Someone Like Me

There are things I do because they are the sort of things someone like me does.

I stay.

I carry my share.

I notice when something needs doing and, often enough, do it before anyone has to ask.

These are not habits I particularly want to lose. They belong to the person I recognize when I look back across my life.

Which can make change surprisingly difficult.

Someone suggests another way of responding and the suggestion doesn’t land as simply another possibility. It can sound like a correction.

You shouldn’t be like that.

And before I have considered the suggestion, I am defending the person who got me this far.

Perhaps there is another way of approaching it.

I am still here. What else can someone like me do?

The question doesn’t ask me to become less loyal or less steadfast. It doesn’t require me to decide that the way I have responded until now was wrong.

It just puts another chair at the table.

I can stay—and set a boundary.

I can help—and wait to be asked.

I can notice someone’s discomfort—and allow them to decide what to do about it.

I can disagree—and remain in relationship.

The old gestures haven’t been confiscated. They are still available when they fit.

There are simply more of them now.

That matters because sometimes what looks like a change of character is really a change in repertoire.

A musician doesn’t become less of a musician by learning another way to play a familiar phrase. A gardener doesn’t betray the garden by discovering that something which needed watering in July needs leaving alone in October.

Perhaps steadfastness can work that way too.

Not as doing the same thing again because that proves who I am, but as enough continuity to risk discovering another response.

There is a corresponding responsibility when I offer something to someone else.

Writing these field notes, for instance, means putting something into our shared space that may influence what another person notices or does.

I don’t think I can make that innocent by insisting that I mean well.

But I can ask:

Does my participation leave the other person with more capacity to participate without me?

That changes what I hope might happen here.

You don’t have to adopt my language. You may make an association I couldn’t have made. You may try something and discover it doesn’t work. You may disagree. You may notice something I have missed and, if we’re fortunate, I may be changed by your noticing too.

Perhaps that is one possibility for an Us.

Not agreement.

Not becoming alike.

Not one of us possessing the map.

Just enough relationship that each of us can remain recognizably ourselves while discovering that there are more ways of participating than either of us could see alone.

I am still here.

So are you.

What else can people like us do?