Opportunity

The H’end of the Road

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

This is actually an interlude from my previous and forthcoming blogs on “the end of” series. There is a similarity to the “end of” to this blog, but it is a different twist.I’m going to have a little fun before I get to the meat of this blog, the essence of which I think is quite important for many people, perhaps all people at some time in their lives. But I want to indulge myself in one of the things that I live best: language. I am by far not nearly the skilled linguist that many people are although it would be a fond wish to be able to speak Russian, French, Swedish, Spanish or German fluently after having studied each of these languages enough to say, “hello” or “where’s the bathroom?” I also studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in school and still am able to parse out a word that might have such origins. You might wonder what the “h’end” of the road might mean, so let me tell you. Deb and I lived in Newfoundland, Canada for four years, a most glorious experience and our only long-term cross-cultural experience, not of the depth of someone living in Zambia, grant you, but Newfoundland was a good place for us to be and we yet treasure this very unique province and retain good friends there. Due to its Irish heritage, much of which shows in its music and subculture, there was a tendency of many Newfoundlanders to add and subtract the letter “H” to words seemingly at random, but of course for Newfoundlanders it was not random. For instance, the letter “H” was often added to words that began with a vowel and just as often deleted from words that began with an H. We heard a person speaking about her “h’anger”, not “anger.” Likewise, I heard a woman talk about her child who was very “’yper,” not “hyper.” I came quite certain that there is rhyme and reason to the shifting of the letter H, but I never got the hang of it. However, I remember one very distinct instance when we were visiting an “outport” Newfoundland town and asked a lady where a particular bed and breakfast might be located. Without missing a beat, she said, “Sure, I know where it is. It is at the ‘h’end of the road just past the h’apple stand. I ‘ope that I was ‘elpful.” A young person in our car repeated her exact words with the emphasis on “the h’end of the road.”

Enough of my linguistic jostling. Now I want to talk about the real issue: when people come to the “end of the road,” whimsically called “the h’end of the road.”

The End of the Road

My thoughts about the end of the road (or the h’end of the road) began just a couple days ago in a conversation with a patient who said that he seemingly had come to “the end of the road.” We talked about this vision that he had, and then examined this phenomenon, namely with the contexts of the future, the present and the past. I have since shared this picture with several other people in my office who I thought might profit from this picture, which we might call a metaphor or even a vision of what lies ahead for them in life. Over the recent three days I have found myself using this end of the road picture quite relevant to several of the people (all men, of course) I have seen. Importantly, almost all of these people have all been in their 60’s including:

  • A man, 67, whose wife left him for another man and now that that man has left the “new man,” he wants to come back home
  • A man, 63, whose wife has also left him, but not for another man, but rather because she admits that she never should have married him, and has been relationally unhappy for 30-odd years
  • A man, 65, who is single and never married, who is looking at the rest of his life, which includes who he might be with, what he might do for a profession, and where he might live
  • A man, 62, who has had a good and sustainable relationship for several years with a woman who has been a very good friend and conversationalist, but now it seems that their differences might suggest that the relationship might not be sustainable any longer. He is also looking heartily about his profession and the place where he might live.
  • A man, closer to 50, who has just lost his very successful job, has lived unhappily for many years in a marriage, and all things seem up in the air for him.
  • A man, 58, who has been typically and frequently angry all his life and is only now looking at his deeper feelings and how to communicate them
  • A man, not even close to 50’s or 60’s, who is looking at a life that includes possible drastic changes in his vocation, his family relationships, religious orientation, and even a more significant element of his very nature
  • A man in his late 50’s with a good marriage, good professional life, good house, and generally a good life who has fallen into a significant depression because, despite the fact that he has been a good person all his life, he hasn’t attended to his feelings.

All of these men seem to be facing what I come to a place in their lives where things in the future seem to be quite uncertain and vague, but more importantly, an opportunity for a good life, if perhaps quite different from what their lives have been over the past decades. The surface questions include:

  • Should I be married or otherwise with this person in my life?
  • Should I continue in my current profession, find another one, or should I not be working at all in any kind of formal job?
  • What kind of financial security do I need for this new life that I might have?
  • What might I lose if I move into this new life?
  • Is there any urgency for me to make a decision?
  • What are the external factors that I might face in this new life?

