Reframing Others

 I have been reflecting recently about how cognitive reframing can be used as a tool to foster greater empathy and compassion.  When we normally think of cognitive reframing, we often think about being able to reframe our own personal situations in positive ways so that our moods or mental attitudes might improve. For instance, I might reframe a negative event as something that has positive repercussions, such as when I decide to be grateful for a challenge or reframe a failure as one more step toward success. Yet, what would it be like if we could reframe the actions of those around us in more positive and empathic ways? How could that potentially impact our daily lives?

   One example might be how seeing someone cut someone else off in traffic might be framed as a form of disrespect, on the one hand, or possibly a sign that the other person is in a rush to get somewhere. The former kind of framing sees the other's behavior as somehow intentionally designed to hurt or frustrate someone else. On the other hand, perhaps, when we think deeply about it, nobody's behavior is ever really that intentional. Often, people do things because they are agitated or preoccupied about something. In other words, whatever happens really has little to do with the person one is cutting off and so on. This requires some insight and imagination, indeed, but perhaps it also requires a realization that seeing others in a negative light is not constructive, and it often simply ends up making the evaluator of the situation more unhappy than the other person! 

I think the key to reframing others is simply to take oneself out of the picture. When I can appreciate another just like a work of art--as someone that is inherently valuable, without my own involvement or stake in it--then that person is appreciated as unique and special, someone who has just as much as reason to live as anyone else. Now,  think that what this also requires is the ability to be actively curious but even this is something that can be cultivated as a habit over time.

But in order for all this reframing to work, perhaps there needs to be a deeper sense of interconnection that can only happen when I contemplate how all beings are in constant interrelation and transition. When I am not treating my own mental constructions as a be-all/end all--let alone as "final interpretation"--then conversation itself (and even empathy) can be a much more playful process that does not require a definitive view on someone or something. It therefore becomes more of a process of creation in the spontaneous moment, as opposed to discovering some incontrovertible truth.