05/08/2024
Responsibility. In other words, our ability to respond to something. Most importantly, or ability to respond, rather than to react, to something triggering. Ultimately, it's one of our most crucial, and impactful abilities of all.
There has been a surge of conversation recently about the 'man vs bear' question, a lot of pain and sadness being expressed by both men and women around the answers many women have given when presented with the question, "would you rather run into a man or a bear while alone in the woods?".
This conversation is indeed important, and highly informative. The energy and fear behind it, though, can often be detrimental to the real issue at hand, which is how can we come together, man and woman alike, to ensure that ALL human beings can feel safe, in whatever situation they might find themselves. I long in my heart for all women AND all men to ALWAYS feel safe, no matter what. And the sad truth is, we don't.
So what to do? Attack each other over and over again, interchanging the roles of victim and persecutor repeatedly, arguing in an incessant, painful ping-pong match of "who's suffering more?" That might feel good in the moment, to blame others for our pain, but it also traps us in the role of victim, seemingly powerless to do anything to improve our situation.
On the other hand, we can rise up powerfully together and try something new to interrupt these patterns, to create new ones. What if we all made more effort to examine the underlying sources of our pain, the unmet needs of safety, connection, and togetherness that we ALL share? What a difference that could make!
We are not each other's enemies. We are on the same side of this, if we CHOOSE to work together with each other, rather than continue to point fingers and avoid blame.
It is absolutely f'ing painful to be a woman in a world and not feel safe alone with a man, whether in the woods, late at night in a dark alley, or even in a home. AND, it is absolutely f'ing painful to be a man, longing for intimacy and connection with the beautiful, divine feminine, yet having been constantly bombarded from birth by carefully contrived messages of sexuality in pop culture, marketing, and social systems.
I can especially relate to this last part. I spent decades, painful decades, chasing women and sexuality in a frustrating and ultimately impossible mission to meet what I wasn't even aware were my underlying needs, of intimacy and connection. In fact, my attempts to meet those needs through sexuality actually prevented me from meeting them at all! But society NEVER taught me this. I learned a lot about math and science, aced all my tests, but didn't once get taught the difference between strategies and needs until I miraculously discovered Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication in my mid 40s!
Of course men are dangerous to women- we're in pain, we're struggling, and some of us have no idea how to contain that pain, no matter how hard we try. Is that an excuse for violence and abuse? NO! But if we want to eradicate that violence and abuse, the ONLY effective way to go about that is to get to the root of why it happens in the first place, what is the Dis-Ease that men experience which can so often lead to the tragic symptoms of violence and abuse.
We can solve these matters, if we work together. On the other hand, if men and women continue to fight each other, to exacerbate and exaggerate the experience of separation from one another, the tragic symptoms of that will continue to show up in more and more painful ways.
It's time to end the war, it's time to heal, it's time to create containers of safety, connection, and love. For ALL of us (including the bears!)
With love,
Colby
