Owning the power of transference....

Why are we such conspiracy theorists? People who believe in conspiracies are held up in our society to be crazy and psychotic. But we all do it. At every job I have ever had, I have worked with people who complain complain complain (including me). They complain that the bosses don't pay enough, as though they are purposely filling their pockets just to deny their lowly minions. People complain about new policies, forms, and procedures, as though their boss actually took the time out of his busy schedule just to plan ways to make his employees' lives miserable. It happens in every day life too. Something goes wrong and we immediately are angered, blaming the person responsible as though they did it on purpose. It happened to me just the other day. I sent in a rebate for my new cell phone, and received a notice back saying it was denied because of this reason or that, which I knew was false. Instead of accepting the fact and focusing on the solution, I instantly became angry. How could they interfere with my life and cause me to waste my extremely limited time by calling them to make sure they know how to do their job? So when I did pick up the phone it turns out the guy just reversed two of the numbers in my phone number. A harmless mistake anyone could have made, and much less devastating of a mistake than I'm sure I make all the time. Thank goodness I didn't take my anger out on the operator. And, how much time did I really "waste" on the phone with her? 5 minutes, maybe.

When I think about how many people are on this planet each following his or her own interests, it amazes me that we all don't just collide and explode every second. But somehow it all manages to work out, for the most part. No one is out simply to hurt other people. We just get blinded by whatever need we happen to be hunting at that moment in time for our own survival. And, sometimes that affects others. Always it affects others. It's like the theory of transference in criminology. No two objects can come into contact with each other without leaving some physical trace on one another. So it is with all situations in life, though in life the contact doesn't have to be physical, and the traces left could be emotional, mental, etc. The old saying "put yourself in their shoes" then applies. Only we have to go a little deeper than that. Maybe the guy has dyslexia, maybe he was extremely tired because he was up all night with his baby, maybe his keyboard malfunctioned, maybe he just made an honest mistake, or maybe shit just happens. But just like at the hotel where I work, we have to have each others' backs. When one person makes a mistake, the next person has to catch it. No blame. But we have to understand everyone makes mistakes, not one person knows the perfect solution to anything, and we all have our own agenda which sometimes makes us blind to that of others.

I read an amazing book once called Turning Stones about a man who was thrown into the arena of child welfare. It depicted some of the cases he worked on, and also included a story of a trip he took once where he saw a busload of tourists. He watched one of them turning stones over that she found on the ground. When he asked her why she did this, she said it was her way of making her impact on that one place in the world. She took nothing from it; she left nothing behind. But just turning over one stone each place she went was her way of saying "I was here". Every time we have any contact with others, we are essentially turning them over, making an impact. We just have to keep in mind that we have this effect on people, and own that power. Because it can do a lot of bad, or a lot of good.