Always Question Authority, Always Respect Authority

Always Question Authority, Always Respect Authority

It’s always been a good life skills approach to stay out of the way from those who could hurt you.  I respect fire, yet work to understand how I can come to know it as friend.  In the ’60’s, my rebellious youth was quite good at questioning authority, but not so good at respecting it.  This caused me much unnecessary suffering.  Life experience has repeatedly shown me that ‘the problem is never what I think it is’.  The assumptions we make in the face of apparent injustice frequently end  up causing us to needlessly suffer.  Especially in the face of injustice and false accusation, our skillful means of communication can mean the difference between a minor incident or one that changes the course of our life in unwanted ways.  Our prisons are filled with those who’ve lacked skill in holding their reactions to authority or those who got in their way.  For sure, many are there for offensive reasons, but I suspect many are there for emotional, defensive reactions to others who got in their way.

More and more, we’re discovering the need to put ourselves in another’s shoes before we react.  As former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, points out in the documentary Fog of War, the number one military lesson is to empathize with the perceived enemy.  Put another way, it’s critical to question where their authority is coming from and always respect that authority.  This is a deeper listening that involves compassion to the human experience, a willingness to meet another’s suffering and difference.  Our human failure to do this has resulted in countless unnecessary wars and millions of lost lives.  This capacity to respect our enemy can’t be faked.  Dr. Martin Luther King has written that others can smell our contempt when our listening is done through the closed mind from judgments of righteousness.  The inquiry must me open to the influences of divine Providence in honor and wonder to that which is bigger than our reasoning minds.

I had previously held judgment on highway patrol officers pulling me over for mild infractions.  Then, through a meditation retreat with the Madison police force, I was able to grow my respect for the challenges of their job.  I used to fill with frustration when pulled over.  Now, I fill with compassion for the risks they take each time they pull over an unknown driver.  Rather than focusing on my inconvenience I’m filled with apology for putting them in their situation.  They can smell my respect for their authority and as a consequence, they open more readily to my questioning of their authority.

Respecting the authority of those who our mind would judge to be inferior in development is challenging beyond most of life’s challenges.  Yet, when we separate from them in our judgment of superiority, we inevitably make matters worse.  It seems best to hold silence until we can really, really begin to understand the experience of the ‘supposed other’.

Life is difficult.  Our attachments to our sense of ‘righteousness’ cause great suffering.  Our willingness to open to that which is bigger, beyond our illusion of separation, leads to the skillful means necessary to navigate challenging interpersonal situations.  Today it seems too few recognize the need to respect authority as they become apathetic to questioning authority.  I suggest we revisit respecting our parents, church and state as we more deeply question authority from the open ‘non-righteous’ mind.  These non-emotional explorations will lead us to better living and the capacity to find our ‘common sense’.www.just-be-it.com