D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June
2009
Thou Art Also an It
When are your relationships truly personal — and when are they mostly business?
By Bina Breitner
Eleanor was very involved in her suburban Boston community, her children's school activities, her neighborhood block parties, and the social life of her group and her husband's colleagues. When she and her husband divorced, she was stunned to notice that only one couple on the street continued to befriend her. Being suddenly isolated hurt her deeply. These people had all been her personal friends. Well, apparently not. For her neighbors, the relationship had been primarily functional (shared school, shared neighborhood, shared husbands' jobs, etc.). When she was no longer in their "married" group, she was no longer a functional fit.
Eleanor hadn't distinguished clearly enough between personal relationships and functional relationships. The Austrian/Israeli philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) devoted himself to exploring the difference in his book, I and Thou. For Buber, the "I-Thou" relationship involves a deeply felt and intimate relationship with the "other," whether another sentient being or a spiritual presence. In this I-Thou relationship, one waits patiently, with acceptance and an openness to experience. There are no expectations or demands. One is simply, and fully, present. The "I-It" relationship, by contrast, is primarily functional. It includes many expectations and demands.
Another example: Carla and her husband Dave ran their own business. Dave was the creative force, and Carla made sure things happened effectively. They worked extremely hard, so neither of them had important friends outside of work.
When Dave left the marriage, they had to sort out their business connection as well as the results of their emotional rupture. Carla's main struggle in therapy concerned Dave and the end of their marriage, which devastated her, but she also talked a lot about two of the female employees whom she considered her friends. I pointed out that these women were not her functional equals: She could fire them but they couldn't fire her. Furthermore, they were probably going to keep working for the company after she'd sold her interest to Dave.
Carla hadn't thought about the difference between the I-Thou relationship she'd had with Dave and the I-It reality (the power differential) that underlay her relationship to the employees. Recognizing the difference helped her organize the experience of leaving Dave and the business behind. With time, she found new friends who had no connection to Dave or the business, and she recovered enough to marry a kind man with whom she now has a lovely child.
If you think of an axis with "I-Thou" at one end and "I-It" at the other, you'll find that business relationships lie closer to the I-It end of the axis. You may enjoy the fellow behind the counter in the market, but you get to take home your quart of milk only if you pay for it. When you work for someone, you keep your job if you do it well enough and if there is enough money coming in to support your salary — not just because the boss likes you. There are standards, job descriptions, rules, and expectations. (Did you ever notice that the word "business" derives from "busy-ness"?)
Family relationships, if they're working well, lie closer to the I-Thou end of the axis. When family relationships deteriorate, though, they slide over to the I-It end. The extreme example is the divorcing couple who used to trust each other and who are now consulting their own lawyers, each one convinced that the other is a sneaky, money-grubbing cheat. Listening to them, you'd never know they used to be each other's most intimate ally. They're the same people, but the deterioration of trust in their relationship has damaged their sense of Thou-ness.
Problems don't have to be that extreme for people who still love each other to shift toward the I-It end of the axis. In fact, the Thou/It ratio in our families is kind of a moving target, and we adjust all the time, whether we realize it or not.
For example, Marlene and Joe still love each other and have two nice children. They're deeply connected as "thou's." Then Joe loses his job. Both of them know he isn't creating the crisis on purpose. They try to be patient and understanding, to figure out what else they can do to balance their budget, and to accommodate the difficulties of their new circumstances.
Marlene doesn't doubt that she loves Joe. He's her husband, her lover, the father of her children. They're members of each other's extended families. But Joe also has a role in the family, which includes helping to provide for them. When he stops bringing in money, he isn't "doing his job." They worry about finances, they're stressed, Joe feels like a failure, and Marlene can't help feeling he isn't keeping up his part of the bargain. Statistics tell us that many couples fall apart when income shrinks. It seems that functional I-It realities can trump, or contaminate, the I-Thou relationship, even with people we love.
What about the relationship with oneself? In truth, we are both an It and a Thou to ourselves. We have duties and functions, yet we also recognize timeless "being" and a feeling Self within.
Consider self-discipline. Self-discipline helps provide order, it's productive,
and it contributes to making things work in life. But there's a big range in how you
discipline yourself. On a dark winter morning you can say to yourself (inside
your head), "Darn you, I don't care how you feel, it's time to get up, so get up and get going!" Or you can say, "Oh, baby, you are tired today, aren't you? Oh, well, gotta get up anyway. . . ." In the first example, you're an It being ordered around by your executive brain, whereas the second approach includes you as a Thou. They feel very different. The result is the same — you get out of bed — so
why not do it nicely?
Or consider the way you approach your own history. You can say, "I prefer to remember the good stuff. Those unhappy experiences were years ago — they're not relevant today." Distancing the hard times reassures us that they're in the past and not happening now. We've moved on and we're living in the present.
But what are you supposed to do with your memories? There's an old song lyric, "Good morning, Heartache, sit down. . . ." Like that lyric, you can say hello every day to your fears, your loneliness, your anxiety, your illness, your shame, your anger, your grief. They share lodgings in the home which is your Self, and they come out of their rooms regularly to chat with you. If you include them, you don't have to spend energy insisting they aren't there, and you give them the honor they deserve (you survived and you're participating in life today, so congratulations to you). Besides, they'll settle down when you acknowledge them, so you really can live more in the present. In fact, since they're your memories, living in your Self-house, they're part of your present whether you like them or not. You might as well try to get along.
What about the way you relate to your body? Many people are dissatisfied with themselves. Their body (It) should weigh this much. It should have a body-mass index of that number. Its shape should be like the people in the pictures. Its blood pressure should be this ratio. It should exercise that amount and have a cholesterol reading below such-and-such.