relationships

Good for Me; Bad for Me: II (corrected)

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the second of three blogs regarding the concept of something that is, quite simply, “good for me” or “bad for me.” In the first blog on the subject I noted that these terms, while valuable and important, cannot be fully defined. That having been said, you can recognize when something has either been good for you or bad for you. We also discussed the quantification of something that is good or bad for you. In this blog we will discuss primarily (1) things that are bad for you, (2) the quantification of something that is bad for you, (3) how to recognize when something is bad for you, and (5) what you might do about something that is bad for you.

Things that might be “bad for you”

When I use the term “things,” you might think primarily of property or of something that might come into your sphere of life that doesn’t feel right. But there are many things that can be bad for you including:

  • Specific people, groups of people, or an individual person
  • Geographical location
  • Many kinds of food
  • Physical property
  • Weather
  • Smells
  • Sights
  • Physical touch
  • Noise, including people talking
  • Silence, including people not talking
  • Information, whether from individuals or from media
  • Dreams, whether nighttime or daytime
  • Your own thoughts
  • …and many more

It is not necessary that I elaborate on each of these items, but allow me to comment briefly on some of the ones that I deem less important as a precursor to our later discussion of how these things affect our personal and interpersonal lives. You might find it profitable to list, whether in your mind or on paper, things that you think of, that might be bad for you. For instance, some people are very sensitive to one of the five physical senses and have some kind of immediate reaction to, say, something that might be malodorous to them, while other people are more adversely affected by what they read or see on TV. I want to focus on the times when people are bad for you and situations that are bad for you noting that “things that are bad for you” might be people, places, or certain times of you day or life.

Quantification of “bad for you”

In a review of the previous blog on Good for Me; Bad for Me, I proposed that there is a spectrum of such things, namely

Bad for me                   /                     Good for me

(Very bad for me)   (Moderately bad for me)         (Moderately bad for me)     (Very bad for me)

____________________________________  /  ______________________________________

In this blog we will discuss the “bad for me” side of this spectrum. In the next blog we will discuss the “good for me” side of the spectrum. First, a reminder of the words I have chosen to subcategorize the “bad for me” side of the spectrum. In ascending order of “bad for me,” meaning increasingly bad for me with groups that are very bad for me and only moderately bad for me:

Lethal   Toxic   Dangerous                                          Aversive   Unpleasant   Uninteresting

(All in the very bad for me group)                              (All in the moderately bad for me)

____________________________________________________________________________ /

It is important for you to find an approximate place on this spectrum of how bad something might be in your life. This is sometimes a challenge because something might be very bad for you at one time and not so bad at another time. Or, something might be moderately bad for you at one time and then moderately good for you at another. We will delay this discussion for now as I ask you to consider something in the possible list I noted above that is, roughly, “bad for you” in some way. Maybe eating broccoli is in the moderately bad for you category, as it is for my grandson, or potentially toxic as it is for my wife. It might be valuable for you to consider how an individual person might be bad for you in some way, or perhaps an activity of some sort. If you have some trouble in this endeavor, I might be able to render some help in identifying when something is bad for you and to what degree it might be bad for you.

Recognizing when something is bad for you

We have presented a paradigm of recognition of feelings in I Need to Tell You How I Feel. In this book we propose that “feeling,” however central in life is not a definable element of psychology. Rather, we understand feelings by the process that “feeling something” takes and by the effects of feelings. So, feeling that something is bad for you (or good for you) can be understood and valued but that feeling cannot be adequately defined. Instead of defining feelings in general of the feeling that something is bad for you in particular, you do best to understand the feeling process, which flows a distinct pattern: physical, emotional, cognitive, and active. In other words, when I feel something, I first have a physical feeling, then an emotional feeling, thirdly a cognitive feeling, and finally a feeling that shows itself in physical action. Note that the third process in feeling something is what we call “cognitive feeling,” which might seem a contradiction of terms, but we find that cognition is where many people land when they feel something. Additionally, the “action” that is taken is always physical, but it could be some kind of physical movement, some kind of stationary commitment, speaking or choosing not to speak. So, it is with this paradigm that I suggest you understand how to know when something is bad for you: physically, emotionally, cognitively, or actively. You will note that you probably have a preference for one, or possibly two of these expressions of feelings. You might need to read more about this feelings expression in our book. For our current interest, allow me to suggest how you might recognize that something is bad for you:

