Day 25–100 Days 100 Ways Being Visible
I break a habitual response and avoid a destructive argument with my partner
Do you react or do you respond to a stimulus? Steven Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) argues that between stimulus and response there is a moment in which we can choose our response. This has never made sense to me. Covey says that we can learn to extend the length of the gap between stimulus and response to the point that we can consciously choose our response and no longer be reacting. In the extreme when there is no pause when someone says something to us our response is automatic and unconsidered and we act as an automaton. An automaton that nevertheless has the capacity to learn to observe its own response and to learn to extend the pause until it is long enough to allow conscious thinking to intervene.
Humberto Maturana (The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela) argues convincingly (to the ‘observer’, I am) from a biological (rather than philosophical or psychological) point of view that human beings, as a matter of fact, are ‘structurally determined’ systems. The response of a structurally determined system to an external stimulus is fully determined by the structure of the system. A car is a structurally determined system and thus what happens when the key is turned in the car’s ignition switch is fully determined by the structure of the car’s electrical and mechanical systems at the moment the key is turned. The response is not random and certainly not chosen by the car. While Maturana is emphatic that human beings are not machines, their response to a stimulus is similarly fully determined by their biological structure at the moment a stimulus is received. In this interpretation there is no ‘gap’ between stimulus and response; there is a stimulus and then a response to the stimulus.
For Maturana, if I have understood correctly, the biological structure of a human being allows for self-observation and self-reflection. It also allows that the process of thinking changes the very biological structure that does the thinking.
Thus, for Maturana, if a certain stimulus happens to us at a moment in time, then a certain response will happen. If we are self-aware of our response and we reflect on what happened for the sake of learning then the act of thinking will change our biological structure such that the next time the stimulus occurs we respond in a different way. (If we just ruminate rather than reflect then the change in our structure might be a deepening of the propensity for a habitual response.) This new way might be to take a breath before we speak thus giving time for our conscious mind to consider some options before we speak. In this interpretation there is no gap between stimulus and response, there is a new response that includes a pause.
Maturana and Covey both conclude that human beings can learn (meaning that an observer would say that their behaviour in response to the same stimulus changes over time).
I find Maturana’s explanation both intellectually satisfying and consistent with my own experience.
What stimulus provoked the response of my writing the above paragraphs?
I had today, a wonderful experience in what could have been an exceedingly difficult conversation with my partner. She said something (the details of which are not relevant) to which I responded with a sense of defensiveness and an inclination to ‘make her wrong’ for saying what she said.
I noticed my response and did not say the words that would have been predictable from a knowledge of my history of this sort of interaction. Instead, I asked something to the effect of “Did you think I was inappropriate in our conversation back then?” This was a new response for me; I was surprised to hear myself say it. My new response changed the direction of our conversation and instead of falling into the trap of arguing we listened to each other deeply as we each shared our experiences of the earlier situation. We were both moved by our conversation and each said we felt it to be an important change in one of our habitual patterns of interacting.
How is this relevant to being visible? I attribute my new response to my focus on being visible. When I respond defensively to something someone says, it is like I am putting on armour ready for a fight. When I wear my armour I am not visible. Today, I did not put on my armour and instead remained visible to my partner. In sharing my experience with her, I allowed her to see a part of me that had been hidden. Her response was to allow me to see part of her that had been also hidden. We now know each other in a new way.
In my recollection, I did not pause and choose my new response, rather the new words just came out of my mouth. I conclude that something has changed in me over recent weeks that determined the new response. I have learned a new behaviour that I would like now to cultivate. Further, our biological structures will have been changed by our conversation and I am curious to see how these changes play out in our life together.
Progress
I took a significant step in being visible to one of the most important people in my life. I am deeply grateful for who my partner was in our conversation today and more generally for her being in my life and her being willing to grow and learn alongside me.
Postscript
I was also visible to my partner today by asking her permission to write about our experience in this article. I did not take it for granted that she would grant that permission.
25/26/100 (Number of days goals met/ number of days into project/ 100)
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