Questioning our ways and beliefs
Most of what I write about is observed behavior. Mostly my own, but other peoples as well, and I feel sometimes like what I write comes off as offensive, critical, or judgmental, when that’s really not my intention. I am just endlessly curious to understand why we all do what we do, and the reasons why? What influenced us to be the way we are?
My dad came to visit recently. I noticed that he has a certain way of eating apples. He cuts off 1/4 (or so) of the apple, removing a portion of the top, bottom, and sides, and discards them. Then he carves up the flesh to eat, and leaves substantial meat on and around the core that gets discarded. I eat apples completely opposite of him. I eat everything except the seeds and the stem (the only parts that are inedible). I do that, in part, because of my obsession with food waste. Seeing the the way he ate his apple made me so curious to know how two people from the same household could have such drastically different ways of eating an apple. So I asked him why he ate it that way.
When I first asked him he brushed me off, and didn’t want to discuss it because he thought I was just going to judge and reprimand him (which in fairness I have a tendency to do). But that wasn’t my intention. I know that everything we do in life and the way in which we do it is because of some learned experience from a previous time in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not (and most of the time we’re not). And so I was curious to know what his was, so I could begin to bridge the gap between his method and mine.
After I assured him that I really wasn’t looking to be critical, that I wasn’t asking him to change his ways, and that I would be happy to eat the pieces he didn’t want, he agreed to engage. He told me that the skin of the apple irritates his lips. He used to peel them, but as time went on it became easier to just carve it up the way he did, that bottom and top of the apple are dirty bits, and that he never considered eating the core, because no one around him ever did.vIt’s a small and relatively inconsequential example, but it’s interesting to me.
Everyone has their own ways of doing the same things, their own beliefs about the same topics, different reasons for the same interests, and the thing I get off on is knowing why. I don’t know why I do, but it is the thing that interests me most in life. Trying to figure out what made the person I see standing in front of me, and why they’ve come to live the life they live. I think trying to understand my own tendencies is what’s made me even more aware of it in other people’s live as well. You can only learn so much from studying yourself, and some of the most important lessons I’ve learned about what to do and not to do have come from observing others.
It’s fascinating to me how we can go through periods of our lives without wondering if an alternative method is possible. In Boyd Varty’s book The Lion Trackers Guide to Life, he has this great quote:
“I suspect that part of being a man is that you will as a matter of course fall asleep in your own life. It will happen. Knowing this seems important to me.”
I know that’s been the case for me. Throughout my 20s I had a single-minded view of what it took to achieve success. I believed that working long and stressful hours was the only way. That it didn’t matter if you enjoyed it or not, the point was to work and make money. And throughout all my years I never questioned it or wondered if there was an alternative path. Looking back now on how close minded I was about it is scares me, because I know there’s a belief I carry right now that one day will be shattered. But at the time I questioned other people who were not of this mindset. I thought they were just fooling themselves. That the way I was doing it was the only way.
It wasn’t until I started reading books on business, biographies of successful people, and self-improvement, plus the physical toll of stress caught up to me, that I began to question this method. It wasn’t until I got into triathlons and sat in meetings thinking how I’d rather be on a 6 hour ride than in a meeting for an hour, that I started to wonder if there was more to life. And the more I time I spent seeking out answers, and talking to colleagues and mentors about my newfound conflict, the more I learned that alternatives existed.
It happened to me with food. For years I had an unhealthy relationship with food, with a misguided view of what carbohydrates and sugar do to the body. During this time bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oatmeal, and sugar were the enemy. I proudly sent back bread baskets at restaurants, routinely ordered the salmon with mixed vegetables, and turned down dessert, usually opting for a protein shake instead when I got home. And I felt good about it. I was convinced I was doing the right thing, and those foods would kill me, so I didn’t let myself indulge.
On the same visit by my father, the four of us, his girlfriend, my fiancée, me, and him, were all standing around the kitchen eating pastries I had bought for their visit. My dad said he’d never have pictured in a million years standing in my kitchen eating pastries with me. His girlfriend asked why, to which he explained the way I used to vilify carbohydrates and sugar. Dead serious, and with a concerned look on her face, she turned to me and asked, “Why did you torture yourself like that?”
To me the answer was obvious, but to her, someone that never had an unhealthy relationship with food, she couldn’t understand how someone could be so cruel to themselves over something she enjoyed her whole life. And it’s taking me some years to undo that programming, but I now happily include all of those foods in my diet. And I feel grreat.
A lot of times we go through life with set beliefs that we picked up from our parents, our friends, the paper, a movie, a TV show, and it isn’t until we read, hear, or see something different that we question our thinking. Or we have an unexpected experience that raises doubts in our mind about what we once believed. Or we visit our annoying son who even at the age of 39 can’t help but keep asking “yea but why?” And it’s only then, if we’re open to it, do we begin to question ourselves, and search for answers.
I decided a long time ago that I have no interest in fighting with my fiancé. She’s the first and only partner I’ve ever loved. And when we’re at odds it feels like nothing is right, so I try my best to avoid fighting. But for some reason every now and then I forget that, and we get into an argument that I immediately regret. If I don’t want to fight with her, then what’s the reason I’m fighting? There’s got to be a reason that I’m just not tuned into right now. Some underlying feeling manifesting itself as anger or irritation because I haven’t addressed it. And maybe if I can figure it out, then I can work on changing it, so we don’t fight about it anymore.
That’s the type of stuff I like to explore and observe. Both in myself and in others. I want to understand the reasons, so that I can change my behavior later, or so that I can show up for someone in the best possible way. I want to understand why so that I can avoid making the same mistake 10 times, and maybe limit it to 1, 2, or 3 times before getting it right. I want to understand so that I can be aware of what’s influencing the things I’m saying, and not saying, and the things I’m doing, and not doing. I want to know it all.
I want to know because none of us act without prior influence and experience impacting our behaviors, and, like Boyd Varty says, knowing that seems important to me. And I believe understanding that influence is the first step to getting to know someone, and myself. So I apologize in advance if you read a story that sounds familiar here (sorry dad). Because I’m not being critical, I’m working through understanding why, in the hopes of learning something new.