Expanding awareness
Someone mentioned that they read a book about relating better to yourself and others. the author of this book posited that failures in how we treat others can be viewed as making choices with limited awareness.
For example, the driver who honks impatiently at the car ahead doesn't see the pedestrian at the crosswalk.
For example, the parent that scolds the child for hitting didn't hear the wprds exchanged beforehand.
For example, the man who can't live with himself for heartbreak, doesn't see that his pain is driving people away.
'Expanding your awareness' is one of those terms that is tainted by stereotypes of new age hippies and the drug culture. I am reluctant to embrace the term. Still I believe there is something to be said for its use.
Remembering that the same place looks different depending on where you are. Running is a great reminder of this. Each stretch of road or hill is different the closer to it you get. And depending on how you have eaten, slept, trained, or rested the run feels diffferent even doing the same path over and over.
Places have a psychological meaning as well. The furthest place I've run to. The diner for our first date. The place I go to study. Strange how we overlay meaning onto physical spaces--how it is possible for us to relate our minds and our bodies.
Maybe the same trick can be used with this awareness expanding. Physically moving to another location, driving a different route home, the same route but at a different time of day.
We often invoke the 'need for a new perspective' when we are unhappy or disappointed. But when we are happy? Do we stop expanding our awareness when we are enjoying life? Is there a line where we cross over into angst?
Modulating our awareness seems to be key. Manipulating it so that the frustrating becomes absurd, the annoying amusing, the dire shrinks to managebly problematic.