The New Ideas Blog

As humans we tend to measure people and their ways in our minds, based not on any objective view of things, but on our own inclinations and preferences. In other words, how we dress is the measure for what is “normal,” and our own customs are the “correct” ones. Essentially we tend to feel that we are the measure of all things. This tendency makes us very unpleasant at times.

I first thought about this many years ago after cleaning a house (one of 60 various jobs I’ve had) and noting how horribly dirty it was. I told the “horror story” repeatedly. Later I caught myself telling another true story about a home I knew of where the children were told to walk on the edge of the stairs so a wear pattern didn’t develop in the middle, and the furniture was only for special events, and the kitchen floor was clean enough to eat off of.

I realized that in both cases I was being very critical of other people’s choices and lifestyle. It is common to criticize “slobs” and “uptight” people. But it occurred to me that what I was implying was that my own standards were the “obvious” measure. For example, I might have left newspapers on the coffee table, but not too many and not too long. I had a clean house, but not too clean. I was the standard, and all who deviated from my ways were fair targets for a critical opinion.

This is silly, of course, and yet if you watch yourself and others you’ll find that we all fall into this habit at times. There is no final “objective measure” of how clean all humans “should” be, how polite they should be, or what customs they should follow. And to the extent that there may be good reasons for one particular measure or another, it’s still dishonest to say that we carefully and rationally considered all facts to arrive at the perfect measure and that’s why we are right there where we and all others should be.

I used to walk a lot in the past because I had no car, or just because I preferred to walk. When you walk around a town you have to cross a lot of streets. Typically, there is a feeling that you should rush across if cars are waiting. This is the norm. I asked a friend about this once, and he replied “Of course you should hurry across when cars are waiting. That’s just reasonable.”

Given the honking horns and dirty looks we pedestrians get when we don’t rush, it seems that most drivers share that opinion. Maybe you do too. Now lets look at this more closely, from the perspective of the person walking.

Living in Tucson, we had to sometimes cross dozens of streets daily as we went downtown. For a moment, consider how ridiculous it would be to be stressed out and sweaty from running across streets every few minutes all day, just to allow drivers who are sitting comfortably in air-conditioned cars to get where they’re going a minute earlier. Does this really make any sense at all? Do those who walk or use a bicycle have no right at all to go anywhere unless they scurry like rats across every intersection? Is there some special reason why they should make themselves hot and uncomfortable rather than the drivers simply waiting comfortably for the extra few seconds?

This is an example of using oneself as the measure of “how things should be.” When people only drive, they tend to see things from a certain perspective. Cars - meaning the people in them - are more important than mere pedestrians, who must therefore get out of their way as fast as possible. When laid out plainly like this it seems ugly, but that is a common perspective.

You are not the measure. I am not the measure. In the end, there is not much use for the whole concept of “how things should be measured” (although I like the more benign idea of “how things could be”). Why not simply accept that everyone has their own understandings and ways of doing things, and that there is no cause for anger or nasty comments (or honking horns) if the standards of others differ from your own. Do this and you’ll suffer from less stress and negativity, and impose it less on others.

How do you arrive at this state of more peace of mind and less anger and stress? By noticing that there is always more than one perspective, that you will never know everything, that you too are judged by others the same way you judge, and that the whole game of “I am the measure of all things” is without any constructive value.

Easy to say, but sometime this month you and I both will very likely judge some poor store clerk who “clearly” “should” ring up the orders faster - because after all we know just how fast a person should do such a job. Or we may note that a friend who works only ten hours weekly is lazy, while one who works 70 hours is “missing out on life,” since we certainly know the right number of hours a person should work, and what “life” should consist of - even for others.

It is tough to avoid, and you may already have arguments going on in your head about how “some people ARE lazy,” and “it isn’t reasonable to have no standards against which to measure the way people or things should be.” These arguments are probably correct, but they miss the point. They only suggest that if you want some kind of “true” standards, you better get busy thinking more deeply about how to discover them, because thinking had little to do with how you arrived at them to begin with. And as I said before, the sense that “I am the measure of all things” is a game without constructive value.

What do you get from it? You get stress, irritation, anger - and the health problems that come from these. What does it do to your mind? It causes you to focus on the negative. What does it do to others? It hurts them. How can you actually use such measurement in any case? Only to justify your negative feelings. So what value does it have? None.

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Tags: people, standards, the measure of all things

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am and is filed under Self Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.