  • Physically: You feel something in a part of your body, probably determined by your biological heritage and physical awareness. Typical physical symptoms of something that is bad for you include some kind of stomach agitation, chest pain, breathing changes, facial grimaces, or coldness of extremities. Less often people feel actual headaches, or stomachaches, and some people come to tears easily.
  • Emotionally. An emotional experience is one that includes one or more of the four basic emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, and anger. By the way, these emotions come in that order: joy first (you like something); sadness next (you lose something); fear next (you are afraid of losing more), and finally anger (you react against the force that took something away from you). In the “bad for you” category, you will have the last three of these emotions, but note that you have these only because you have loved something. So, when something is bad for you, you will first feel sad, then afraid, and the anger although the transition from sad to fear to anger may take a split second. Note how you feel emotionally.
  • Cognitively. It may seem odd to refer to cognitive action as a “feeling,” but it is, and it is predominant with some people. When something is bad for you, you will usually be in the fear/anger range thinking of what this person did or didn’t do, how some situation is bad for you, or what is wrong with the universe in some way. Then…
  • Actively. In this category of “feelings” you will do something or say something. People tend to be say-ers or doers, but this part of feelings is always the end place of feelings. When something or someone is bad for you in some way, you will want to bark back at that person or throw the hammer at the wall because the hammer hit your finger and not the nail.

Read more about this feeling process in I Want to Tell You How I Feel. After you have recognized the feelings that erupt in you when something is bad for you, you will then see the effects of this thing (or person).

The effects of something that is “bad for me”

There is an important principal in economics that I find helpful in deciding what to do about if and when to do something. This is the concept of marginal utility. Economists use the created denomination of utils in order to formulate an equation for the proper action to take in business. I will not belabor the point of marginal utility and utils at this point, but you might look the terms up and see how economists’ idea of marginal utility to suggest how people should make business decisions. I find it equally valuable to use the concept of marginal utility when deciding “go” or “no go” with something in your life. While it is dreadfully important to “do something,” whether that means stay the course or change course, you have to count the cost of the staying or the leaving. When you do that, you will be looking at the effects of staying or leaving. Then, if you can create a kind of equation according to the principals of marginal utility, you will be able to honestly and fruitfully think clearly to yourself, talk clearly to someone else, and take definitive action. Instead of discussing the equation of marginal utility, I suggest simply that you examine the effects of something in your life in order to know whether you should work to enhance something that is largely good for you, or how you might examine the deleterious effects of something that is largely bad for you.

In order to adequately examine both the “good for you” phenomena (situation, person, or thing) as well as such things that are “bad for you,” you need to see how far you are on the spectrum of good or bad. If for instance, you are on the “bad for you” side of the spectrum, you have to see how bad this thing is, namely whether it is in the:

  • Mild category of uninteresting, unpleasant, aversive or
  • Strong category of dangerous, toxic, or lethal

In making this decision, you will notice that you might want to push something that is not good for you towards the mild side of the spectrum or push it towards the strong side of the spectrum. You will need to be honest with yourself as to how strong the “not good for you” might be. Let me explain how you might make that determination:

  • Roughly speaking, the three categories of mildly not good for you do not cause lasting or permanent harm, whereas the strongly not good for you categories do.
  • You can live with uninteresting pretty easily; unpleasant is…well…unpleasant, and aversive experiences can be tolerated, but not forever
  • Strong “not good for you” things need careful attention because you cannot sustain a life with something in the strong categories, e.g.:
    • If something is dangerous, you live in some kind of fear, which in the long run will be deleterious for you, certainly psychologically and ultimately physically
    • If something is toxic, you can figuratively hold your breath, i.e. survive for a time under toxicity but not for long
    • If something is lethal, you need to move away from it as soon as possible.
  • The problem, as you certainly see, if how to discover where you are on the “bad for you” side of the spectrum. There is a danger of staying too long with something that is dangerous, toxic, or lethal, and there is an equal danger of “pushing” something that is just mildly not good for you into the totally bad for you side of the spectrum.
  • People want this decision of “go” or “no go” to be easy but it is no such thing. It is hard, it is painful, and it is always sad. But sad does not make it wrong.