These are the objective and practical questions that they are asking, but I believe that there are also subtly asking subjective questions, like:

  • Can I hang on to the security what I have had up to this point, like the security of house, family, marriage, profession, or gender identity?
  • What dangers are there in this “new life” and am I prepared to face these dangers?
  • What abilities and experiences can I take along with me that might be useful?
  • What relationships, property, feelings, and beliefs do I need to leave behind?
  • Can I have the best of both worlds, meaning the past and the future?

Wanting it both ways

The answer to the last question, “Can I have the best of the past and the future?” the answer is “yes.” Yes, you can have the best of the past, but you can’t have the experiences of the past, the relationships as they were in the past, the property of the past, the money of the past, and the job/profession of the past. You can have the best of the past but not the things of the past. What is the best of the past? It is what you have loved, what you have lost, and what you have learned. You can’t have the kind of relationship you had before. You can’t have the property you had in the past. You can’t have the ideas you had in the past. You can’t have the family you had in the past. In other words, you can’t have it the way it was…but you can take the best of the past into the future. The best of the past is what you loved, how you loved, and the memories you have of such things. You might stay in a marriage, a relationship, a job, a profession, a house, or a city, but your new life will not be the same. You will have a new perspective of life and life around you built on what you have done, said, felt, and thought. This is the best of the past, but it is not the past carried into the future. You don’t forget about the past, nor do you allow yourself to simply live in nostalgia of the past. Rather, you will be looking at the present and the future with the knowledge, skills, experiences, successes, failures, and mistakes that you made in the past.

The people whom I made reference to above said to me something like:

  • I don’t want to lose what I have with my wife, so I am afraid of challenging the situation that I find myself. This is scary.
  • I can’t see clearly where I should live so I will just stay here because it is safe. Anywhere else is scary.
  • I love my partner for sure but maybe if I wait for a bit longer, she will change or I will change so we don’t argue all the time. Anything else is scary.
  • I don’t think I can make it without the money I was making in my previous job. I’m scared of living in some kind of poverty
  • I want to keep on telling my wife that I love her hoping that this “will get through to her.” I’m afraid that if I don’t, she will never come home.

Note the operative word? Scared. They are scared of doing anything, saying anything, or even daring to feel anything because they don’t want to lose what they have had. I think in all of these cases that they have already lost what they want, most likely will never get it back, and they are putting their heads in the sand hoping for some miracle. They are all at the “h’end” of the road, the road of their lives up to this point. And they can’t have it both ways: they can’t have what they have had and what they might have if they really move forward. But how to they do this? how do they “move forward” into their new lives?

Moving into the new life

I think of all of these people, people of any age, who have come to the end of the road in some way (or a combination of ways), need to face the fact that the new life needs to be substantially different spiritually than in their previous lives. I could also use the term “emotionally” because emotion is a significant part of moving into anything new, but this new life certainly has an important emotional ingredient: No fear. I also call this the “second half of life,” however old the person is, because this “second half of life” is substantially different from the first “half.”

  1. You can’t enter a new life with any kind of fear, none whatsoever. Sound impossible? It is. I state this “no fear” element because fear cannot be the dominant factor in their lives. Recall the fears noted in all of these people:
    1. Fear of losing wife
    2. Fear of being discovered
    3. Fear on not enough money
    4. Fear of what people think of me
    5. Fear of failure
    6. Fear of criticism

All of this has to go, or at the very least, be at a minimum level

  1. You can’t take “the best” of the past. This is the love you have, the successes you have had, the mistakes you made, the things that happened to you. In a nutshell, you take into the future what you have learned in the past.
  2. You will most certainly have some of what you had in the first part of your life, like relationship, property, friends, and the like. But you will not be hanging on to these things, which has kept you impotent in life.
  3. You will love more, love better, lose better, and love again. It may be the same person, place, or property, but it will not be loving with a closed hand because you now know that you will most certainly lose everything that you love at some time, which means people, place, property, and ideas.
  4. You will make a difference in the world. That will be a place where you are no longer interested in acquisition or approval, but rather the opportunity to be of service.
  5. But first you will have to “collect” the past so you can use the best of the past.

