Hey, all you brave seekers out there,
I’ve had a lot of reasons lately to think about the ways that people live the “same” values with ever-so-subtle differences.
Subtle, that is, until nuances of the same value – like, valuing conservation and sustainable living, for instance – are interpreted in ways that take a very different shape in action. Suddenly, I might find myself connected to someone who feels unexpectedly misaligned with my values.
For example: “I thought we both cared about saving the planet, and I was inspired by the pollinator garden you built on your property … but then I found out that you also have an Amazon prime account and order things through the supply chain all the time, and that is objectively bad for the planet.” (this is just an example, no shade to Prime users out there – I have an account myself.)
For the speaker, this is a hypocritical contradiction they couldn’t live with – while I imagine that for the friend, they either don’t know about Amazon’s carbon footprint and questionable business practices … or they do and for whatever reasons, have judged the contributions of the technology to be more valuable to their life than the cost of the extra labor it would take to use alternative paths (as I do in my own hypocrisy on this subject).
What I think I’m learning for myself, at least, is that feeling aligned with someone’s values is how I build trust with people in relationships. When I think we have the same values, I trust them more. When I trust someone, I feel safer to be vulnerable: safe enough to share my heart, and safe enough to trust them to help me with practical things that I really need.
To continue the example: based on my read about your pollinator garden, perhaps I thought we were on the same page enough to start dating you, or to hire you, or to trust you taking care of my kids.
It’s really painful when I think I’m on the same page with someone, I open up, and then they do or say something that shocks me. It’s like finding out that the same-page I thought we were on together is indeed the same place in the same chapter of the same story … but in a different version or edition or translation than the book I’m reading. Depending on the variation, it might even feel like a betrayal.
When this dynamic emerges in a connection, it can end close relationships between individuals. When it happens in a community setting, it can cause people who think that they’re united under the banner of certain value(s) to dissolve into in-fighting amongst themselves.
At a time in our culture when it has never been more important to resist separation, I think it’s mission-critical that we learn how to co-exist and support each other even if it seems like our values are different – or, even when our values really are differentOr, even when we both idealize the same value, but because [trauma, capitalism, conditioning], one of the people or groups is blocked in very specific ways from embodying or living the value in a way that the other can trust.
What it comes down to, I think, is calibrating our degrees of trust in one another. Trust can’t be a blanket statement, and it needs to be ok to trust someone with some things, and not others.
After experiencing this dynamic three times a row recently – once in a very close partnership, once in a community conflict I’m proximate to, and once in organizing an event I was directly involved in – my biggest takeaway is that I get to choose how close I keep the people around me. The part of me that wants to trust everyone and live in a kumbaya world is often motivated to try to get the absolute most I can out of every connection – to be as close and as trusting as possible, because connection is the answer, right?
I’ve learned that I need to take whatever time it takes to build the kind of trust with someone that reveals those subtle, nuanced differences in our values – before I trust them with the big stuff: with my survival needs, or my children’s needs, or the future of my business. There are so many other things I need support and reciprocity for in community relationships – things that I could trust someone to hold, without including them in my closest inner circle.
Rather than seeing community in such black and white terms – “you’re either on my team, or you’re not” – what would it be like if we considered community relationships, and the needs we get met in community, on a wide spectrum of trust?
I can trust this person to take care of my dog when I go out of town, but I don’t think I could trust them to show up on time or do what they say they’re going to do as a co-worker.
I trust this person to fight for a world where we prioritize everyone’s liberation, but I don’t trust them to co-parent children with me.
I can trust this person to show up and listen to me when I need a friendly ear or relationship advice, but I don’t trust them to be able to hold my core trauma the way I need to be held.
I can trust this person to advocate for me in our shared inequity/lived experience, but I don’t trust them to be able to live together.
We each have so many needs, far more than our culture has ever made it permissible to ask for each other’s support around. There’s no reason why we can’t get some of those needs met from people who are reading different editions of the same book we are. And, just because I personally don’t trust someone to hold certain things, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be trustworthy to hold those things in another relationship with a different person.
It’s always possible to deepen our relationships and find more same-pageness with each other. We can engage in healing work that really shifts one party or the other in a material way … but that kind of work has to be consensual, and it has to begin with strong clarity around the differences in values or subtle-values in the present moment, and a non-attachment to outcomes.
This is all probably just a fancy way of saying … boundaries are important. It makes me wonder if a better way to talk about boundaries is to talk about “authentically calibrated trust.”
One of the things I love most about SeekHealing events is the opportunity to practice vulnerability and trust with strangers. It’s one of the best laboratories I’ve ever experienced to be able to practice noticing my boundaries around trust in real time. I can choose how much I share in a circle, or how willing I am to show up for another seeker and in what ways (like volunteering on a Connection Mission, or signing up for a Seeker Pair, or answering a call on the Listening Line). Even when we’re sitting and listening to each other in a Connection Practice meeting, we get to practice consent every step of the way.
It’s taught me that while vulnerability always leads to connection, there are degrees of vulnerability that change depending on who’s in the circle and who I’m connecting with. Finding the degree that’s most aligned with my trust in a given moment is what true authenticity is all about.
If you haven’t been to a public, open Connection Practice meeting (CPM) before – I encourage you to give it a try for this reason. Connection Practices that are organized by shared lived experience (like our Recovery CPMs, BIPOC CPMs, Elder CPMs, etc…) make trust more automatically accessible. It’s been a beautiful growth experience for me to feel into how I calibrate my vulnerability in those meetings differently than when I’m sitting next to someone very different from me, or who might trigger me in some ways. And the beauty of the Seek container is that there’s space for that – both for my trigger, and my authentic calibrations of trust.
