Innocence

I was raised to observe and relate to people from the outside. In a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ mentality, the levels of vigilance in my family often ran high and a sense of self-protective separateness kept our nuclear family bonds tight to form illusions of safety and security. Trust became an intentionally icy street from which only a few were even permitted to drive down. And the guilt of others was the Northeast snow that sometimes didn’t let up for months. At the first sight of discord, mostly everyone else was to blame; guilty without ever even considered innocent.  

Something always felt wrong to me about this choice, which to my Jewish lineage, was considered much of a choice at all. After generations of persecution and misunderstanding, the idea that we could be anything other than overly-cautious meant that we could be mishandled again, and this time, it would be our own fault for not seeing it coming. Of course, through this black and white lens of division, the only way we thought we could find the peace that we seek within our closest relationships, was to force it by shutting “bad” people out and leaving the door just slightly ajar enough to let the “good” people in.

As a young child, this way of relating was puzzling and restrictive, particularly as I became more and more aware of consciousness and what was underneath people’s surface-level behaviors. It tugged on my spirit that knew otherwise, that was desperate to live my life on my own terms, in as pure of a place of peace that my knowing offered me. Some part of me always knew that most human behavior is merely linked to people doing the best they can in situations they wouldn’t choose, stuck in internal worlds they wish they knew how to change.

We choose our own self-righteousness for the sake of self-protection and become unconscious participants in the viscous cycle that perpetually creates more of the same. We fuel guilt, blame and conflict, and all other forms of projection and punishment that are insatiable and sadistic in nature. They find the wrong-doing in every situation, and without us being able to add a different perspective into the mix, they win the argument every time.

In my relationship with my partner, Mike, when we’re swimming tirelessly in the waters of projection, there are times when no amount of clarity brings relief to the stories of drama and chaos we create. We project our skewed realities and old histories onto each other so quickly and feverously that we miss the entirety of who the other is entirely. We mistakenly rely on our convenient stories to keep us stuck in a continual cycle of disconnection and delusion. Projection becomes a kind of punishment in which we pigeonhole each other into staying exactly as we see the other to be so we don’t have to face the uncomfortable realities of our own imperfection. As Byron Katie once eluded to, in these moments we choose rightness over happiness each and every time.

I’ve heard of countless stories and witnessed many conversations when men and women feel inclined to punish their partners for “bad behavior” and self-diagnosed incompetency. The scorecards of our partner’s perfection become breeding grounds for having the final word and driving a point home so much so that the original hurt or misunderstanding becomes secondary to the need to inflict emotional pain to distract from being hurt. This battle takes place on a heart-less playing field where both players lose at the mercy of the other, trading armor of victimhood and perpetrator until no one is left to play at all.

But, there is another way -- in which both partners mutually and willingly help each other to win. As I’ve come to shed my own conditioned layers of vigilance and worry, I’ve also exposed what has long been underneath --- a need for solace that eternally aims for peace. It is a place within me that eagerly looks for the good where it’s often hidden, impatiently orients towards re-connection when it’s been severed, and enthusiastically leans towards the ways in which I can smooth out my own illusion and suffering into honest contentment.

It’s not blindness to injustice, wrong-doing or boundary crossing; it’s reacting to such with a clear-heart and a willingness to stand for what is right for myself while also standing for what is right for another. When I don’t do this, I bring but a small portion of me to my relationship with Mike. Undoubtedly, I bring judgment that is fueled by my narrow viewpoint and need to be heard during times when his ears are closed to my words. I bring vigilance, separateness, righteousness and moral superiority, all in the place of love.

Thankfully, both Mike and I have dug pretty deep into our own wells of self-development and discovery, as well as each other’s. We know our old patterns, in and out of relationship, and we know exactly where the other lacks the muscle to hold tight when the going gets rough. And while this is a blessing, its dark side is also a potential curse. The more we know each other’s old wounds, the more ammo we have to project onto each other with. In these moments, there’s nothing worse than showing the person we love our wounds and demons, whether consciously or not, and waiting as the other knowingly punishes us for our imperfections. It’s a trap that we set for each other and wonder why relationship after relationship we’re met with the same incompatibilities and dissatisfactions in the form of different person acting more and more like old flames we once knew.

It’s in these places where we are forced make the choice; push the other overboard or save the other before the drowning takes place. The only thing stopping me in these emotionally life or death moments from choosing the latter is recognizing Mike’s innocent imperfection, that in actuality, makes me want to rescue him time and again versus knowingly letting him drown in his own momentary self-delusion. In the moments where I’m the “guilty” one to blame, I regain my footing when he practices rescuing me before my own emotional hijacking capsizes my boat and tries to drag him under with it.

When I practice seeing him in his innocence, nothing that I deem to be “right” needs to be swept under the rug but instead brought to his attention with the heart-knowing that in his hardest moments, he’s merely forgotten. During times when Mike’s heart is hidden to himself, he’s undoubtedly going to hide it from me. It is my job, not only as his partner but as a fellow human, to see him in his innocence, and not as a helpless child but as a human incarnation of the aspect of open-hearted compassion and love that lives within each of us. Instead of punishing him for his “faults,” I actively choose to celebrate him for the innocent man that he is.

I’m also acutely aware that the way I treat him in these moments has everything to do with my own pain as it does with his. In the worst of times, the pain of his disconnection is a cold reminder of what it is like to live on earth without the specific type of warmth and love I didn’t know I was missing as a child. It triggers my old wounds as I desperately reach out for touch that his wounds won’t let him offer. Sometimes, though rarely now, his words are a harsh blow that defend his weeping heart, and I forget that remembrance as I tend to the impact of my own broken-heartedness. It has in the past often felt impossible to find the balance of open-heartedness and self-preservation, as if to keep one I was forced to give up the other.

This doesn’t mean that I condone his impact on me; it merely means I don’t take it at face value. I would be missing the intense angelic being who is seeking remembrance instead of affirmation of his wrong-ness. When I look through my lens of innocence, the man in front of me is a perfect creation who has been merely conditioned to believe otherwise at times.

We’re only ever reflecting our internal state back at the world and we’re only ever asking for the truth of who we really are to be reflected back to us. We all hide our hearts to the reality of who we are. And it takes a fierce commitment to that truth to break through our self-created illusions of separateness, guilt and blame. The innocence of who Mike is not only speaks to the depth of his pain but even more importantly to the depth of his divinity. There’s a direct relationship between his level of wounding that is reciprocal to the beauty that lives underneath it. When I don’t hold him to his behaviors but instead to the man I’ve always seen underneath, his back can naturally come off the wall from which he often puts himself. 

Without innocence, the pain of punishment keeps us swimming in the waters of our deepest wounds of not-enough-ness and imperfection. Imagine a world where instead everyone was always seen as this innocent. No matter the negative behavior, bad deed done, mis-attuned miscommunication, every person is always considered to be inherently good and divine in their own way. How many people in our lives, including our partners, are practiced at reflecting to us who we really are? And how much of that reflecting are we gifting to them?

When we don’t see others in their innocence, we’re depriving them of experiencing their own divine being --- their undeniable aspect of God incarnated here on earth. We re-connect through our innocence. We re-habilitate each other and our planet through our innocence. When it comes to our most intimate relationships, the deep union that many of us are longing for is found in the innocence we share and the infinite love that we discover together.