Collecting the past

  1. I am not a particular fan of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) while I acknowledge that AA has helped countless millions of people. I do like what they call the 4th step: making a moral inventory of oneself. I would not so much limit this important “step” to morality but to life in general, specifically, at successes and failures
    1. Examine your life and see all the love you have had, all the successes you have had, all the losses you have had, all the good people in your life, and most importantly, how you have been of value to the world
    2. Examine your life and see the regrets you have had. The things you should have done but didn’t; the things you should have done but did; the things you said that you shouldn’t have said but did; the things you didn’t say that you should have said but didn’t.
    3. Draw from these good, and not-so-good experiences what you have learned
    4. Keep these things in your mind, not so much to remember what was said or done, but what you learned from all of it
  2. Store these things in your heart. You may tell someone, or you may not, but have no fear of telling or not telling. It is not approval or disapproval that is important, but rather having the knowledge and wisdom you have had.
  3. Now you are ready to look forward but be careful to avoid falling into “wanting it both ways,” like dragging all the money, property, and people into the future. Whatever you retain for the future will be in a new light because now you can love knowing that whatever you love, you will lose.

Now, are you ready to use the end of the road as a good starting place?

Passion, Purpose, and Product

Ron Johnson appreciation, Feelings, mindfulness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

A good life is a life that produces something. I have to very careful here because “producing” doesn’t necessarily mean some kind of physical product, like the infamous “widget.” A product may be an idea, perhaps an idea that changes the world, or at least part of the world, for good. The product might be interpersonal, where someone is meaningfully helped in life. The product might be some kind of physical movement, like dance, drama, or chiropractic where the movement is good for people. And, of course, the product might be some kind of widget. A life without a product is not worth living. Sadly, many people do not have a product in their lives despite their having worked very hard at something or as the result that they haven’t worked very hard at something. Let’s start with passion.

Passion

Let me explain these three words before I say more about the product. First, the passion. Passion is one of those words that is undefinable, like I have written about before, most importantly the words feeling, love, wisdom, meaning, and many other psychological/philosophical terms. Recall the known universe is composed of (at least) three undefined terms: time, distance, and mass. We all know what time and distance are, and we might say that mass is something like physical stuff (sorry physicists; I’m doing my best here). We know what these elements are but they are not defined. Velocity is defined as distance over time, but distance and time are not defined. Likewise, feelings, as we use the term is that which emanates from our inner self or soul, but there I have used another undefined term. All of this talk is about the centrality of many concepts and words that represent those concepts that are real but undefined. Passion is undefined although we know what it is and we know what it does, just like we understand feelings, time, and love.

Passion is some kind of mixture of feelings that themselves are comprised of the four elements of feelings: physical sensation, emotion, cognition, and activity. One has passion when he or she “feels” a desire for something good. God for the person and good for others. Thus, passion leads to something good…or ideally should lead to something good. We may have passion for a football team, a country, physical work, play, or any number of ideas, things, or activities. We can even have passion for something that is not real, like a TV character who somehow inspires us to this undefined element of passion. If we don’t have passion, we can never have a product. Many people fail to find a passion in life. I am dealing with such a person in my current practice.

Jake has no interest in anything. He likes to play video games and is often on his cell phone playing or rambling through the Internet, but he has no interest in doing anything good. I’m sure, somewhere down inside of him, he has a real core self that is pure and godly, but beyond this esoteric understanding of Jake, I see no interest in anything that has any lasting value. He is like many young men: he likes sex and he likes money, but even these likes are quite fleeting because he has neither at the present time because he doesn’t know how to nurture his passion. Jake came to me because he was “depressed” but that word, that diagnosis, does him no good because it is just a statement of his lacking passion. On the other hand, I know many men who have very specific passions in life including boating, fishing, hunting, dancing, playing golf, interpersonal connectedness, raising children, working hard at a secretarial job, gardening, and writing. My own primary passion these years if for writing although I am equally passionate about therapy and a few other secondary passions like basketball and minor carpentry. Passion is great, but passion is not enough. You have to have purpose.

