Emma, my daughter, is having “the year of her life” in school — huge leaps of passion and learning and adventure. And facing powerful challenges. The most pressing being a relentless conflict with another girl, let’s call her Josie. They are both strong willed, independent, and believe themselves to be smart. Patty & I have worked to help Emma see that being right is not that interesting unless you are also kind. In turn, Emma has worked hard on being less abrasive, but these two just push one another’s buttons — and now it seems like nearly every day Josie is accusing Emma of something.
The latest round was that Josie was mad that Emma ignored her. “I don’t want to fight with her so I just walk away,” says Emma… and we all agree that’s better than fighting… and that it’s not the same as making peace. Emma was at a loss, though, of how to engage a different way, and was feeling helpless. “She’s mad at me no matter what I do.”
So last week I shared a bit of Gandhi’s story. Emma could definitely relate, and found the concept of Satyagraha fascinating. Satyagraha is the name Gandhi gave to the type of nonviolent resistance he led to transform India. Gandhi wrote:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence.
He contrasted satyagraha to passive resistance — or to walking way (in Emma’s case). Satyagraha is active, it’s a force, but it’s not the kind of force most of us in the West think of when we think “power.” Yet it turns out to be a game-changing, world-changing power because it steps out of the paradigm of escalating might and righteousness.
And it’s not just “what you do” that matters. “How” is just as important. For Gandhi, the means is the result — if you pursue peace through violence, you have made violence. If you create peace through love, then you have created love.
Emma came back the next day having tried it. “Satyagraha is SO difficult,” she said, “but I am going to keep doing it.” While she struggled with it, she also knew, she experienced in just one day, that this is a transformational way of engaging with disagreement. We could see in her reflection that she had, in fact, found a new kind of force.
As Gandhi said, when you let go of “violence of the heart” it generates a powerful new energy:
What I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart — and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation.
The challenge is maintaining it — holding onto the kindness in the midst of the daily frustration. Because while Emma can choose her response, Josie is continuing to look for opportunities to blame. And how do you, as a 9-year-old, not take this personally? It’s so difficult to step back and recognize that Josie’s reactivity is Josie’s.
In our EQ training we sometimes talk about the idea of “making others good.” This means letting go of being right over others — it means accepting that “they are doing their best and I could do no better.” The challenge is finding a genuine, solid core of caring for this “enemy” (who our egos are saying is “wrong/bad/mean”) and letting go of the defense of righteousness.
Satyagraha is a process of resistence and a force of power, and an exercise in justice; at the core it is change that starts with love.
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Dear Joshua
I have been on your e – mail mailing list for some time now and I always enjoy reading about your insights from an EQ perspective. As a disciple of Esther Orioli, I have worked in the realm of adult emotional intelligence development in the workplace for the past two years. Before venturing into EQ training in my native South Africa, I was employed as a History teacher by an independent school and therefore, your blog entry on Gandhi and his Satyagraha principle caught my attention.
I believe, as a means of adding significance to EQ development in children, History is an indispensable asset. In our country, as in most others around the world, a great deal of fuss is made about Science and Maths. Whilst these technical subjects may be important in a contemporary job context, they are nonetheless sterile and are insignificant from an emotional point of view. Conversely, History is filled with real examples of emotionally charged decision – making, which significantly changed the lives and circumstances of ordinary people everywhere and we are privileged to be able to tap into this rich tapestry of emotional endeavour for our personal gain.
Time and again, my experiences as a teacher have reminded me of the realities of the ‘generation gap’ and the lack of empathy, compassion and respect today’s youngsters have for the older generation. It is in imbuing these emotional capacities in young children, that I believe a subject such as History comes into its own. A lesson from my own experience provides this insight.
Whilst on holiday in London, England eight years ago, I was enjoying a bowl soup in a restaurant on a rather cold day. It was a self – service restaurant and, once you had purchased your food, you sat wherever you could find a seat. My wife and I were fortunate enough to secure the last remaining open seats available. The restaurant was filled with young people, most appeared to be in their early twenties. As time passed, I caught sight of an old man, probably about eighty years of age, entering the restaurant. A few minutes later, I noticed him standing in the centre of the restaurant, soup bowl in his hand, searching in vain for a place to sit. Nobody around him acknowledged his presence or made any attempt to help him find a seat. I approached him and offered him my seat. His gratitude was immense.
So what was the motive for my actions? Yes, I was acting upon a habit ingrained in me by my parents, but I was also drawing on the immense perspective my extensive education in History had given me. For in this old man, I saw someone who would have been a young man at the time of the Second World War. In this old man I saw someone who had, in all probability, experienced hardship and fear in his lifetime that the patrons of that restaurant couldn’t possibly comprehend. In this old man I saw someone who, in all likelihood, had fought for the very freedom we were enjoying on that cold London afternoon. Allowing him to sit in my seat was the very least I could do!
Thank you once again for your excellent e – mail communications and a first class blog. I look forward to receiving a lot more from you and Six Seconds in the future.
Kind Regards.
Darron Tarr
Durban, South Africa