For us humans, life is a complex domain in which we are born and then have to learn how to operate while doing it. We learn to live life while living life. All the major aspects of life have this wide range of complexity that cannot be narrowed down to a fixed proposition. So, how do we cope? In a conversation with Samantha Willman, we explored the role of family in this odyssey and the different ways it influences our relational capacity in the long run.
One of the most efficient ways to learn something new is through participation. Family creates a place where new entrants to life can sample life on a safe smaller scale. The family acts a place where one can be inducted into the practice of the ritual of living. As the more “life-experienced family members” demonstrate their values in situ, the new members are watching and learning what seems to work. They can then develop their own models from these working examples.
These working examples are a doorway into a range of alternate possibilities because of the nested dynamism in both the family members practicing and life in general. As they say, there can be a million ways to do something. So as the practice of the ritual of living continues, the learning starts to compound. If you repeat something several times, you tend to learn a way of doing it from that compounded experience.
This compounded experience is a language of expression that is then used to participate in life activities. It varies though because we all have our own individual preferences that also influence us to have particular appetites that are unique to us. As we continue to participate, we run into the challenges of translation between our understanding, our preferences and the constraints we have to work with in the shared reality.
Family is a shared reality where it is meant to be safe to test out our languages of expression. The members of the family try to “figure us out” and anticipate what we mean. The longer this goes on for, the better they get and at some point they sort of “tap into us” and can understand what we mean even when we are not able to properly express it. If they are kind, they might even help us with some tips on how to better express ourselves.
The Australian Aboriginal “Dreamtime” is an example of the imaginal anticipation of the other. When done at scale, it’s almost like the Star Wars Jedi Order and the Force. When you continuously participate in life with the same people in the same shared physical space like a home or workplace, over time you can anticipate what they are likely to do in a given situation. You can get to a level where your prediction of what they mean is almost 70% – 80% accurate most of the time. If that person did the same for you to that level of accuracy, it’s possible to have a “telepathy-like” interaction, hypothetically speaking.
Most families aspire to be the place where you can be allowed to express yourself with minimal regulation because of the “dreamtime” like anticipation. One of the reasons I love about my family is that I know that they “accept” me for who I am. This means that they are familiar with most of my “Village of Me’s” and even when the “me’s” that I try to hide escape me, they can accomodate them and help me regain control of myself. My family holds a space for me that allows me to make expression mistakes with minimal consequences.
The gift that is freedom expression is definitely a testament of love. Love is the thing that creates family and all relationships are tending towards a “family-ness” as they progress. At some point in some relationships you come to realise that the “family” they are developing into does not accomodate you as you had anticipated and so you sadly have to stop investing in that development or in some cases they regress because they are too brittle.
All this development is a kind of “shaping” and “re-shaping” and family allows for it. Conflict does ensue when shapes are not interpreted as intended and sometimes this leads to a forced re-shaping that is not welcome. However, if you are in a family with people that love you, they always make an allowance for you and the shape in which you are showing up for as long as you need it. Without this allowance, we suffer more as we try to figure out how to participate in the ritual of living.