Purpose

While passion is undefined and something you can only understand by observation and by feeling, purpose is quite specific. Simply put, purpose is the drive that put passion to work so that there can be a product. Purpose is movement, whether by mind or body, that pushes one’s passion into something real and meaningful. I have to be careful about using the term “real” here because real could be quite esoteric, like an idea that could change the world, or it could be real like painting a house. I know, for instance a professional painter who is passionate about his work and can’t wait until he can return to “the wall,” as he calls it. The purpose of John’s passion is to pain well and finish well. Likewise the purpose I have in this present blog is to be of some service, but as I write these words, I have not completed a product, which will hopefully be a document of some use to someone.

Sam is a really smart guy. He is also an analyst by nature (you’ll have to read the analyst blog), which means that he loves problems to solve. The other day I was with him in a situation that had a kind of conundrum, which perplexed him but also intrigued him. The dilemma we had at the moment had no significant value in the world at large, but it consumed Sam for the moments that we were uncertain as to what we should do in the situation we were in. At first, I thought I could recommend a course of action, namely how I saw the dilemma, but he would have none of it because he was so taken by the problem that he could have spent hours just contemplating what he (or we) should do. I gave Sam as much time as I could genuinely give him and then said that I thought it was best that he take his course of action. He was slightly upset with me because I evidently didn’t want to muse about what he (we) might do. Many people are like Sam, musing, thinking, feeling, dreaming, wondering, or analyzing. Behind their musing and such is a deep passion for something. In Sam’s case, his passion is to solve problems. But to my mind he has never solved any significant problem in his life and has spent hours and years musing. Some people get lost in the things they own but they are not really passionate about things, while other people are passionate about relationships while not having any, and still others are passionate about ideas but never find one that leads to a product.

I also know of many people who have passion and purpose and go farther with it. Fist, however, before they actually do anything, they achieve some sort of skill at the doing this passion. I have a friend my age who is passionate about several things, one of which is water skiing. A couple years ago he water skied some 100-plus times over the summer. Furthermore, he is passionate about helping people learn to water ski and even more passionate about have weekly get-togethers where everybody talks, plays, eats, and water skies. I know of a man who is passionate about matters theological, another matters psychological, and another matters that have to do with construction. In all of these man there is some product, whether intellectual, relational, or physically productive. While many men get stuck in the first stage because they don’t have passion to do anything, many more get stuck in the second stage because they are willing to step forth and produce something.

Product

As central as passion is as a reflection of one’s soul, and as fun as it is to muse and consider this passion and what might be done with it, life is ultimately not meaningful if one does not have a product. As noted, the product be of almost any form, but it has to be something more than passion, which is beautiful, and purpose, which is fun. That having been said, it takes a number of things to move from passion and purpose to product. In a nutshell, it takes trial and error, or more accurately, many trials and many errors. Even more importantly, it takes the difficult experience of being misunderstood, misjudged, corrected, or challenged. You see why so few people get beyond passion and purpose: no one likes to make mistakes and no one likes to be criticized. Let me put some meat on the bones of this passion leads to purpose leads to product.

  • Mahatma Gandhi was a failure for most of his life. He failed in South Africa where his work began. He failed in India for decades. He failed in keeping India united instead of splitting into Pakistan and India. But his passion led to purpose, which in turn led to product: the freeing of 600 million Indians from British rule.
  • Martin Luther King was largely a failure. We remember his “dream” speech, which was wonderful, of course, and the peace marches he led. But he did not succeed during his lifetime, and his legacy continues strong where his product is still unfolding.
  • Sojourner Truth, a very significant Black woman in the 19th century who said, “Ain’t I a woman?” when questioned about her beliefs. Read about her. She had passion, purpose, and did something.

