Absent and Wrong

" Those who are absent are always wrong." - Congo

I can have the best arguments with people who are not in the room. It sounds crazy, but the people who cannot defend their position or perspectives are usually absent, not available to object to my untested opinions. I can make the absent people very, very wrong. I then have an obligation to reach out to those whom I have made wrong in order to heal myself.

Sometimes those people made wrong have passed away, or moved away, or faded from our memory, but the impact on our well-being is strong.

The "absent ones" are not safe at work either. When work or personality styles collide, conflicts and blame games arise. Failing to confront those differences provides opportunities for camps to develop.

Religious, social, economic and political communities exacerbate tensions as they make "outsiders" wrong. The "wrong" ones are impure, unclean, unintelligent, misguided, and unfit. The "right" ones are those who agree with us, who look like us, who think as we do, who have had a similar life experience as ours. Judging and separation commit our life to one of limitations. When we fence others out, we fence ourselves in. When we pronounce others "wrong," we unintentionally make ourselves judges of lives that we have not created.

We have parts of our own life that we can honor. We can use those "honorable" parts as models of how life can be lived, thoughts can be thought, and love can be shown. By being clear as an example of the love we are, we can respect other spiritual beings as an extension of our spiritual family, and give up the illusion of separateness. We are never really alone; others in some way, are always with us. They in truth are never absent. What is the example you are setting?