I Know You: An Ethic of Meeting pt. 2

It’s been about a month since my last post on this subject, the content of meeting, of meeting someone for the first time (and I'm talking about meeting people in general). My reasons for neglecting this post is, I suppose, irrelevant, so I’ll just get to it.

First of all, let’s talk about the title. In my previous post I mentioned a few times about the possibility--actually the inevitability--of being wrong in the event of getting to know another. People have preconceived notions about others all the time, before, as and after they meet them.

“She’s boring.”

“He’s ignorant.”

“They’re sheltered.” Whatever.

People (and I’m included) think they know another, even before they introduce themselves. Only to ourselves, because we are obviously the great epicenter of knowledge and understanding, we proudly proclaim “I know you.” They become the embodied replica of the image we pronounced them to be in our minds. In other words, we snuff out any possibility of truly knowing them. Thus, the ironic, “I Know You.”

So, how should meeting go down? I think a lot could be said here, but I’d like to start my humble and simple reflection off by asking another, different question: How confident are you that your prejudgments of people are sound, even before you meet them? In other words, are you surprised when you’re wrong?

If you are surprised that you were wrong about a person, after realizing that your prejudgments were poorly founded or misconstrued, this may be because you understand, even on a subconscious level, that you are superior. You may believe that your interpretation of others are correct even before meeting them. This is prideful because, when surprised, you reveal that you had little room for error or being wrong. You thought your view was airtight and built strong, when actually you built on sand. You weren’t leaving any openness, possibility of change or instruction--particularly from the person it mattered most, the other person. In a word, you weren’t willing to receive.

A person and the elements of the Eucharist, here, are in common. You never take Communion. You always receive it. So it is with people.

This is actually the only way you can know another person. You must receive them, as they are, as they give themselves to you. A person is a gift they give to you.

Pride says, I do not want your gift, I do not want you. Pride proclaims--proudly, sinfully and all alone--I reject you. I reject you as you and instead, I insist in my prejudgments. I will remain steadfast in what I thought before, though, now, I have evidence to believe otherwise.

Or maybe you weren’t being intentionally closed-off. Perhaps you just built a nice conceptual structure, a framework to understand someone--which is difficult to move, by the way. To usher a metaphor, you put that person in a box. But what does this mean?

When I think of putting something or some things in a box, I think of organization and categorization. I want to put like items together. After, I label my box and put it away somewhere out of the way.

Employing this metaphor, it seems that to put someone in a box means that you (think you) understand them, categorize them and label them. Then, you put it all away, down in the depths of the mind’s abyss. You think you know someone or how they will react or what they will say and--Bam!--then they do something you weren’t expecting, something out of the your ordinary, something out of the your box.

Then you are, again, surprised.

Now I don't think the goal is to become dull to where nothing surprises. Getting to know--receiving--another is, if nothing else, surprising. People's stories shock and their histories astound. But the surprise is sprung from a recognition that the other is a mystery, a complex world, an awe-inspiring beauty.

I can't help but wonder if the handshake is no help to us anymore (and this is coming from a firm believer in the handshake). What if, instead of clasping hands, we, following the picture's example, opened our palms and lowered our arms to one another as an embodied reminder what getting to know another is all about. It's about, I think, receiving.

I Know You: An Ethic of Meeting pt. 1

[Here are some chopped thoughts. Hopefully there will be a 2nd part to this soon.]

Meeting new people is an intriguing activity. For some it’s terrifying and for others it’s electrifying--in a good way, of course. It is somewhere in the middle for me, though I’m very aware the middle between terrifying and electrifyingly good is hard to place; it’s a vast space. But it’s true. And I’ve been doing a lot of it recently.

Many know but I’m sure some are unaware that I am currently in my third week of an internship at Eastside Foursquare Church in Bothell, Washington. Thus I’ve been meeting people, lots of them. And it’s good, I enjoy it, sometimes.

Someone I work closely with, after “knowing” each other for only a few days, said to me, while chipping away at our morning chore, “I didn’t think there was much to you.” “Oh, jee, thanks loser!,” I thought to myself. My superego and id compromised. I said something else. But it’s funny. What this person thought of me wasn’t who I was, nor am. So where did these thoughts of me come from? From where did this person based her conclusions? That’s what I want to know.

But realizations like this, but mostly on my part--as in, I’m the one doing the realizing--have been happening a lot and it’s because of the number of people I’ve met. I’ve been floored by how many times I’ve been wrong about someone; like really wrong. This has got me thinking about what it is to meet someone and how it should be done, the ethics behind this exchange. I wonder, is there a proper way to meet someone?

I’m not talking about what’s “seen”, the technique of your handshake or your introductory speech like, “Hey, what’s up, I’m Nick.” I’m talking about the covert, hidden and incognito, what’s taking place inside your mind. What’s of more interest to me is one’s preconceived notions, their judgments about ‘the other.’ Anytime two people come together, for anything really, things gets, well, complicated. Everything that there was one of, there’s now two; two personalities, two interpretations, two preconceived notions, two of what one thinks of the other.

But, how does this thinking-of-the-other come about? Where and how is it formed? Well, for starters, I can hear what someone says and the manner of their saying it. I can interpret that and configure what I think they are, what they’re like. But I can also judge someone long before I hear the words of their mouth. I need not a poem, song or spoken word. All I need is observation, to see them. I can make judgments based on their actions.

But all this boils down to a finer point, I think. We can package this together under a single word because words and actions don’t happen apart from a body. Essentially, bodies are the origin, they are what we have to work with, so to speak. They are what we see. They are what we notice and consider and judge. This can be a scary thought.

A new friend and fellow intern, Karina, a student at SPU, sent me a link to a lecture one of her theology professors spoke at Wheaton College--a young, mixed man, half black and half white. A quote of his from early in the lecture grounded itself in my mind, “My body was already doing work.” In other words, before he ever opened his mouth to speak and before he walked down a hallway to teach, his body was being interpreted. People were trying to understand him, organize his body and categorize him.

What do I think when I see a brown woman? What do I see when I see an overweight man?

In our culture where bodies can easily be divulsed from mind or personality and where people consume other’s bodies, we understand what it means to look upon a body or face and exegete it. We gaze upon someone and quickly, often without conscious oversight, draw out a meaning. Interpretation is almost inevitable and a second nature activity.

Most of what I “think” will be subconscious, not explicit. I wonder how easily I place some mental framework, my understanding of a person on them. This leads me back to what I said earlier: I’m usually wrong and sometimes surprised that I am. And this has been good for me to realize.

So what does it mean that I am usually wrong about people I meet? How should this inform an ethic of meeting (if such a thing is even necessary)? What part does someone’s body, if any, play in all this?