Human Stories

Many of you have heard me say and encourage people in my sessions to practice self-care. For example, I invite people to fall asleep during my sessions, to move or dance when they feel like it, to leave a session midway, to ask for empathy instead of staying with the group, etc.

By practicing listening to ourselves, we naturally begin to notice how different we are from others. Each of us needs different things in order to be present and to flourish.
We have different bodies, different neural wirings, different backgrounds, different traumas…
We are not the same, we are different, we are diversity.
I call it: ‘Living diversity’ – as a core quality I long for and actively seek in life.

And yet: I remember, in my twenties, I had a friend who often said to me, “Yoram, be normal!”. This sentence shook me deeply every time I heard it. It’s already so scary for me to allow myself to be honest and show how different I am — fearing that if I’m not “normal,” I’ll be cast out from the human tribe. Hearing “Be normal” made me lose the last bit of courage I had to ‘live the diversity I am’.

For example, my truth is:

• I often don’t enjoy chitchat.
• I don’t like smiling when I say hello (because I often feel uncomfortable rather than happy).
• I prefer to stop people in the middle of their speech when they use more words than I enjoy hearing.
• I love honoring the rhythm of my own walk, even when walking with others — which often means I prefer being alone rather than adjusting myself.
• I say “no” to many of my friends’ (and girlfriend’s) requests (while fearing they or she might choose to leave me)…

To follow my truth is damn scary – I’m afraid others might get hurt, might think I don’t like them, or that I’m arrogant… and might cast me out.

Honesty is staying loyal to Nature/God:

(Perhaps) my deepest joy is being true to myself: to live with no gap between what I feel inside and what I show outside.
For me, being true to myself means being true to Nature (or some would call it God): to honor my feelings and needs – the voice of nature’s wisdom speaking through my body. Each time I betray that truth, it hurts – I experience it as a real, physical pain in my body.

Supporting others in ‘Living diversity’: 

And it’s the same the other way around: when people around me feel safe enough to be themselves with me, everything they do becomes Art in my eyes – deeply engaging and alive. When people feel safe to be themselves, everything becomes so funny – the way they react, the way they speak, every movement is a surprise! Art for me is the allowance to show truth – for truth itself is all-attractive.

– Diversity is Crucial –

Diversity in nature is vital – The fact that there are different beings allows life to flourish:

• Bees pollinate plants.
• Trees and phytoplankton produce oxygen.
• Birds spread seeds across vast distances through their droppings.
• The Amazon rainforest depends on dust carried by the wind all the way from the Sahara Desert in Africa.
• Reproduction among close relatives (whether in humans, animals, or plants) is dangerous and prevents healthy genetic diversity
• Etc., etc.

Diversity is the heartbeat of life. Life is not equal, not “normal,” and not the same. Life thrives on variety, not conformity.

And yet, why is it so hard to welcome diversity among human beings? Where does this sentence “Be normal” come from? How can we deeply and wholeheartedly support one another in being different, in being fully ourselves, and be celebrated for our diversity?

Eliminating diversity:

When something disturbs us, our impulse is to try to eliminate it. For example:
In 1958, China launched a campaign to eliminate sparrows, believing the birds were stealing grain. Millions of citizens killed sparrows by destroying nests and forcing the birds to die of exhaustion, nearly wiping them out within a year.
Without sparrows, insects multiplied uncontrollably, devastating crops and contributing to the Great Chinese Famine, which killed tens of millions of people.

Trying to eliminate diversity, often without even realizing it, risks creating very costly side effects…

And we do the same among each others, all day long:

Consciously and, most often, unconsciously, I/we do the same to our partners, our children, our friends, and our colleagues. Whenever they behave in ways that disturb us (that don’t meet our needs), we try to eliminate or change that behavior – and by doing so, we risk eliminating diversity. We risk creating a very costly side effect.

For example (some examples are mine, while others are from people close to me):

• Why is my girlfriend so disorganized? → Trying to eliminate: she should learn to be more systematic.
• Why doesn’t my partner make love with me more often? → Trying to eliminate: they need to see a therapist to unblock their sexuality. And why can’t they be more open or emotionally available? → They should also heal their trauma with their Mother.
• Why can’t my child focus and can never rest? → Trying to eliminate: Shall we give them Ritalin? (OMG, I have so much compassion for the complexity of this choice, and I’m NOT saying it’s ‘wrong’ to give Ritalin. It’s a difficult decision!)
• Why is my mother so afraid of everything? → Trying to eliminate: Judging she needs to learn that life is safe and stop projecting her fears onto everyone (especially me).
• Why don’t my friends listen the way I listen to them? → Trying to eliminate: Let’s send them to learn NVC 🙂.

In nature, you would never see a tree telling a bird, “I don’t like how you behave- stop eating my fruit and pooping everywhere!”. If a tree were to refuse a bird to eat its fruit, it would unknowingly reject its own reproduction system.
Nature (including human nature) is profoundly intelligent. We perceive only a whisper of its vastness.

So what can we do instead?
Where lies the key to supporting people be themselves and allowing diversity?