But the people who actually do something, actually have a product in their lives don’t have to be these well-known people. Most are not well-known, nor do they want to be. They just want to do something important, something good in life, maybe like:

  • Helping a challenged child learn to walk or talk
  • Be a recovering alcoholic and help others to recover
  • Write a song that is good for one person, one family, or one country

May you find your passion in life, purpose to do something, and then do something. People will love you. People will hate you. But it’s not about people loving or hating you. It is about the passion that God has given you that needs to be given to the world in the form of product.

The I-You-We Approach to Relatiionships

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Opportunity, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness

The I-You-We Approach to Relationships

There are three main ingredients in any relationship, namely “I” (myself), “You” (the other person), and “We” (the combination of “I” and “You”). People tend to focus on one of these three elements, somewhat on a second item, and much less on the third item. This discussion is intended to shed some light on some of the ways people engage in looking at a relationship. Depending on how a person starts this process of examining and establishing a relationship determines how s/he approaches this very basic element of human existence: relationship. Before we examine the differences between the “I”-first approach, the “You”-first approach, and the “We first approach, we need to discuss this murky word “relationship” because there is no consistent understanding of what this word means, much less how a relationship unfolds, improves, or deteriorates.

I should start by acknowledging that I am an “I”-first person because readers need to be aware of how I see relationships, but we will discuss this in a moment. I mention the fact that I am an “I”-first person because all writing has an important autobiographical element to it, however esoteric or scientific the writer might be. I mention this personal orientation to understanding what a relationship is because I actually recall a time when the word “relationship” became popular, namely in the 1960’s, largely in the later 60’s, about the time I was in graduate school studying psychology. I vividly remember hearing my wife (at the time) and the marital therapist we were seeing at the time used the term “relationship” as if it was clear what that word meant. I recall saying, “What is this thing you are calling a relationship?” to the therapist.” I also recall his disbelief that the word had very little meaning to me because it was so clear to him. He was, by the way a “We”-first person, and recall that I am an “I”-first person. .Since this word “relationship” has been so frequently used over the recent 50 years, it might come as a surprise to many people that this word, as well as the concept underneath the word, did not exist in the field of psychology and in popular literature until the late 60’s.

A bit of history

A review of the literature over the past 60 years or so will discover that the use of the word relationship accelerated in the 70’s and beyond to the point that it is now a central concept in clinical psychology and in most people’s day-to-day vocabulary. I mention this entomology of “relationship” because I am somewhat suspect of how frequently the world is used today, often without much understanding of the very nature of how people seek to relate to one another. Furthermore, many elements of our current culture are replete with references to “relationship” as if this word, and the concept under the word, had an exact and universal definition. The church I attend has as its motto: “…to build a relationship to God.” Now, I ask you, what does “building a relationship with God” mean to you, to me, and to everyone else? Something quite different, I suspect. I don’t want to disregard the essence of a relationship because I agree that the concept is dreadfully important. My interest in this discussion is to examine some ways that people see the essence of a relationship and how the differences in how people understand the concept of a relationship can create a myriad of successes and an equal amount of failures as they seek to “relate” to one another.

What are the possibilities?

So let me set the stage for this “I-You-We” discussion. As briefly noted above, people tend to have a predominance of one of these items in how the form a relationship. If you had a bit of advanced math, you know that there are six permutations, which is to say there are six possible arrangements of the three items. (Just for fun for folks who like such things, we arrive at this with the formula P = 3x2x1 = 6.). So these possibilities include three each that begin with one of the three items:

  • I-You-We and I-We-You
  • You-I-We and You-We-I
  • We-You-I and We-I-You

Think of these possibilities as a way people engage someone else. I-first people begin a relationship with the perspective of who they are, and perhaps what they feel, think or do. You-first people begin a relationship with the perspective of examining who the other person is. We-first people look at who the two people are together. Right off the bat, I suspect, I have lost some of you possibly because two of these possibilities makes no sense. For instance, We-first people might think something like, “A relationship is two people together, not so much one person and another person. Obviously a relationship is what happens between two (or more) people.” I-first and You-first people might vociferously differ from this perspective. I-first people might say, “Well, you have to have an I before you have a We, right?” You-first people could say, “If you’re going to have a relationship with someone, you have to know who that person is, what s/he thinks, feels, and does. Only then can you relate to that person.” Sound familiar? Do you find yourself saying one of these things? The reaction you have might suggest to which camp you might belong.