Once you have discerned that something is bad for you, have determined just how bad it is, noted your feeling reaction, and seen the effects of this thing, you are ready to do something. If something is simply sad, you can profit from the sadness, but if something chronically makes you sad, you might need to do something about it.

Doing something about the “bad for you” element in your life.

There are people who delay doing something about things that are bad for them forever. They tend to get stuck in the previous stages of the process and end up tolerating, complaining, or dreaming of some magic solution to get them out of the “bad for you” situation. There are an equal number of people who jump right into doing something before they have understood how bad the thing is, what they feel, and the actual bad effects this thing has on them. We might call such people “intolerant” and the other folks “tolerating,” but neither operation is sufficient in all circumstances. Making an adjustment to life sometimes means we need to tolerate and sometimes we need to do something that is bad for us. Consider which side of the do something/do nothing spectrum you tend to be on. I suggest the following process, which reflects the process of noting what is bad for you:
1. Note what you feel: physical, emotional, cognitive, or active.

2. Determine the severity of the “bad for you” experience (mild to severe)

3. Note the effects on you, namely how you have been hurt or damaged in some way. You will see that you have lost something that is important to             you and this loss has created sadness in you.

4. Reflect on your feelings, the degree of hurt you have sustained, and the effects that something has had on you.

5. Then take action

Taking action, most importantly, requires that you know the degree of suffering you have encountered by this thing (or person) that has been bad for you. Roughly speaking, you might take the following actions under the following degrees of “bad for you.”

  • Uninterested. Probably take no action. You can’t be interested in everything, and you need to have a life where things that are uninteresting might profit you sometime, some day.
  • Unpleasant. Not much different from uninterested. Note that something is unpleasant and allow this to be bad for you for a short period of time. Don’t jump to action. Don’t complain. Just suffer the unpleasant experience
  • Aversive. While still in the “moderate” realm of “bad for you,” you might just need to be in this aversive condition for a while before you take any kind of action. It depends on how long the aversive element lasts. Roughly speaking, you can do with something aversive for minutes, perhaps for hours, but not for days.
  • Dangerous. This is where you need to be hyper aware of your feelings, namely your physical and emotional feelings. “Dangerous” is theoretical, but not real. You see that the situation or element is potentially harmful to you, possibly permanently. To live with something dangerous is sometimes necessary, but it always takes a toll. So, if you have to live with it, do so realizing the cost on your body, mind, and relationships. Take action after hours or days, not weeks or years.
  • Toxic. This is much worse than dangerous because this element is currently causing damage for you. You feel it in your stomach, in your mind, and in your soul. You need to get out and you need to get out soon. The only thing that keeps you here is your own inability to move quickly enough. But know, the longer you stay with something toxic, the more you will deteriorate.
  • Lethal. Not much option here. Get out, get out immediately. You will die if you don’t. Don’t count the cost of staying with something lethal. Whatever it is, whoever it is, whatever you like about the situation, you are beyond danger. You are dying. Get out and get out now. You can cope with the loss later. If you truly can’t get out of a lethal situation, note the deterioration that occurs to you and plan to find a time of restoration.

