NOTE TO READERS: The following post is a slightly revised version of the first section of the eleventh and final chapter of my book Addiction and Responsibility, which is available in the “Store” at the top of this blog-site. The reference I make in that section to Pontius Pilate and the Crucifixion of Jesus guided my decision to make this post in honor of Easter, which occurs next Sunday.
To react to something that happens is to empower that to which one is reacting. To respond to something that happens is to empower oneself.
I have had a long day at work. My classes have not gone well, and I have had some unpleasant encounters with a few of my students who came to my office to complain about their grades on a recent test. I am behind in my class preparation as well as in my administrative work for my department. A committee meeting at the end of the day has caused me to be late leaving the office. To top it all off, traffic is unusually heavy and it takes me an extra half hour to get home. When I finally do walk in the door to my house, my wife immediately begins complaining that we were supposed to go to a parent-teacher conference before dinner, but she was forced to go alone when I did not arrive home on time. I grow angry and raise my voice to my wife, complaining in my own turn about her insensitivity to how tired and overworked I am. Slamming down my briefcase on the kitchen table, I retreat in a huff to my study, where I intend to pout until my wife comes in and apologizes. When she doesn’t, I just grow more irritated.
In that example, all I am doing is reacting to situations as they develop. I am letting events “push my buttons and pull my strings,” and I am dancing to whatever tune they select. They are in control of me, not I of them — or of myself!
Some of those events are external (for example, my wife’s complaining). Those outside events first trigger attributions in me (her complaining is a sign of her insensitivity to my needs). Those attributions, in turn, trigger emotional reactions in me (irritation and anger). That is the first cycle of reaction.
The attributions that form in me in reaction to outside events are themselves internal events, as are the emotions that form in reaction to the attributions. As the external events first triggered these internal ones, the latter now in turn trigger externally expressed actions or behaviors on my part (in the example, my anger causes me to slam down my briefcase and storm off to my study). That is the second cycle of reaction.
The process continues on and on from there. My actions themselves trigger attributions in others (for instance, my wife may attribute my storming off as just one more sign of the low priority she thinks I give to her and the rest of my family). Those attributions trigger emotions in them (my wife’s already present irritation toward me grows stronger). Those emotions trigger actions on their part (my wife throws my dinner down the garbage disposal and tosses my briefcase in the trash can), which trigger more attributions that trigger more emotions in me (when I finally come out of my study and see what she has done, my anger builds toward rage), which trigger further actions on my part (I go out and get drunk), and so forth, round and round and round again.
It is as circular as the thinking of an addict, and just as enslaving. When I am reacting in such ways, I may feel quite in control of myself, and I may think that I am exercising free and sovereign power over my own choices and actions at every step of the way. That is precisely how addicts often feel, even when they are in the most advanced stages of their addictions. In both cases, however, the freedom is purely illusory. There is really no freedom there at all. Insofar as we remain at the level of reaction, events are in control, and we are at their mercy.
In contrast, to respond to an event is to reclaim our own choices and actions. It is to reassert our right and capacity to self-control in the fullest sense. That is a sense having nothing to do with moralistic rigidity — “the moralistic inability to break a prohibition,” as Erik H. Erikson calls it in his book Ghandi’s Truth ([New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1969], p. 145) — but in which one attains the freedom of genuine self-expression. To respond, rather than to react, to an event is to issue a rejoinder to the event, as it were—a rejoinder in which I give voice to my own uniqueness in answer to the uniqueness of the initial event, as it concretely displays itself to me in my experience of it.
We have all experienced such moments. They are those moments in which we suddenly find ourselves completely open and receptive to everything that is going on around us, down to its finest nuances and details. Sometimes such a moment comes when we are at work, wholly absorbed in doing a task for which our talents and training have prepared us perfectly, where we no longer need to check ourselves against any set of directions (mental or otherwise) or await the judgment of any external authority (or even any internalized one) to be assured of the quality of our work. At other times, we find ourselves entering such a state of awareness when we are at play.
There are moments in playing tennis or some other sport involving competition with another player when one ceases to have to struggle to anticipate the movements of the opponent and position oneself for a reply. Instead, one seems able effortlessly to know exactly what is going to occur from one shot to the next. One just as effortlessly meets whatever the opponent casts one’s way, and meets it with just the right countering, rejoining return shot.
Similar moments occur in solitary sports, for example, in non-competitive skiing or bicycling. While we are engaging in one or the other of those two sports, there come moments when one feels wholly in tune with the slope and the skis, or with the bicycle and the road — and with oneself.
For some of us, such moments come while we are dancing. They are those moments when we and our partner seem to become one with the music. Each note calls out to us, and calls out from us in response just the right motion. It is a motion wholly appropriate to the music that invites it, yet at the same time wholly free. It is a uniquely nuanced motion, one stamped indelibly with an identifying mark expressing the individuality of the dancing couple that sets it apart from all the equally wholly appropriate, wholly unique responses to the same note that might be made by all the other dancing couples on the same dance floor.
Genuinely and fully responding to a situation, as opposed to merely reacting to it, requires, first of all, that we be fully open to that situation. That is, it requires that we approach it without prejudice and prejudgment, demanding of it that it give us what we want of it. We must be free in relationship to all the expectancies we have towards the situation, expectancies that come from our investing ourselves in all the attributions that inevitably form in our minds as changes occur in the situation from moment to moment. Insofar as we invest ourselves in those attributions, we block ourselves from the possibility of encountering our situation as it actually addresses us. As a consequence, we block ourselves from any possibility of responding to it by making a rejoinder, in our own behavior, to the unique requirements of each and every unfolding moment. Only if we let ourselves see what needs to be done, do we have the option of doing it.
If we are not open to the situation as it actually is, there is no way that our actions in that situation will succeed. They will not be able to avoid going astray. Distorted by our selectivity of perception, our actions will miss the mark. We will “sin,” in that original and still fundamental sense. That is not a matter of our actions failing to conform to some external standard of conduct. It is a matter, rather, of our actions becoming distorted at the level of their own nature—the level of their own definitive intentions, so that while we aim at accomplishing one thing we actually end up accomplishing the opposite. Our own actions themselves are thereby dis-owned.
In reaction to the way in which our actions themselves are so disowned (robbed of the very intention that originally defines them), we ourselves disown them, as Pilate disowned responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. After all, what they accomplished is not what we intended. So we no longer see ourselves in them. We can, therefore, wash our hands of them, all in “good conscience.”
However, the cost of such an unblemished conscience is no less than relinquishing our claim to being efficacious agents. We keep our consciences pure in such a way only by robbing ourselves of our own actions, giving up rights to them and turning them over to external events. Our actions cease truly to be actions at all, and instead become mere reactions. We keep our good reputations, at least in our own eyes, only by losing our very selves.