I will take the liberty of looking at three (of the six) possibilities (“permutations”) to focus on who people begin the process of relating:

  • I-first people would seem to have the more rational approach to a relationship. They simply think that “relating” to someone begins with one feels, thinks, or does. Then, they go into the You and We parts of a relationship depending on their next preference. I think that most I-first people think of the You part next, but that suggestion may simply be a projection of how I go about relating to someone. I tend to speak first, listen second, and then occasionally try to find some commonality between the other person and me. The I-first people I have known tend to favor the I-You-We formula of relating.
  • You-first people operate quite differently, and the key to their way of relating is in the format they use to relate. They ask questions. Their perspective is, “If I can understand the other person, I can then have an opportunity of relating to that person.” They then try to fit in, agree with, or sometimes carefully challenge the other person. But the heart of their relating is in the focus they have, namely how the other person thinks, feels, or acts. The You-first people, tend to be You-I-We in orientation to relationships.
  • We-first people are different yet in their seeking a relationship. They do not actually spend much time assessing of what they think, feel, or do, nor do they think much about what the other person thinks, feels, or does. Rather, they think that everyone approaches the matter of relationship as they do because they are so oriented to the We part of a relationship. So, they may talk (like I-first people) or ask questions (like You-first people). More often, however, they will just “feel” their way into a relationship or a conversation. So they will say, “It feels right” or “It feels wrong.” This “feeling” of right or wrong is tantamount to feeling “connected” or disconnected, words that we will discuss in a moment. The We-first people I have known tend to have the We-You-I orientation predominantly.

The strengths of these three orientations

  • We-first people seem to have the inside track of the whole business of relationship. They certainly use the term “relationship” more frequently and are on the lookout for how they “feel” with someone almost all the time. I think of these folks as having the “lover” temperament that I have written about. Lovers are those who look for “connections” with other people. I am reminded of an old friend who once said that every morning he would think about how he could “connect” with someone, and then go about his day looking for these connections. Another We-first person has fallen in love with my suggestion that his orientation is about connecting to someone, and it has given him the freedom to see that he is seeking reciprocal love with any and all people he knows, most specifically his wife (who happens to be an I-first person).
  • I-first people, like myself (and my wife) are much more inclined to make statements and declare ourselves (what we think, feel, and do) as a way of establishing a relationship. The underlying operation is something like, “I will give person A the opportunity of knowing me so s/he can decide whether I am a person who they might want to relate to.” The basic strength of us folks is that we know where we stand, what we believe in, what we have done, and the like. We assume (often mistakenly) that everyone else knows where they stand on things.
  • You-first people are yet different from I-first and You-first people mostly distinguished by their tendencies to ask questions of people, quite contrary to the I-first people who make statements of themselves. The gift these people have is a more genuine interest in other people than in themselves or even in a relationship that might ensue. We might suggest that they love people best, whereas I-first people love themselves best, and We-first people love the connection between people best.

The opportunities of these three orientations

  • We-first people are the best at knowing this vague thing we call a relationship because they understand the spiritual nature of a connection between two (or more) people. They “feel” something or the lack of it, and that “something” cannot be defined, just as a relationship cannot be defined. These folks are the best at cooperation, agreement, and common purpose. They make the best negotiators, for instance, because they give each party opportunity to speak while focusing on how the two (or more) people can find common ground and eventually common purpose and procedure.
  • I-first people are best as stating themselves. They simply state what they know or believe, or have done, and less so what they feel emotionally. You can trust these people most because they have the most established ways of saying what they believe, feel, or have done. They give the other person the opportunity of knowing who they are with the expectation that the other person will then return the favor. I-first people tend to be better at admitting to error than the other two types.
  • You-first people are best at understanding other people. As noted, they ask questions, and often questions upon questions with the primary intent of understanding the other person, and often know more about the other person, perhaps even more than the other person knows about his/herself. You-first people can put other people at ease and give them room to talk about themselves, something that is quite lacking in most social encounters when most people are looking for air time to talk about themselves.