An example

Deb and I recently had our 14-year old grandson living with us for three months, an experience I now see as the hardest thing I have ever done. This has been a very interesting experience because it was almost entirely “bad for me” for these three months, and I still have the effects of this experience. Having Gavin here was interesting partly because he is a good kid, a “lover” and “player” by nature, quite bright, and fun to be with. My best connection, perhaps my only real connection was in the realm of play, usually around table games, which he adored. (Deb connected with him on their shared value of nature.) The difficulty I had with him was that his player temperament had been indulged by his parents to such an extent that he had almost no understanding of the care of property. I won’t indulge myself in explaining the challenges that deficiency brought to me but to note that my primary temperament (read the blogs on temperaments) is “caretaker,” namely a person who values property as sacred. So during the months he was with us, I ranged from unpleasant to toxic on the “bad for me” scale. I found myself complaining about his lack of responsibility, and complaining is something that I rarely do. But I found myself caught in the commitment we had made to Gavin’s father to keep him, home school him, and live with him until his dad got settled in their new home in Los Angeles. This put me in a very difficult situation because I started to notice physical changes in my body, most specifically my heart “talking to me” with a mild pain, particularly as I ran. So, here I was in the situation of taking care of someone whom I dearly love, and someone who had only 8 months ago lost his mother, and now had temporarily lost his dad as well. But this person was increasingly “bad for me” despite his need of my care and my love for him. Due to my biological heritage of heart disease, I was aware of the potential lethal nature of my caring for Gavin and I considered ending the time of care within a month of his being here. But there was a cost to me, first the tendency to complain, which I deplore in anyone, particularly me, but also in the feeling that I could die in the process of taking care of someone whom I love. There is a substantial amount of literature related to how people fare in the caretaking of an impaired person, or situations that are otherwise stressful: you die earlier. Such was the case with my brother who died at 59 having cared for my Alzheimer’s impaired mother for 5 years as well as other stressful circumstances. He died of a heart attack. I could feel this potential heart attack during these months with Gavin…this kind, loving, playful, bright kid whom I loved.

Such is the nature of the “bad for me” situations that people have: not all good, not all bad; love and dislike together; sometimes good, sometimes bad; good person bad for you; necessary situation that is potentially lethal. Consider the difficult situations you are in, whether property, person, geography, vocation, interpersonal, or just what you eat or drink. Consider the nature, the effects, what you feel, and what you might do. Take care of yourself first so you can take care of people and property as you need to do.

I look forward to writing about things and people that are “good for me.”

You Value What You See

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

I don’t see much. Well, that’s not entirely true, but there’s lots of truth in it. An important part of this “not seeing much” is related to the fact that I am colorblind. Not seriously so, like people who actually don’t see colors at all and live in a kind of black-and-white world, as I have a red/green colorblindness, which is the most common. So when Deb asks me to look at the (red) tulips in the yard, I can see them only if they are pretty close to me, but when far away, I can’t distinguish the red tulips from the green foliage. There are lots of other times when I mix colors or fail to distinguish colors. I have failed to distinguish red, green, brown, and gray depending on the depth of the color and what might be the background confusing the “cones” in my eyes. I recall the first time everyone realized that I was colorblind because my paternal grandfather asked me to plug the meter in his green Nash standing right in front of his office building where he could watch me from 6 stories up. Mom and he watched as I plugged the meter of the brown Nash right next to his green one. Colorblindness comes through the mother’s side of the family and rarely affects girls, so my maternal uncle was colorblind, my daughter not, but her son is. It is funny to play Sorry with Gavin when we struggle to distinguish the green movers from the red ones. Enough about the colorblindness, already. What does this have to do with anything important in life? It’s not terribly important if you or I are colorblind, but it is dreadfully important to know what we see and what we don’t see because we actually see different things.

First, let’s enlarge upon the word see for a moment. We can use this word “see” to include at least all five senses and possibly the “sixth sense” of intuition. Intuition is very close to the feelings that I have disused at length in previous blogs, but for our current purposes, we shall use the word intuition as a kind of sixth sense. Then we can use the word “see” to include all the ways people gather information: seeing (physically), hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and by intuition. I mention this 6-part way of “seeing” as a way of dealing with several important factors in one’s psychological makeup, not the least of which is that there are great differences among people in the way they see things. Some people are particularly good at seeing through one of their six senses, and some people are good at using all of their senses. Furthermore, there are people called synesthetic, who actually integrate their senses so much that they do such things as “taste the color blue,” smell the green grass, feel “touched” the thing that they hear, and many other combinations. There is at least one good book on the phenomenon of synesthesia and many articles, some of them in the popular genre. Blind people often have developed a particularly sense of hearing, and deaf people are often particularly good at seeing with their eyes. Beyond the fact that many people have a preference for one or two senses, there are people who aren’t particularly good at using any of their senses.