Mourning:

‘Mourning’ is THE key to shifting from demand energy (from the urge to change the other and eliminate their perceived ‘wrongness’) toward a new creativity that is more life-sustaining.When I wish to change or eliminate, it’s because I have a beautiful need behind it. And yet, trying to change them often creates a painful side effect. For example:

• If I try to grow vegetables in my garden and snails eats all my veggies just before they are ripe, it’s painful. I have a need to protect my veggies.
  Wanting to use pesticides (eliminate) is an attempt to meet that need for protection.
  Painful side effect: In the long run, poisoning the very earth that feeds me will not protect me — it will poison me. And it may also lead to the decline of bees (and therefore of vegetables), or a “pesticide treadmill.”
• And it’s the same with my ex-girlfriend twenty-five years ago: she once hinted that she didn’t want to make love with me. I got scared. I had a need for closeness, intimacy, and sexual expression. So I hinted back to her that it might be worthwhile to try (eliminate her “no”) – that by giving it a chance, she might become aroused and enjoy it.
  Painful side effect: She agreed, and soon after, she lost all sexual desire toward me, forever. Making love with me became, for her, like going to work – a duty rather than a passion.
• And I have hundreds of such examples.

Mourning is an antidote to “trying to change”:

“To mourn” means to sit with my pain, sadness, or sense of being lost. Mourning creates (what in the Alexander Technique is called) an “inhibition” – the capacity to pause, not act immediately, but instead to sit with my pain or discomfort, to sit with my needs, and wait until a more life-serving action or habit can arise naturally. For example:

• To choose not to give my child Ritalin, but to stay with the pain (and the complaints from their teachers and siblings…), to sit with my fears (that my child might be kicked out of school or not be loved by their friends), and with my frustration and being on the edge (“I’m going crazy!!!”), until a more life-serving strategy might emerges. Perhaps to see that “ADHD” can be a gift, a beautiful life energy: to let my child choose to become a drummer or a basketball player instead of a doctor studying seven years at the university.
• To choose not to use pesticides to kill snails, but instead to mourn- to sit with my sense of loss, sit with my need for protection not being met, until a sustainable idea arises (for example, going out at night to move the snails to the other side of the canal and planting herbs that snails dislike).
• To choose not to try to change my girlfriend to be more organized, but to sit with my fears that I will ‘have to’ take care of everything in the house, to recognize my actual need behind it – my wish to use my energy for creation rather than for organizing.
  And to slowly begin seeing that she is, in fact, highly intelligent, just in a different way than I’m used to. And to discover that this is actually the inspiration I receive from her (and, in fact, the very reason I fell in love with her in the first place): to be less ‘earthy’ and practical, and more ‘airy’ and creative.
• And I deeply mourn that I didn’t yet know how to mourn twenty five years ago with my ex…

I mourn all the pain that’s caused when I/we/the human race don’t know how to mourn.

With much longing for each of us to be supported in being fully ourselves, and to stay in tune with the intelligence of nature speaking through us.

Yoram

Extra
(for the curious souls wishing to walk one more step)

Here’s a part I took out from the text above. I removed it out of fear that it might trigger resistance or confusion and distract from the core message.And yet, for me, this challenge of ‘Living diversity’ exists on all levels of human interaction – personal, interpersonal, and global – to me, it carries the same human dynamic at each level. Just as every person does, every group, nation, and government also tries to change or eliminate diversity when they are “disturbed”.
So here are some more “global” examples of how we try to change groups, cultures, and nations, and in doing so, risk eliminating diversity that may hold an intelligence we do not yet understand:

We try to change groups of people when their behavior disturbs us (when it appears to threaten our core, beautiful needs or values). Here are some of the ways I often wish to change groups:

(Note: if you agree with my statements, it may be harder to see the risk in the wish to eliminate them. I write the needs behind them in brackets, to remind us of the beautiful intention.)

• Why are people so impatient and rude on the road? (I long for kindness)
• Why can’t companies care more about the planet than about profit? (well-being of all)
• Why don’t governments ban plastic once and for all? (Sustainability for all species)
• Why do politicians choose war instead of dialogue? (Peace)

So often (for example, here in the West), I want to change other cultures:

• Saudi Arabia must let women drive and dress freely (I want all humans, regardless of gender, to have the equal freedom to choose and grow).
• North Korea needs to free its people from dictatorship and China should become democratic. (I want all people to be free)
• India’s caste system is barbaric. (I want all people to be seen deeply for who they are)
• African countries must stop child marriages. (I want children to be protected and safe to grow in their own rhythm)
• Developing countries should stop using coal and go green. (I want care and sustainability for our planet)
• Putin should leave his Soviet mentality behind (I want peace)
• Etc., etc.

And a very last comment:

I’m aware that some of you will like the text and some of you may not – we are diversity. It’s so easy for me to fall into thinking, “Is it a good text or not?”.
In the end, it isn’t a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ text – it’s a text that resonates deeply with me. I’m writing and sharing it as an expression of ‘living my diversity’ and contributing to our collective diversity.