Are Emotions The Bridge?
I had an epiphany during a conversation I was having with a close friend of mine.
The context of the conversation is a simple one that I believe we all would have been a part of at some stage.
Someone he works with, call him Jo, believes that my friend doesn’t have a comparative level of pressure as Jo does which is causing feelings of resentment in Jo which impacts his productivity, therefore impacting both Jo & my friend in context of the work they do together.
Now, this really had me thinking about,
How is one human being meant to understand another human being when the circumstances that surround them are completely different?
I’ll give more examples because this is a good one to think about.
Example 1: Joey is a police officer & her friend, Sam, has a corporate job. Both of them are talking about how stressful their work is. Emotionally, Sam feels drained and emotionally, Joey feels drained too. The circumstances that cause them to feel drained, however, are COMPLETELY different.
Joey’s circumstances — She has tackled a drug addict, a suicidal teenage girl, a murderer, someone dead/dying all in the span of her shift. This has caused her to feel EMOTIONALLY drained.
Sam’s circumstances — She had a crucial project that was approaching deadline and she wasn’t able to meet it so now has to work twice the amount to ensure the completion of the project. This has caused Sam to feel EMOTIONALLY drained.
Both of them get to talking, telling each other how drained they feel and when they ask each other about why they feel this way, they describe the circumstances.
Joey turns to Sam and says,
“You feel emotionally drained because of a project? I saw someone die today at work just for perspective. That’s a good reason for me to feel drained. How can a corporate job possibly stress you out in comparison?”
We will come back to this after I’ve given a few more examples because these examples surround us in all facets of our lives.
Example 2: Kamal grew up in a war-torn country. He immigrated to Australia with his wife & after a painful divorce, decided to be intentional with his life. A few months after his divorce, he met a few people and became really good friends with them. He’s having a conversation with one of them, Zoya, when she says,
“I had a very tough past. My parents divorced when I was young. I had a good relationship with them growing up, but after college, I just lost myself to party & drugs. It’s been a very hard journey for me to get to where I am.”
Kamal baffled at Zoya’s definition of a tough life retorts,
“That’s a tough life? I grew up with kids dying all around me. I have always been surrounded by death all my life. I escaped to Australia by luck then also lost the love of my life. That’s a hard journey. You call your parents divorcing & you loosing yourself to parties & drugs hard? If that’s not the definition of first world problems, I don’t know what is.”
We will come back to this too.
Example 3: Zac & Cody have co-founded a business together. One wears a technical cap while the other wears an executive cap. They’ve done some amazing projects together and have started making a name for themselves when Zac starts feeling like Cody isn’t doing enough.
Zac (the executive)’s circumstances: Zac is on the ground dealing with multiple stakeholders for their projects along with managing their expectations until the projects are completed which is making his job very stressful.
Cody’s circumstances: Cody has all the technical responsibilities so deals with all the technical aspects in relation to their projects. Of late, they have been receiving a lot of projects so Cody feels the pressure but prefers not to talk about it.
Zac says to Cody, “I think it’s time that we review the way we get paid on the work we’re doing. I believe I’m doing way more than you since I feel way more pressure than you do.”
In all these examples we have two human beings who are dealing with a completely different set of circumstances and yet feeling the same emotion.
In example 1, both of them feel emotionally drained & overwhelmed with work.
In example 2, both of them feel remorse at having a hard past.
In example 3, both of them feel overburdened & stressed.
Now in all these examples and in real life, we have the option of choosing to discontinue the conversation in which case there’s no point in looking further.
However, what if we are keen to understand how to engineer & build a bridge between ourselves & others when the circumstances that surround them are completely different and yet the emotion they feel all too alike?
What’s clear to me here is you can’t possibly hope to build a bridge when you invalidate the other person’s circumstances under the illusion that yours are worthy of more consideration despite the same emotion being felt on both sides.
The easiest thing to do here is to accept to yourself that you can’t step out of your story, let alone become a part of someone else’s, therefore there is no need to build a bridge. In this case, it might be better for the person to build a bridge within first.
The only way I can see is to build a bridge however, that requires becoming a part of the other person’s story through emotions.
Step 1: ACCEPT THAT CIRCUMSTANCES WILL ALWAYS BE THE POINT OF DIFFERENCE
Let’s go into construction of the bridge accepting the condition that the circumstances that surround us are ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT. There is no rationality in trying to argue whether one circumstance is more worthy than the other because it would be like a game of red hands, one will keep slapping the other on the top.
So it seems to me that before we build the bridge, it is imperative for both beings to accept that both their circumstances are equally valid and one not more valid than the other.
Through the lens of the examples discussed,
Police officer’s job is equally stressful to the job of a corporate worker.
Kamal’s past is as traumatizing as Zoya’s.
Zac’s job is as difficult as Cody’s.
If you’re having trouble equating the above examples, maybe I can also unravel this more through science.
All living organisms, including human beings, work within a simple stimulus > reaction structure.
This has been the case since the genesis of life on Earth. Without stimuli, an organism would not be motivated to change or act or to do anything. When you want food, the stimuli is food & the reaction is whatever you do to procure the food. The food is your reward.
In the complexity of today’s world, these basic mechanisms still remain the same. The circumstances are your stimuli whereas the reaction is however you choose to react to them. Imagine a butterfly arguing with a caterpillar, where the butterfly goes,
“What do you know about my stress in life? I have to react to the stimuli in my environment through chemoreceptors scattered through my body. Do you know how tough that is?”
Caterpillar probably does, through his own way of responding to the stimuli relevant to him.
In the numerous examples you can draw from the rich biology of earth, you will continue to see this structure everywhere. The more complex our evolution as human beings, the more complex the environment that we had to start reacting to. We are now easily so complex that each one of us has a different set of circumstances we have to react to.
Step 2: BUILD THE BRIDGE
Once we’ve agreed upon the above, the next logical step is to be curious about building a bridge. You might not have the motivation to do it and that’s fine as well. For the ones who do, it seems to me that a simple start might be through emotions.
Let’s unravel the emotion of stress in the first example:
Emotion: Stress
This is the commonality. Both feel the stress, physiologically & psychologically. Both of them probably have a lot to talk about here. Maybe we start with that.
How do you feel stress in your body? And in your mind?
What causes you stress?
What do you do to mitigate stress?
This starts creating a bridge of commonality. As this bridge starts forming, maybe we feel comfortable driving over that bridge into their world at some stage. This happens I’m guessing naturally when you start becoming curious about the commonality you share with the other human being.
Through emotions, you start going deeper into the causes of their emotions which is somewhere where the circumstances live. Now we established that starting with the circumstances is probably pointless. But when you take a drive inside the landscape of circumstances through emotions, you can maybe understand them better?
What if in example 1, Joey turned around and asked Sam,
“How do you feel when you’re stressed? I feel it somewhere in my heart and some nights, I can’t even sleep. I’m keen to hear how you deal with it.”
What if in example 2, Kamal turned around and asked Zoya,
“How are you moving on from your past? I feel like I’m carrying a heavy bag with me everywhere I go and I can’t seem to shake it off.”
What if in example 3, Zac turned around and asked Cody,
“When do you start feeling overwhelmed? I feel as though my chest contracts when I feel overwhelmed and it usually happens when I haven’t planned for all the projects realistically.”
Maybe, here’s when the bridge goes officially under construction. Before you know it, the bridge starts connecting the two towns of your hearts and you can drive back/forth from each other’s towns as much as you want & need.
Maybe that is the point of differences. To build the bridge over them. The trick is maybe knowing how to build them, I guess?
“Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.” Sterling K Brown