Beyond the use of the physical five senses plus intuition, there are some very interesting things about what we see that are very close to many other psychological factors, not the least of which is what we value. Think of it this way: if you don’t really care much about colors, as is largely true for me, you won’t really see colors, or if you do, you won’t care much about colors. Thankfully, Deb chooses my ties every day and often chooses my suits, jackets, pants, and shirts. I care about how I look but I don’t care about colors particularly as Deb has learned over our 40 some years together.

Having briefly presented some information about what we see with our eyes, what we see with the other physical senses, what we see with intuition, and also what we value, allow me to tell you a bit about a very important understanding that was made a century ago. Carl Jung, psychoanalyst and psychologist was a student of Sigmund Freud around the turn of the last century but came to believe that Freud’s understanding of the human condition was not sufficient to help people grapple with the difficulties in their lives. He proposed. Among many other things, that people had substantially different personality structures, one of which was the way that people see things. He referred to this structure as the perceptive function. Jung observed that people seemed to attend to very different things, perhaps see different things, and certainly value different things. Simply stated, Jung suggested that there is a spectrum of these differences representing how, what, and why people saw, attended to, and valued different things. He called these two different ways of seeing “intuitive” and “sensing,” terms that have continued to be used for the past century. I have found it more valuable to use the terms “objective” and “subjective” in explaining these differences of seeing. Thus the spectrum of perception is:

_______________________________________/______________________________________

Objective (Sensing)                                                                                     Subjective (intuition)

 

There have been scores of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of pages written on Jung’s understanding of personality, so permit me to simply indicate how people with these different perspectives see the world.

Objective (sensing) people tend to:

  • See what is real
  • See what is factual
  • Value the physical world
  • Engage the physical world
  • Produce something
  • Examine things (and people) individually

Subjective (intuitive) people tend to:

  • See what is unreal
  • See what is possible
  • Regard the nonphysical world
  • Engage the nonphysical world
  • Create something
  • Examine things (and people) relationally

There are many more things that can be said of these important ways of looking at the world, and nay interested reader will have no difficulty finding relevant material on this subject. My point in presenting this difference in seeing is to highlight the strengths of both of these ways of seeing, and to shed some light on some of the difficulties people have engaging these different worlds (physical and nonphysical), as well as the difficulties people have relating to one another.

For purposes of personal revelation I should note that I am particularly on the objective side of this spectrum, namely being a person who sees the real world and engages the real world. However, I am married to someone who sees the unreal world and engages quite well with this world. Furthermore, I have had the opportunity of living with my 14-year old grandson for the past three months who is distinctly on the subjective side of the spectrum of perception. The interesting thing about living with these two people who share this subjective way of seeing the world is in their seminaries in how and what they see and ultimately what they value. Additionally, as would be expected, they display differences in maturity that come with being either 14 or 65. Deb grew up in a very objective family and learned how to deal with the objective elements of the world, so from her earliest years she knew how to engage the physical world, reflected to some degree in the way she cared for property. My grandson did not grow up in such an environment largely because his mother took undue care for all the property in her household leaving my grandson to be able to continue undisturbed in engaging the “unreal” world, more accurately described as the “possible world”. It has been remarkable for me to see Gavin who is truly “subjective” in what he sees compared to my wife who also sees the subjective but also engages the objective world. This has given me an opportunity of seeing a bit clearer what subjective people “see” and hence what they do with what they see, and what they value because of what they see. This can be simply summarized in the matter of socks.

