My mind feels muddy these days. Searching for congruent thoughts and words is akin to going for a run after a long stint of too much sitting around eating pie and pudding.
In attempts to make sense of nonsensical cruel acts, many words have been uttered; love and hate are recurring topics. Some people claim that we need to better understand evil to encourage a more loving society. Audun Myskja goes on to say that a prerequisite for love to surface, is that we are able to create a society where each individual experiences a sense of belonging, being valued and respected. Sara Azmeh Rasmussen claims we aren’t able to love everyone, that love makes us partially blind, and finally that love is not wise, but excited. From her viewpoint a love-prescription issued to people and organizations will not solve the challenges of our diverse society. Rather we need to undress ideologies of hate through matter-of-fact, rational and enlightened debates.
Is all this love-speak a search for an antidote to hate? As I see that Wikipedia defines antidote as a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning. The term ultimately derives from the Greek αντιδιδοναι antididonai, “given against”, I wonder if we once again follow our tradition of dualistic thinking. That makes me curious about the seemingly empty space of ‘in-between’. If most things are as complex as a cut diamond, looking at one facet does not say much about the beauty and value of the whole stone. Therefore I do not vaguely think that I have any answers. It is perhaps random that the love-hate discourse occurs at the same time I am exploring the concept of Appreciation.
Appreciation has been showing up on my radar a lot over the summer. A friend told me about Appreciate Inquiry in leadership (based on affirming what’s working, rather than a deficit based approach). This lead me to read about Question Thinking, which aims at switching from a judgemental mode to learner thinking. In another book I got, a funny, little one called ‘Practical Wabi Sabi’ Simon Brown writes :”Appreciation should be seen as a skill. In part, it requires you to be humble and not make assumptions…” He also claims that we need to let go of judgemental preconceptions in order to feel appreciative.
If love & hate is a dichotomy, is appreciation somewhere on the grey scale? Putting this skill to use, it would need me to be open and curious, and resist premature conclusions and labels, so that I could find some value, or perhaps not even that, but ‘something’ in everything and everyone. Perhaps appreciation can help love from being blind, and through non judgement support the rational enlightened mind to find true objectivity. Perhaps this is a bit of a reach, but instead of trying to better understand evil to become more loving, what if we try to become better at making peace through appreciation?
