Vachon Imagined

What happens when we give the world a villain and a savior?

We make life easier to understand.

Someone is wrong.
Someone is responsible.
Someone needs to change.
Someone else will make it better.

And suddenly, we know where to put our anger and where to place our hope.

A relatively small percentage of people seem to consistently practice deep self-observation, particularly when they are hurt, threatened, or angry. We don’t know exactly how small, because there is no reliable way to measure it. Human consciousness is a moving target. We grow, change, become defensive, soften, and begin again.

Most of us move in and out of this.

And it isn’t as necessary when everything is going our way, which doesn’t happen for very long anyway.

The real question comes when life doesn’t cooperate.

Who do I become when I meet resistance to life within myself?

We can understand that our anger belongs to us while sitting peacefully at home, and then someone cuts us off in traffic and suddenly we’re prepared to testify before Congress.

That’s human.

The question is what happens next.

Do we create a villain?

That person is an idiot.

My boss is terrible.

Those people are the problem.

And then, just as quickly, do we create a savior?

Someone needs to fix this.

Someone needs to rescue me.

Someone needs to make this right.

Giving the world a villain gives us somewhere to put our pain. Giving it a savior gives us somewhere to put our responsibility.

Both can keep us looking outside ourselves.

But there is a cost.

When we make another person the source of our internal experience, we give them tremendous power over us.

Our peace depends on their behavior.

Our identity becomes organized around what they did.

Our hope becomes dependent on what someone else will do.

And now we aren’t free.

This doesn’t mean harmful behavior isn’t real. People hurt people. There is abuse, injustice, cruelty, and genuine wrongdoing.

The question is what we do with our experience of it.

I can say, That person harmed me, without deciding that person gets to determine who I become.

I can hold someone accountable without turning them into a monster.

I can recognize courage without turning someone into a savior.

I can disagree without creating an enemy.

The people who practice this consistently aren’t necessarily more intelligent, educated, or spiritual. They have learned to pause between what happens and what they make it mean.

And that pause is enormous.

Something happens.

I experience it.

I notice what it brings up in me.

I don’t have to immediately judge.

I don’t have to immediately find a villain.

And I don’t have to immediately look for someone to save me.

Instead of asking, “Who is doing this to me?” or “Who is going to fix this for me?”

I can ask,

“What is this revealing in me?”

We don’t know exactly how many people can live this way consistently, because we’re not measuring a fixed type of person. We’re watching human beings become conscious.

And that is always changing.

The moment you stop needing the world to give you a villain or a savior, you begin to discover what was happening in you all along.