Socks? Yes. Some weeks ago, before I had truly grasped the differences in how my grandson and I “see” the world, I noticed that he had left his socks on the bathroom floor when we were visiting our cabin up north. I noticed the socks after he showered for the day. I noticed them at noon, again at 5 PM, and at 8. I noticed the socks because I notice such things. At 8 o’clock I asked Gavin to look in the bathroom and see what might be “wrong,” which was an interesting word I chose for what he saw. He immediately said that he saw the socks on the floor. I then asked him if he had seen the socks on the floor during the several times he had gone into the bathroom during the day. He said that he hadn’t seen the socks. While hard for me to believe, I came to the immediate realization that he hadn’t actually seen the socks. I thought, “How can someone walk into a (relatively small) bathroom and not see the socks that are on the floor?” But this wasn’t so much a question as it was a rhetorical question, something that I restrained myself from asking because such questions only stir shame rather than instruct.

Since the incident with the socks there have been perhaps several hundred such incidents over these past 12 weeks that Gavin has been with us, many of which I ignored, many of which I attended to by picking things up, and many of which I asked Gavin to attend to. This experience of “socks” and all that the socks represent has stirred a new understanding of people who have the subjective way of looking at the world.

I know this: it is the subjective people of the world who have made the most important discovering and improvements in the world, not the objective people like me. This very blog is a testament to this fact: nothing that I have written is “new” because Jung and his predecessors “discovered” this difference in perception long ago. Theologian Soren Kierkegaard predated Jung by nearly a hundred years and said the following about how people perceive. He called objective folks “people of possibility” and subjective folks “people of reality.” Then he went on to note the difficulties that both kinds of people have:

  • People of reality do everything but nothing (or very little) is of value
  • People of possibility do nothing (or very little), and everything they dream about is valuable

There are many more musings on this matter, not the least of which is what we value. Thus, Gavin values what he might do rather than what he does, whereas I value what I have done more than what I might do. I’m sure it’s been a challenge for Gavin to live with me for these past months and it certainly has been a challenge to live with him. More importantly, this is not about Gavin and me. It is about what we see and what we value, and ultimately how we can understand and value one another.

Further Reading

Jung, C. (1921/1974). Psychological types. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen

Myers. I.B. (1980). Gifts differing. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press

Johnson, R. (1993). Watch your temperament. Madison, WI: Midlands Psychological Press

What Do You See?

Ron Johnson mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness

I’ve been working with a teenage boy and his stepfather recently and observed something that gave me a bit more clarity in how we see the world, namely that we see different things. Furthermore, when we see different things, we are simultaneously evaluating the things we see. It is possible that the valuing precedes the seeing but most certainly the seeing and the valuing occur in close proximity. Josh, the son, and Gabe, the stepfather, are both good people but have struggled to find a way to successfully communicate. I discovered, as I often have, that Josh and Gabe see different things and hence value different things. How does it happen that we actually see different things?

For those of you familiar with the Jung/MBTI view of personality type, Josh is an INFP and Gabe is an ESTP. In personality temperament terms Josh is a lover/player, while his stepfather is primarily a caretaker and secondarily player. (You might need to review previous blogs on personality type and temperament). Thus, from a personality type perspective, Gabe and Josh can find common ground on the “P” part of their profiles, namely what I call “low boundary,” or spontaneous and freedom-oriented. On the temperament side of things it makes sense that Josh and Gabe do well when they are playing, whether across the table with table games, teasing and joking, or otherwise playing around, because they share the player temperament orientation. The challenges these two men have is most specifically how they deal with property, but underlying this view of property is a much more profound element of what they actually see.

It became clear to me that Josh sees things that move and things that are alive, while his stepfather sees things that are not alive and do not move. Let me give you an example. Gabe has complained that Josh “not seeing the obvious.” Gabe gave the example of finding Josh’s underwear on the floor in the bathroom, leaving his laundry on the washing machine, and many examples of his using some tool, dish, or book, and then leaving it where he happened to be standing. Gabe noted a time where Josh complained that “someone had taken his glass of water” only to minutes later finding that he, himself, had left his glass in the bathroom. Josh thought that this was funny; Gabe thought that it was irresponsible. The “obvious” to Gabe is property, namely caring for property and putting property “in it appropriate place. I explained to Gabe that Josh had a very different view of property and that when Josh saw property, it attracted him when it was alive and moving. This didn’t make much sense to Gabe until I asked him what Gabe tended to comment on. Gabe said that Josh always comments on birds or bugs flying, or even a jet flying in the sky, as well as any animal that ran across the lawn. Josh tends to see things that are alive or moving, and he is particularly attracted to living things that move. “Why doesn’t he see that the wrench needs to be put back where he found it, and why can’t he remember that he put his water glass on the bathroom counter?” I explained that neither the glass nor the wrench is alive and neither is moving. This was a very hard thing for Gabe to understand, much less appreciate because for him, “everything has a place and everything should be in its place.” I noted that when things are in a “place,” they are stationary, i.e. not moving, and furthermore these things were not living. It was a stretch for Gabe to understand that his stepson didn’t see what Gabe saw. Following this challenging discussion, Josh was, of course, all ears because he admitted that he is attracted to living and moving things, not to things that were stationary and nonliving.

