Evangeline Lilly> Listen to something every day that makes you uncomfortable

I just posted a video on Instagram where I was waxing on about listening to podcasts from all points of view – even the ones I don’t like. I was on a walk in Honolulu and enduring the grating voices of a very right-wing podcast, only to then go on to listen to the very condescending voices of a very left-wing podcast. Both podcasts had come highly recommended to me by friends, and both left me more informed and with more insight than when I began.

By Evangeline Lilly

Nonetheless, it was very hard for me to get through them both. I wanted to change the channel dozens of times. I wanted to quit them and listen to something comforting – a philosophical lecture on the meaning of life, or trauma recovery, or spirituality. But, I endured and decided to write a philosophical lecture on why.

Human beings are a species of animal who were made to live in tight, insular communities designed by biology, not by choice. What this means is that we were meant to live tightly and interdependently with people who think differently than us, feel differently than us and behave in ways we don’t like.

This interdependence on the “other” – ie the person or people who are “too familiar to ignore but too different to tolerate” (Yuval Noah Harari) – is fundamental to our design. The familiar comforts us – it gives us the safety necessary to survive and the security necessary to thrive – but it is the difference that spurs us to grow, to develop and to evolve. All of nature is like this.

In a healthy, interdependent society, we can not escape the people we can’t stand. In fact, we are dependent upon them for survival. This forces us to compromise things we feel are important, in order to stay alive and to thrive. This also forces the “other” to do the same. In these compromises, we stretch ourselves to the utmost of our limits of what we can tolerate and we keep ourselves from the extremes that human morality and tribalism seem to be prone to.

We become each others’ checks and balance and each others’ spur and prodding iron. The tension created by this stretching is the very condition necessary for, not just personal evolution and growth, but species evolution and, surprisingly, peace. In all species, it is the unpleasant and even dangerous, consistent pressures put on us by outside forces that cause us to evolve from murderous, impulsive animals driven only by selfish lusts, to cooperative, protective animals driven by a collective need to survive. Sometimes that outside force was a charging bear, sometimes a bear of a snowstorm, sometimes a bear of a neighbour, and sometimes it was a bear of a relative.

**Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that anybody should ever stay in an abusive or dangerous situation for the sake of their evolution. I am referring here to differences of politics, opinions, hopes, dreams, fears, etc. NOT to physical or psychologically abusive relationships.

My absolute favourite Dr Suess book is called, “I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew”. In it, a young chap of illusory species strikes out to find the fabled utopia of Solla Sollew because his homeland is littered with troubles. There are Quilligan Quails, Skritzes and Skrinks and he has “so many troubles [he] just couldn’t think”! I recommend reading the whole book (available on archive.org). In classic Suess fashion, he meanders us through lands and up and down absurdities in order to orient us just perfectly so that (spoiler alert!), when our main character finally arrives at the fabled “Solla Sollew, on the banks of the beautiful River Wah-Hoo, where they haven’t any troubles! At least very few”, and he discovers that the city is locked and the one trouble they do have is with the key hole, we are horrified. You see, that key hole has been occupied by a Key-Slapping Slippard and now nobody can get in or out of the city. Our friend is shit out of luck.

In the end, this poor little fellow who’s endured endless troubles to arrive at this anti-climactic end has a decision to make…will he follow the Solla Sollew doorman to the fabled city of “Boola Boo Ball on the banks of the beautiful River Woo-Wall, where they never have troubles, no troubles at all” or will he return home?

He decides to return home to the Valley of Vung where he knows he’ll have troubles, he’ll even get stung, but he’s ready to face those trouble head-on. He’s ready to accept that life has troubles and trying to run away from the discomfort only leads us to more and more strange, unexpected and foreign troubles. At least, at home, he knows what to expect and can grow in his ability to engage with and conquer his troubles.

This is a story of growth. This is a story of maturity. This is a story of the beginning of mastery.

Abandoning our own personal “Valley of Vungs” – our families of origin, our hometowns, our country, our planet – in the hopes of finding better alternatives (in the hopes of avoiding the troubles we faced “at home”) seems to be causing a kind of “devolution” in our species. This evasion of discomfort keeps us spinning our wheels, wasting our energy searching for an elusive dream of an ideal place where we will be safe, and held, and troubles can’t reach us. But, in this place (which does not exist) we can not be sharpened, we will not be challenged, and we will not develop. Without being stretched outside of our comfort zones, we will not grow bigger, stronger, wiser and more mature. In other words, the solution of running away from, villainizing or dehumanizing people who trouble us, keeps us childish. In other words, the very people we hate are our evolutionary allies.

If we want to grow and evolve, we need to include people we can’t stand in our communities and let them and their ideas stretch us beyond where we could go on our own; we need to let the people we despise limit us from becoming the most terrible and monstrously self-righteous versions of ourselves; we need them to prevent us from becoming adult toddlers. Echo chambers are the breeding grounds of ignorance.

In our current political climate and isolated culture where we have the skewed sense that we don’t need each other to survive, it can be so tempting to hunker down in tribes and “otherize” the people who disagree with you. Listening to the other side is the last thing most of us want to do. For many of us, it makes our stomachs churn. But endeavouring to find platforms and voices on the other side you can tolerate (I didn’t say “like”, I said “tolerate”), taking the time to invest in listening even when it feels like it’s killing you, is the antidote to the “divide and conquer” downward spiral we’re in.

Listening only to your side, especially if you have it on a constant stream day-in and day-out, is not building you up as a person, it’s building you up as a pawn in other people’s power games. Only being open to hearing what you already agree with is not contributing to your growth as a person, our growth as a culture, or our evolution as a species.

We’re at a time in history where we need to level up or die. Biology would tell us that this means we are ripe for an evolutionary leap. But, how do we do it? How do we get there?

I have made it a practice for years now to listen to as many sides as I can make time for. This has not only kept me sane and mildly hopeful through these tenuous and, seemingly hopeless, times but it has changed me. It has shown me that humanity is not a stasis, it’s a tapestry. We are a mandala and every good mandala needs the high points and low points, the darkness and light, the shadows and brilliance to come alive. It is precisely because we have different points of view, priorities, gifts and vices that we have thrived, proliferated and evolved into the deeply conscious species that we are. Without the person who thinks differently, one perspective would run away with the horse, reach their limit and die. But with their counter-part pulling on them, pushing them, holding them back, pointing out other roads, we find creative solutions to the smallest and largest troubles we face.

To those of you on the left, maybe those crazies on the right are the bat you need in your fist if we can ever hope to conquer our collective troubles. To those of you on the right, maybe those snobs on the left are the tender heart beating behind that raised fist, keeping it in the air, keeping the veins flowing with blood. We need all sides.

They say “do something every day that scares you”. Maybe that’s a stretch for many of us in a world that currently provides enough fear mongering to keep us in a perpetual state of fear. Perhaps a baby step toward that kind of empowerment, toward the kind of evolutionary leap we need to make right now is: “listen to something every day that makes you uncomfortable”.

>

[email protected]