— Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Founder and Director

Sometimes - often, lately - I find myself in disbelief at what other people believe.
 
It happened this past summer as I worked on a project with other volunteers.  We’d come together from two different parts of the community, and thought we were aligned in support of both our shared goals and each group’s specific priorities.  When it became painfully apparent that wasn’t the case, my colleagues began to say, almost daily, “But don’t they see?”
 
Well, no, I said - clearly not.  And if we’d continued asking that question, we might as well have been hollering into the wind. 
 
When I was a kid and the wind was so fierce the forecasters warned all to abandon the beach, my father would take us there. We’d tumble from the car into the kind of wind you can lean hard against until you’d fall on your face if the wind wasn’t keeping you up.  The kind of wind that makes you squint to keep out the sand, your ears filled with the double roar of moving air and crashing waves. We’d have to plant our feet, and our arms would blow like rag doll arms.
 
We couldn’t hear, we couldn’t see, we couldn’t move.  When my parents called us back to the car, we’d have to drop to our knees to hear them.
 
Hollering into that kind of wind is not a position from which to make change.
 
Still, right now especially in the U.S., people from all along the political spectrum stand stubbornly in disbelief, saying over and over again, “Don’t they see?”
 
The parable of the unseeing men and the elephant is thousands of years old and well-known. Originating on the Indian subcontinent, the story has made its way into the teachings of Hindus and Buddhists, Sufis and Jains.  In each story, a group of unseeing men – some versions say they are blind, some say it was a deeply dark night – come across an elephant, about which none of them knows a thing.
 
They disagree about the truth of this animal. Hand on the tail – it is like a rope, hand on a leg- like a tree trunk, on a flank- like a wall, on an ear – like a fan.
 
The story’s meaning is clear: position and perception drive belief.  In some versions, the men come to blows over their differences. The thing is, from where they stand, they truly cannot perceive what the other is perceiving.  
 
When I ask that question, “Don’t you see?”  I will generally get one answer, No.  The question is hardly worth asking, then, if what I want is for things to change.
 
What if I drop out of my stubborn stance, and ask instead a different question, “What do you see?”
 
A week from now, millions of people will be stunned, angry, frightened – or all three, because of the results of the U.S. presidential election.  Regardless of if I’m among them or not, I can guarantee I’ll still be hearing some version of “don’t they see?”
 
But I won’t be asking that question anymore.  I’ll have shifted my stance, dropped to my knees, so to speak, into earnest curiosity – truly seeking to know what others perceive.
 
Because then I can do something.  I might offer compassion, which could soften a heart and lead to connection that could lead to peace.  Or I might  keep my council, listening cooly in order to find new tactics for resisting oppression, cruel limitations, and violence.
 
Or maybe I won’t,  but there is a much better chance I’ll contribute to change if I stop hollering into the wind.

Thank you for thinking with us.