What I want to discuss is how we see, what we see and to some degree what we choose to see. I will delay the discussion on this latter element, namely “what we choose to see” for a moment and focus on what we see with our eyes. I need to note, however, we “see” things with all five senses and may also see with what we might call the “sixth” sense, intuition. We also need to discuss how what we see is what we value leading us to a discussion of how and what we value. Finally, we will briefly look at some underlying neurological elements of seeing and valuing.

Differences in what we see

Gabe and Josh display the dramatic differences in what people actually see. It is distinctly possible that they actually see the same things but then quickly move from what they see to what they enjoy seeing. Gabe sees a wrench as something valuable in and of itself, while Josh sees a wrench as something that can be used. So when Josh uses a wrench, it is seen when it is moving, but when he is finished with it, the wrench is no longer moving, and so it is not seen. So he puts it where he was using it, not where he found it in the garage, and then forgets entirely about the wrench. Understandably, this seems like “irresponsible” to Gabe who views the wrench as intrinsically valuable, not only for its use but also for its care. While the wrench is in its “rightful place” 99% of the time, Gabe views this stationary wrench place equally valuable as when it is in use. Not so for poor Josh who views the wrench something of value only when it is used; afterward, it has no value, i.e. no intrinsic value. Josh and Gabe talked about a walk in the woods that they had together. They both spoke about the things they “saw” but they “saw” different things. Gabe saw the birds and the bugs; Gabe saw the path and the rock formations. Josh valued the life and movement of the animals large and small; Gabe valued the history behind the sandstone and tried to explain the geology of the rocks while Josh tolerated such discussion. Did they see different things? Yes, in a way, but not really. More accurately, they attended to different things. Certainly, Josh saw the rocks but didn’t particularly care about them, that is unless a rock fell from the top, which would have been very interesting to him. In general, Josh saw the living and the moving while Gabe saw the inanimate and the stationary.

Consider what you see, or more accurately, what interests you. I see plants and other things green, but I don’t see them the way Deb sees such things. I see the garage in somewhat disarray and wasn’t to get to reordering it after some necessary neglect. I don’t usually tell Deb my interest in things brown and gray as most garage items are because I know that she sees such things but doesn’t care about them any more than I care about plants and flowers. This is where seeing and valuing begin to connect.

Valuing what we see

I think there is an equation between what we see and what we value although many Jungians would debate that theory. Jungian theory has a different “function” for valuing called the Judging dimension. Where there is overlap between perceiving and judging, I think that we see what we value. Josh values things that move and things that are alive, whereas his stepdad values things that are not alive and do not move. Consider how difficult it is for both men to be in the situation we find themselves seeing different things and hence valuing different things. Gabe and Josh have talked to me about the fact that Josh doesn’t like Algebra and History. Gabe was a Math major and a History minor in college. He knows all the U.S. Presidents and can give you a 10 minute or a 10 hour lecture on all of human history. Josh could care less. “What good is it for me to know X’s and Y’s when I grow up because I plan to be a park ranger?” Josh likes Shop, Music, and P.E. Note that all three classes are those with movement. There’s not a lot of movement in Math and English.

