Common Witness: Uncommon Experience

One morning at my study, as I was hard at work daydreaming, my eyes fell on a picture of me with all of my siblings. In this photo, there were nine of us. My youngest sister was not yet born.
We all posed in our Sunday best in front of our tiny fireplace mantel. I was thirteen. My twelve-year-old sister stood next to me, a full head taller than I was. She had hit her adolescent growth spurt, and I would not hit mine for another two years.
In the past, whenever I looked at this photo, my eyes always fell on the two of us, and that height difference was always a source of embarrassment. Yet, today, for some reason, I paused on each one of my siblings in the photo individually. What was going on in their lives as they posed for this photo? What fears were they experiencing? What anxieties, hopes, or dreams did each one carry with them in that very moment; My two oldest sisters with their 60s style teased hair, my younger brother grinning from ear to ear about who knows what? And, my four little sisters, one straight-faced, one smiling, one looking up to her sister for a cue, and the littlest, Margaret Ann, sitting on her teen-aged sister’s lap, arms spread out and eyes wide open as if getting ready to take flight.
Saint Francis famously prayed, “lord grant that I may seek to understand, rather than be understood.” To understand others is to be curious about them; what others have gone through, how that has formed them, how it affects their perspectives, their outlook on life, and even their behaviors. It is not easy work, and it is not automatic for me.
About a year after this photo was taken, our youngest sister, Margaret Ann, would fall off a bathroom vanity bench, losing consciousness, and never regain it.
I still know today how I felt. I walked for miles around our small town crying and railing against God for taking my little sister because I was afraid to do that in front of anyone. I know the isolation, anger, and confusion I felt. But I don’t know how my siblings or my parents were feeling. We never talked about it. It should have been obvious that I was not the only one suffering and grieving, but It wasn’t. It has been said that even in group suffering, we suffer alone. This thirteen-year-old had not yet learned how to enter into the emotional space of another.
Reflecting on this family photo, I realized that we all went through the same event, but we each experienced it and processed it differently. We were common witnesses of an event, yet had a unique experience from that same event. As a result, we each came out the other side even more different from each other. Aldous Huxley wrote, “Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.” I never wondered how this common event of losing our little sister impacted and marked forever my sisters and brother and mom and dad.
There are so many human factors that affect how we each experience an event. Our age, our history, our mental or physical health, our personal histories and our past traumas, and more. It is this understanding that is the key to better relationships. It may seem paradoxical that as we go through life, we tend to become more individuated through what we experience, and yet, with that very uniqueness comes our very attractiveness as individuals. Common events experienced differently form our individuality and our uniqueness, and to the curious here lies the fuel for ongoing growth in relationships.
Taking this further, how many events happen throughout your life that are common with others around you, and how does each one process it? Take, for example, how a shipwreck and being stranded affect and impact each victim differently. They are rescued from the same event but as different people.
Understanding this can only aid us in how we show up to others with more compassion and understanding. I would like to be more curious about others than I am.
In a long-term relationship, undoubtedly, many common events are shared; vacations, holidays, travels, moves, common friends, life difficulties, and turnings—all shared events that are processed and interpreted differently. We often assume long-term relationships are successful because the individuals become more like each other over time. But that is not the whole story. In those relationships, we hopefully share some common interests. But not understanding that we are each becoming more individuated with each event we encounter, we will falsely expect our friends or loved ones to be the same people we originally were attracted to. They are not. To stay attracted to my long-term friends and companions, I must be curious and excited about how they are changing and growing through life events, just as I am changing with each event I process.
I have been with my wife now for over fifty years. In that time, we have shared thousands of common events. And yet, to my delight, we have each grown in unique ways through these events. We are a union of two people, a union of spirit and love and life purpose. But we continually grow into our unique selves with each days events – you can become different and still grow closer. Curiosity and understanding are the keys.
This year, I will try to be more curious, to look more deeply into others, to seek to understand, and to celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of my fellow travelers.
Kind regards,
Bob