people who are either more I-It or more I-You. This is a sample list offered by one group:

Most people will enthusiastically acknowledge their own desire to possess the I-You qualities; whether they have thought of themselves as being moral or religious does not seem to matter. Moreover, when I ask individuals to tell me about the most influential person in their lives, they invariably choose someone generous and kind. These are the personal characteristics we most appreciate and prize in others, whether or not we manifest them ourselves.

Sometimes very crusty, old-line businesspeople weep when they realize how difficult they have been to live with. One of these, hardened from a career in the New York financial markets, said at the end of our time together, "I'm going to try softer."

But those are examples of people who changed their minds. There are some who, when they consider the issue intellectually, deny that it's good to be I- You. However, even they infinitely prefer those with I-You qualities, in spite of their unwillingness to admit it. Years ago we had as houseguests a prominent scholar and his youthful second wife. His marriage to her, about a year earlier, had rejuvenated him; even before their stay with us he had described her reverently as warm, sensitive, selfless, caring, spontaneous, genuine, and happy. When we met her, Susan and I felt we had seldom encountered a more open and welcoming individual.

The scholar had just read a paper I had written entitled "Anger and Similar Delusions," in which I asserted that negative emotions such as anger, resentment, envy, and hatred are not necessary-that we can live without them and that by indulging in them we deceive ourselves. He objected vigorously to these ideas. To take away these emotions, he contended, would be to strip us of the most vivid and interesting colors of our personalities. He did not see the contradiction in his position. The bright being sitting next to him was, by his own account, richer in humanity than anyone he had ever known, yet she possessed none of the emotional tendencies he insisted a richly human person must have.

We all know the difference between a person acting sensitively and a person hardened toward others. We all know when a person is open, welcoming, spontaneous, easy, and caring, and conversely when a person is defensive, insecure, conceited, fearful, controlling, manipulative, arrogant, or self- centered. Whether we ourselves are open to others or hardened, we recognize these characteristics. But when we are hardened, we cannot think very clearly about what we know.

Next, we will look at some of the fundamental changes that occur as a person changes from an "I-it" to an "I-you" orientation...

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Bonds that Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6