The challenges of these three orientations

  • All three of these orientations have the intrinsic weakness of thinking that everyone else is just like them, but We-first people are perhaps most inclined to this weakness. When I hear from We-first people (or “lovers”), they always say that the difficulty they have with people is that it isn’t “fair,” which means that they haven’t received the care for the We part of the relationship. So, they think that I-first people are selfish and You-first people don’t say anything about themselves. We-first people often get lost in their relationships and lack a sense of You and I in favor of their constant looking for We. Then, they tend to get angry or critical, which is quite opposite to their true nature of loving and connecting.
  • I-first people are the most inclined of the three orientations to be self-centered. Because they so often know what they think, feel, and do, they tend to dominate relationships by talking about themselves, erroneously believing other people will do the same. With few exceptions I-first people do not grasp the “connection” nature that is so central to We-first people.
  • You-first people often lack a sense of self. This is because they are so focused on other people that they have not found time, interest, and ability to develop a sense of what they think, feel, and do. This “getting lost” in someone else is easy for them because they are so intrinsically interested (and loving of) other people, that they have not sufficiently established a true understanding and love of themselves, which sometimes feels to them as “selfish.”

The challenges and opportunities for all orientations

  • In all cases, and with all people, there is a necessity of growing beyond one’s basic nature. Importantly, however, one needs to know, value, and operate with one’s basic nature before s/he can grow beyond this nature. Carl Jung and many other classic psychologists and psychological theorists have suggested that this growing, or what we might call maturity, occurs later in life, rarely before age 50, and sometimes never at all. If one does not mature beyond his/her nature, that person will fall prey to becoming postured in one’s basic nature feeling the centrality of this nature. This amounts to being defensive, and it is a sticky thing to feel and observe because there is nothing wrong with one’s basic nature, but one’s basic nature is quite clearly not sufficient to pursue life successfully.
  • A second danger for all three orientations is that the secondary and tertiary elements in a relationship tend to be undeveloped, and hence immature. This means that I-first people end up being critical of other people (the You part) and dismiss the We part altogether. We-first people think only of connecting, but then their undeveloped I often comes up immaturely and ends up demanding or yelling. You-first people tend to fail in knowing and valuing themselves as much as they value others, and fall into a kind of hopelessness of knowing about others but not themselves.
  • However good it is for We-first people to love and connect, it is not good enough. They have to develop the I and the You to be mature and find success in life and in relationships. The so-called “co-dependent” relationships (not a term a really like, however), are often made up on one We-first person and an I-first person, or even more dangerous, both people being We-first people who don’t know who they are.
  • I-first people have to come to grips with the necessity of the connection that We-first people know and love and find ways to find this spiritual connection and value it. They also need to find the absolute necessity of knowing other people as well as they know themselves. Otherwise, they will end up postured in “knowing what I think, feel, and do” and not knowing much else.
  • You-first people most specifically need to find the I part of life. Because they are so intrinsically interested in other people, and because there are always other people to examine, understand, and even love, they often fail to have a sense of who they are. They can speak fluently about what someone else thinks, feels, or does, but have greater difficulty saying what they think, feel, or do.
  • In all three cases there is a seduction of one of these three natures:
    • I-first people are seduced by their own existence
    • You-first people are seduced by others’ existence
    • We-first people are seduced by the connections that they have…or don’t have

I suggest you find yourself in one of these three orientations and then examine other the people in your life, like friends and family members. Then just get some good psychotherapy, which ideally helps you see what is good about you first, and then how to add to that goodness.