Connected And Becoming
An exploration of the many layers that make up human experience, and how the world we inhabit influences the way we see ourselves and one another. Through our encounters, relationships & observations
We often think of ourselves as people with a fairly clear picture of who we are, what we stand for and how we relate to the world. Yet, when we look more closely, we begin to see how many different versions of ourselves come into being through the contexts we participate and engage with. We move through different places, relationships, circumstances and stages of life, and as we do, every interaction draws out many different responses of behaviours and inner access within us. These contexts, in turn, exist within the larger context of time, which continually evolves the meaning of our experiences. A relationship, for instance, may carry an entirely different meaning at fifteen, forty-five or seventy-five. The expectations, privileges, responsibilities, intimacy and understanding that shape a relationship evolve as people grow older, gather experiences and move through different stages of life. This is true of romantic relationships, just as it is of friendships, family relationships, professional associations and social connections. The nature of the relating may vary, but the way people experience, understand and participate in it continues to be shaped by the people involved, the circumstances they find themselves in and the stage of life they are participating in together.
Even when the nature of the relationship remains the same, what it means to the people involved could change considerably. The same becomes apparent when we consider two different relationships. Imagine someone entering a romantic relationship with one person and, five months later, finding themselves in a relationship with someone else. Although both relationships have the same definition of relation and context, the experience of each will be created by the individuals involved, their histories, expectations, ways of relating and the circumstances in which they meet. What then shows up between two people is always influenced by who they are at that particular point in their lives, and who they are becoming individually or together. Their relationship develops its own understanding, its own privileges, its own boundaries and its own ways of being together. As people involved in a context change, the relationship changes with them and so does the contract between them. Equally, as the relationship changes, the context in which they experience themselves also changes. The same individuals may find themselves relating differently to one another as circumstances evolve, while a change in the people involved could give rise to an entirely different relational experience, even when the relationship carries the same name. And all of this continues to unfold within time, which brings its own experiences, memories, expectations and possibilities. Time, therefore, is perhaps the greatest context of all. Every experience, every relationship, every understanding and every interpretation of life takes place within the framework of time. The meaning we attach to something is shaped by when we encounter it, the experiences we have gathered until that point and the stage of life we happen to be living through. Any understanding of human experience, therefore, has to take time into consideration. This reminds me of something many of us who grew up in the 1990s might remember. There was a television series called Mahabharat, in which the narrator, speaking as the personification of time, would introduce himself as, “Main Samay Hoon”. There was something so profound about that voice and declaration, I still hear it. Everything comes into being, takes shape, changes and eventually passes within time. Looking at life through the lens of context allows us to appreciate how our experiences shape the way we see ourselves and the people around us. Every relationship, every encounter and every stage of life adds to our understanding of ourselves and the world. We grow through these experiences, sometimes discovering things about ourselves that we had never noticed before. Our relationships change, our priorities evolve and the meaning we attach to things takes on new dimensions as we move through life.