This valuing of what we see (and consider “see” might mean all six senses) is quite significant with many people. I have been seeing a couple who display much the difference that we see with Josh and Gabe. The man “sees” the house in disarray; she “sees” the house as orderly, but the words “disarray” and “orderly” are clearly value judgments (By the way, she is a “NP” and he is an “SJ”). There are many other differences in what they see, and hence what they value. And this is where things get dicey. What if you really value something that your friend, partner, employee, or employer doesn’t value; and of course, visa versa? Potential disagreement? Potential argument based on what one values? Potential hurt done and certainly harm done to one another? Yes to all these questions. It is painfully obvious that we see different things and value different things, but is it just in the physical things that we see? There are differences in what we see and value in the realm of thoughts and feelings.

Beyond seeing physical things

Yes, there are most certainly differences in what we see and value in things other than the physical world. Very simply, some people value feelings while others value thoughts, but the situation goes much farther than this simple dichotomy. Gabe values history, pretty much any part of history. But history is certainly not the most well liked subject by most students. History is seen as “boring” or irrelevant. There can be a case made for knowing history so as to prevent history repeating itself, but that is much more of a theoretical view of liking history. Many people, like me, just like history. Furthermore, we “see” history. Gabe can “see” various presidents, the progression of history from Africa outward, the causes of the Civil War and the World Wars. He sees these things as if they were alive, but of course history is “alive” only to Gabe and a few other history buffs (like me, for instance). I think I like history because it is real, at least real to me. Like, something really happened. Other people do not see history as real.

While I see history (and other things), other people see what they value. Some people value ideas and enjoy the thinking and discussing various ideas of who they are, who other people are, whether God exists, various political theories and ideas, and many more things that are not particularly real to me. But ideas and such are very real to people who value them. Theorists of many persuasions, whether scientific or philosophical, value ideas and possibilities including how two or more things fit together. Many people are not so much interested in ideas and theories as they are in feelings and relationships. I have written a good bit on the whole matter of feelings and Deb and I just finished our I Want to Tell You How I Feel, which we hope will render some assistance to all of us in the whole feeling realm. But why would I write a book about feelings when I have stated that I like things that are not alive and don’t move? Because I also like feelings; I just do make a habit of attending to feelings like some people do. So am I really different from people who are more theory-based or feeling-based? I don’t think so. It depends on what one has seen in the past, what families they were raised in, what culture they were raised in, and most importantly, whether they have matured in life.

Maturing in what we see

If Gabe is to be a good father-figure for Josh, he has to understand that he sees and values things that his stepson doesn’t see and/or doesn’t value. Gabe can’t make a judgment of what Josh sees and values as irresponsible and distracting, much less having an “attention deficit.” He sees what he sees and values it. My hope is that I can be of help with both of these men to understand what they see and value and then mature into understanding what other people see and value. Too often, people are not encouraged to see what they see, and value what they value. This understanding more about what one sees and what other people see lies with the mature person. In the case of Gabe and Josh it lies primarily with Gabe, as such is the requirement of any parent.

It is understanding yourself and then being able to forget about understanding yourself, defending yourself, and demanding that everyone else be like you. You can really spend time understanding other people only when you see what you value, and then value what you value first. You do this, and you can spend a lifetime getting better at understanding other people and helping them understand themselves. This does not mean changing. It means maturing. In fact, the essences of maturity is based first on self-awareness, and then necessarily on adding to that self-awareness an understanding of how the rest of the world sees and values. It is laudable to try to “change” one’s perception of life, whatever that might be, but it is not valuable, and it is not possible. You don’t need to change and you can’t change. But you can learn other ways of seeing. If you do this, you will be sad for a while because you will realize that most people do not see what you see, nor do they value what you value. Then, you will be able to understand them better and just possibly help them understand what you see. You could both be better off. If, however, you stand by what you see and insist on it, you will be lonely. If you work on understanding yourself so that you can forget about yourself, this work will be painful. You will choose between lonely and painful. I hope you choose to see more so you can know more, so you can love more.

I see I have reached the end of my energy for this discussion so I will have to delay several elements not discussed here including “seeing” with the other four physical senses and seeing with the sixth sense, intuition. Then we need to look at the neurological factors (brain functioning) that are related to what is seen and values. Later.