My Way or the Highway

Law, especially litigation, is a world determined by sides and “facts.” I have mentioned these issues before (here and here), but today I want to focus on something that has come up repeatedly in my life recently, both in my office and on my yoga mat.

Lawyers like to be right. It seems that anyone who likes to argue “will make a good lawyer” to their parents. I guess this is a time for a little self-disclosure – that is what people said about me. So, arguing and holding onto positions is in our blood. In law school, lawyers are taught to see all sides of a situation, but out in the real world, we have to take positions . . . and we have to stick to them. We have to stick to them even when we disagree with them.

In addition to the courtroom, lawyers take positions by writing. We write emails to other lawyers, motions to the court, closing arguments when we have run out of time, and even sometimes articles and books. In all these written communications, we must take a position. The good news is that your thoughts and ideas can be disseminated more widely, but the less than good news is that those thoughts are in ink . . . forever.

At a conference several years ago, I was speaking to a psychologist, and I had made a point of disagreeing with something he had written in my law school note. We were discussing that particular area of disagreement, and he said something that has stuck with me forever. He said, “That is the problem with writing; it is there forever.” In other words, he had begun to disagree with himself. This is a man who is well known throughout the world for his work, and people love him or love to hate him. And here he was saying that he has evolved and changed over the years. For the record, in discussion, we understood one another and agreed on most aspects discussed. I have the utmost respect for him . . . even when we do sometimes continue to disagree.

Constantly being expected to take a particular position and stick to it creates patterns, or samskaras, in the brain. We learn to do nothing but stick to our guns and tell people, “it’s my way or the highway.” It makes it easier, sometimes inevitable, that we become less compromising. It is not necessarily a choice, but over time, it just becomes the way we see the world.

And lawyers are not alone in this. One of my yoga teachers (actually one of my first teachers), on Sunday, asked us all to tune back into that essence of trying to always be “right.” She, too, had such an encounter during the week. She asked us to look at how it impacts our relationships with ourselves and each other. Timing could not have been better in my life. That was a theme of my week this week. Longtime readers will know that I just returned from New Zealand where I wrote a thesis on a new model for representing children. Now I represent children. Anyone else see a potential butting of the proverbial heads?

And this week it happened. The discussion about the proper model came to me front and centre (I take myself back to NZ when I can through spelling). Not surprisingly, someone disagreed with me. My model for representing children is definitely controversial, so this was not entirely unexpected.

And an amazing thing happened for me. I was okay with the disagreement. I was a bit upset. Of course I would like people to agree. But I stepped back, and I learned a lot from the conversation. I felt a little downtrodden – all that work on a thesis for naught? Really? But then I read a blog post that brought me back to my purpose by none other than my cousin writing about her 3-year-old son’s first imaginary friend. And then I went to the yoga class where this ebb and flow of relationships through being “right” was the theme du jour. I still think my model will work, but I do not see it as the only model.

There is no question that I like to be right, and I like when people agree with me. Not only am I a lawyer, but it is ingrained in us in society. But over time, through yoga, it has become easier for me to accept other points of view, to hold them, and to listen to them. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not! There was some intensity in my discussion earlier in the week. But each encounter where we hold the entire story begins to create a new brain pattern, a new samskara, and we can begin to explore the world from all points of view.

Of course, it can also lead to caving on your position all the time, but that is a post for another day.

Where do you notice your “my way or the highway” approach to life? How do you respond when people disagree with a position you hold and believe is fundamental? Does it matter how much you care about your position?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

A Very Simple Lens

“This issue should be viewed through the very simple lens of a crime having been committed.”

This sentence was uttered by a lawyer at a conference I attended this past weekend. The context is not important, and this blog is not the place to discuss the particular issues associated with the context. But it is absolutely a place to talk about the phrase, “a very simple lens.”

If I have learned anything by studying the law and yoga together, it is that the only simple statement I can make is that there is no simple lens of anything. There is no simple way to see the issues we face every single day as lawyers, nor as people generally. And our interconnected world is making this evident on levels and in situations we have never before experienced.

As I have mentioned before, there is rarely, if ever, one truth. We all see the world through our own concepts of our subjective truths. Most days I wish there were a single, simple truth that we could view through a single, simple lens. Life would be easier. This is why we hold our communities of like-minded individuals close. We preach to our own choir, and we forward emails with which we agree and delete those with which we disagree. I do it as well sometimes. Often it is with a pang of regret, but I tell myself it is because I do not have enough time for those emails. I will talk to people with whom I disagree, but I do not read their emails apparently. That is a line I have drawn many times.

But that is no longer an option. We can no longer live in the bubbles in which we would sometimes like to hide. We can see the entire world too easily. Lawyers meet yogis and realize they are not all chanting and meditating on a mountain (though the thought is nice at times). Yogis meet lawyers and realize they are not all money-hungry, corporation-protecting monsters. The CEO of Starbucks, a gigantic corporation, says we should take corporate money out of politics until the politicians get their acts together. The simplicity of putting people into a box becomes impossible the moment we open our eyes to all that people can be.