And then there is more to us
We constantly develop ideas within particular fields of knowledge and then carry them into other areas of life. Sometimes they fit naturally, sometimes they need to be adapted, and sometimes they open up ways of looking at things that we had never considered before. This kind of cross-pollination happens everywhere. Education, media, culture and social structures all influence one another, often in ways we may not immediately recognise. Yet, we tend to organise much of our understanding into separate compartments, giving each experience its own definition, meaning and set of expectations. Why, for instance, do we tend to hold on to a singular understanding of birth, marriage, death, friendship, work, economics or even right and wrong? Surely, our experiences of these things are far more varied than the definitions we give them. Perhaps we are experiencing what I would call a crisis of metaphor, a shortage of ways in which we imagine, describe and make sense of the world. We need a richer collection of perspectives, a wider range of ways of seeing and understanding things. When we keep returning to the same interpretations, we gradually narrow the choices available to us. We begin to see life through familiar categories, respond through rehearsed patterns and approach situations as though there was only one way to understand or engage with them. In a way, this resembles monoculture in agriculture, where cultivating the same crop across large areas leaves the land with limited biological diversity and greater vulnerability. Human thinking, too, needs diversity. Evolution itself has always drawn upon variation, allowing different possibilities to emerge, interact and develop. Yet, so much of the language and culture we inherit encourages singular definitions, fixed categories and straightforward explanations of cause and effect. We are often taught to think in terms of A plus B equals C. And, of course, there are situations where this makes perfect sense. But do we always know enough about A and B? Do they remain the same across every situation, or do they contain their own variations, histories and possibilities? Perhaps A itself exists across a whole range of experiences, just as B does. And when these two come together, the outcome may depend on much more than the simple equation suggests. Consider the relationship between you and another person. Can it really be understood through a simple definition of you and me. There is so much more to your you-ness and my me-ness than either of us can bring into a single encounter. Neither can be fully witnessed, understood or experienced within the limited frame of a particular moment, context, transaction or even a relationship. We each carry so many layers of experience, memory, desire, contradiction, expectation and possibility. And every time two people meet, only some of these come into contact. There are fifty shades of grey, or at least that is the metaphor we have come to use. Perhaps there are many more. Even gender, something we have historically tried to place into clearly defined categories, is understood today as existing across a spectrum. Now imagine the complexity of two human beings meeting, with everything they carry within themselves, everything they have lived through and everything they are yet to discover. How could a single definition, a moment in time or the terms of a relationship possibly contain all of that? There is so much more to you, so much more to me, and so much more to what happens between us. Each brings a lifetime of experiences, memories, expectations, relationships and ways of seeing the world. What takes place between them emerges from the meeting of all these things. And that is where the richness of human experience lies.
In nature nothing exists alone.
- Rachel Carson
But the world has its own way of carrying ideas forward. They pass from one generation to another through family, education, customs, rituals, language and the everyday things people do. A child grows up watching, listening and absorbing what the people around them say and do. What begins as one person’s way of seeing the world subtly finds its way into the lives of others. These ideas begin to shape what we consider normal, what we accept, what we question and even what we evaluate as right or wrong. And because we have heard them so often, seen them practised and grown up around them, we rarely stop to question whether they still make sense or have they outlived its utility.
The moment we give something a meaning, we give it a name, a colour, a religion, a culture or a country. We draw lines around it, decide where it belongs and who belongs with it. What if things simply existed, without having to belong somewhere? Wouldn’t that leave room for everyone?
Think about what happens when two people come together. You and I, for instance, bring far more into a relationship than the sum of our individual experiences. There are moments when we understand each other beautifully, moments when we struggle to find the right words, and moments when neither of us recognises what is happening between us. We can be many things to one another, sometimes more than we imagined, sometimes less than we hoped, and sometimes something neither of us has words for. Yet, even all of this does not amount to the entirety of who we are. What we see of a person in a particular situation is only what becomes visible in that moment. The same person may speak, behave and respond in ways that seem entirely at odds with what we have come to know about them. I have heard two people speak about an experience they have shared, and it is fascinating to see how differently each remembers and experiences the very same event. Who, then, is telling the truth, what do we call the truth when two people remember and experience the same event so differently, Is there one shared reality, or do we each live through our own subjective experience of it? This is where the limitations of logic begin to show. Cognitive approaches and mathematics may help us put the events in order, but it cannot always account for experience.
All life is interconnected
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Christmas Eve sermon, 1967.
The same thing with knowledge. We study biology, history, culture and agriculture as separate subjects, even though they are multiple descriptions of the world we live in. Biology has a relationship with history, history with communication, anthropology with architecture, and architecture with agriculture. Think of the knowledge that older generations carried in their everyday lives, their understanding of the land, the seasons, the food they grew and the communities they lived in. So much of what we now study as separate subjects, or what we call as specialisation, was once part of an interconnected way of understanding life; are we at risk of losing sight of these connections? We become so occupied with understanding one particular field that we forget to look at what it shares with another. And when ideas are kept within their own boundaries, our understanding becomes restricted by those very boundaries.
The ideas explored in this article taken from a book I am currently writing on human behaviour, the ways in which our search for safety shapes our identities, how we experience changing contexts, and how the definitions we create come to influence the way we live and relate to one another.