Unfortunately, the more difficult it becomes to actually see the world through a simple lens, the more some people attempt to do it. I actually think this is why we are witnessing such polarizing political worldviews today. We are becoming overwhelmed with the information overload, and we are not taking the time away from that overload and giving ourselves a break. No one, without serious practice, can be expected to jump into seeing issues from all sides. It simply, pardon the phrase, does not fit into the biological structure of fight-or-flight. It is evolutionarily safer to put people into a box of good or bad because then we know whether to allow them in or to kill them to save ourselves.

And it is also difficult and scary on an emotional and psychological level. What if the way I view the world is wrong? What if the way I see my truth is not real? The simple lens is so much easier, less time consuming, and immediately safer.

But in a more and more connected world, it is no longer a possibility. We no longer live in a world where everything must be viewed as a threat. Instead, we exist in a world where we must learn to see each other fully, or we will destroy ourselves. Albert Einstein once said, “I do not know with what weapons World War Three will be fought, but I know that World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones.”

We can no longer afford simple.

Lawyers are trained to cling to one truth or another, to find the simplest way to explain a situation, and this causes us, at times, to start to see the world in black and white terms. This does not mean all do; in fact, most lawyers I know see nuance and context more than simplicity. But the training is there, and the vestiges remain. Yogis, by contrast, are trained to open to new possibilities, whether in a physical asana or in a mental practice. Like lawyers, not all yogis do as they are trained, and many turn into fundamentalists convinced their way is the only way.

Do you notice yourself seeing the world through a simple lens? Are there particular areas you notice it more than others? What do you do about it when you notice it?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

When the Truth gets Lost

I am currently at a conference unlike any I have ever attended. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions before, I love conferences. Not only are they a plethora of information, but they are a way to meet the experts, network, and see what people around the world are doing in the work I do. I also love interdisciplinary conferences to learn about other fields. But they also can provide so much information and bring up issues we have in our practice that we did not even know existed. This conference took that issue to a completely new level for me. 

Lawyers are expected to find the “right” answer, the “truth.” I have struggled with these issues on this blog before, but this conference is throwing them in my face like never before. The conference is called the “San Diego International Conference on Child and Family Maltreatment.” The participants include lawyers, law enforcement, doctors, forensic interviewers, social workers, etc. My first day consisted of presentations on differentiating birth trauma from abuse, the importance of acknowledging bruises, and learning about methamphetamine’s effects on the brain. I never thought learning about meth would be the easy part of my day.

This morning started with suggestibility and recantation during forensic interviews about sexual abuse. Good morning to you, too! What are we expected to do with this information when there is no physical evidence? How are we supposed to make sense of it? How do we hear everyone's story and find "the truth?"

The lawyer in me wants to know “the truth.” The yogi in me knows we all see the world through our own truths. The lawyer in me knows that child sexual abuse happens, and it must be taken seriously. So, what do we do in this situation? How do we hold the entire story and follow the law?

For the past decade, my yoga path has encouraged me to see and hold the entire picture and to understand people from their points of views. At the plenary session today, the speaker said she has discovered over her career that when we truly listen, we find there are truthS, not one single truth. That can be very liberating, but it can also be paralyzing to the person listening.

What do we do with that? What does the law do with that?

I try to always have some sort of answer in these posts, some lesson I have learned from yoga or law that concludes. Today, I simply do not have that. I refuse to let go of the years of yoga that have opened my eyes to trusting people, humanizing people, and seeing the entire picture from everyone’s point of view. I cannot do this perfectly; I doubt anyone can, but the yoga makes it easier each and every day.

But we (the system) have to make decisions. We have to determine what is in the best interests of children. And this is not just true of child welfare lawyers. All lawyers, and anyone who sees trauma, disaster, etc. on a daily basis, must find a way to hear it, make some sense of it, and find a way to move forward.

At the beginning of law school, we were told that there may never be an answer in certain law school scenarios. We were asked to “embrace the ambiguity.” When discussing abstract situations involving constitutional law principles, I not only can accept that, I enjoy it. But when we are talking about real life and real decisions, especially those that involve families and children, that ambiguity becomes painful.

But the good news is that people are talking about these issues. People are trying to find some answers, even if we cannot always have the “right” answers. That gives me hope. And the yoga, most days, keeps me grounded. Right now, that is where I am. I look around this conference and see people who have been doing this work for years, and I wonder whether they think they know the answer every time. My guess is not, or they would not be here. That also gives me hope. Knowing we do not have all the answers is the first step. We just keep moving along and hope each day we are doing our best. 

How do you notice these ambiguities in your life? What do you do to respond to them? Do you ever feel like you can know the truth?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl, 2012. All Rights Reserved.