Bonds That Make Us Free, Part 23: The Influence of Living Truthfully
by C. Terry Warner

Let us say that we live truthfully when we let the truth about others, including their needs and hopes and fears, guide the way we treat them. Living truthfully toward them is nothing more or less than being considerate of them and letting ourselves be influenced by the truth about them.

We have seen what happens when someone treats us truthfully. They give us no reason to be defensive and find fault with them. They grant us space to react truthfully to their truthfulness. Their considerateness toward us invites us to be considerate of them. They influence us by letting us influence them.

This brings us to a new idea. Others can have just as powerful an influence on us by treating someone else, some third party, truthfully and considerately. We call this setting an example. How can another person's good example inspire us so?

I want to suggest three closely related reasons.

First, an exemplary person shows us the truth about others by the way he or she responds to them. The following story illustrates this.

I once attended the annual social of an organization which I served as a consultant. I took note of the way the company officers tended to mix only with one another, and the managers and supervisors also kept company only with themselves. That meant the workers and interns also talked only with each other, mainly in departmental groups. Then I noticed the second-ranking company officer approaching a man standing alone—a man who worked in the company motor pool. The officer introduced himself, and they talked for a bit. The officer then introduced this man to several other people, and I could hear him telling something he knew about each of them. A woman came by, a receptionist, also apparently by herself. The officer called her by name and said, "These people need to meet you!" And he told them about her, in detail. He delighted in these people—anyone watching could tell that welcoming them was as far from an administrative chore as it could be. And of course they were radiant.

At the same time, another event was transpiring, as important as these. I, the onlooker, was beholding, through his eyes, something of the intrinsic significance of each of these people. He had demonstrated the inner richness of each one, a richness to which others present, caught up in their own agenda, were unattuned. I felt attracted to these people to whom he was attracted and was ashamed that I had frittered away a lot of the evening pursuing my own conversational agenda. Through this good man's responsiveness to the truth of other people, I began to respond to it as well.

Here is a second reason a good example inspires us in our treatment of others. Exemplary people show us that opening ourselves to others is not to be feared, but on the contrary releases us from the bondage of our fears. My story of the company officer at the annual social illustrates this point. Indeed, no small part of what drew me out of my bog of self-involvement was the fearlessness and freedom with which he threw himself into his engagement with the people around him.

Finally, I offer a third reason for the power of example. Insofar as we respond to another's example, we are in a considerate, truthful relationship with our exemplar. My relationship as observer with that officer quickly opened me to him and to those with whom he was open. Though I may have carried myself through the early part of the evening in I-It oblivion, I became I-You in my newly formed relationship with him and, through him, with the others. This silent relationship with him lifted me out of my I-It condition. The petty, self-absorbed concerns I had brought to the party shrank to nothing: I became caught up in something beyond myself.

Holy Ground
When I met him, Eli was a bright and driving engineer in a large, technology- intensive company. Because of some of the things he had done in his specialty, he had been made chief of a section, with a broad span of authority and power. But if the company culture had been tolerant of complaints from people claiming they were treated badly, Eli would surely never have been given significant management responsibility. He was mean, vindictive, and even abusive, understandably mistrusted by most and hated by many. His marriage had become seriously troubled. The casualties on all sides of his life had grown so great that it began to be clear, even to his results-focused superiors, that they had a pathological case to deal with and needed to terminate him—though they had not yet done so.

In a setting at which I was present, Eli underwent a dramatic change. It was the occasion when Robby's father, Hal, told the story recounted in Part 20. After Hal finished reading the essay written by Robby's brother, Tom, Hal said something else. His additional statement will help us understand why this story affected Eli so much.

Hal said, "I found out about what happened between Robby and Tom only a few years ago, when Robby was eighteen. Before that, I often looked upon him as a destructive force in our family. But when I learned the truth, my heart broke for Robby. I wept for a very long time. I had been thinking about him only in terms of myself. He was the one who had the terrible burden to carry. I never treated him the same again."

A few hours after Hal had told his story, Eli had something to say. Holding back tears the best he could, he told of his childhood as a boy of Native American blood, being reared by an alcoholic father. He recalled accompanying his mother many times to the hospital emergency room to be treated for broken bones or severe lacerations inflicted by his father. When Eli was not yet fourteen, his father came home drunk one day and began to beat Eli's mother. Eli got a gun, loaded it, and went after his father. But his father heard him, got in his truck, and took off; he was just out of range when Eli got out to the street. Not long after that, Eli left home for good, with a heart as hardened as he could possibly harden it.

Now, he said, after hearing the story of Robby, another boy who had hardened his heart at an early age, he began to think of how life had been for his own alcoholic father. He thought of the abuses his father had endured as a Native American. Eli said that in all of this angry man's life, he had never had the experience of being respected or of respecting himself. Eli thought of his own mental abuse of his father. He had been more an enemy than a son. And he thought of how he himself had treated most other people and the burden this had put upon them. It was wrong. He was wrong. He wanted never to be that way again.

Eli's immediate boss was present when Eli told his story. It took the boss's energetic persuasion to get the company's executive team to give Eli another chance; they couldn't believe a person like Eli could change fundamentally. But they agreed on condition that a two-day session be held with all his work group to see if they could come to a tolerable working arrangement together. Early in that session a man stood up, a man known in the company for his religious zeal. Like many others, he had been deeply offended by Eli's cruelty. He intimated, at least to my ear, that what he was about to say represented others' feelings as well. Then he said: "We have all been raped. We are being asked to forgive the rapist. And the rapist is sitting right here with us."

Eli did not respond defensively. He freely confessed how he had treated people, particularly the people in that room, and he apologized sincerely and pledged that he would never be that way again. Perhaps some accepted the apology; most skeptically agreed to wait and see.

Many are the stories that could be shared of what happened after that. The difference in Eli made a difference in everyone with whom he worked. For example, after working with Eli for the next six months or so, one of the union leaders, who herself had a reputation for being hard as nails, volunteered in a meeting: "I have acted at least as badly toward you as you have toward me, but until you changed I never could see it."

Many others responded similarly. Perhaps most significantly, some months after Eli's change, the man who had set his heart against Eli and called him a rapist was with Eli in a meeting in which everyone was sitting in a circle. This man indicated he had something to say. He stood up, walked across the circle, and stopped in front of Eli. Then he took off his shoes, and knelt. "I have been hiding my sins under the cloak of my religion," he said. "I am taking off my shoes because this is holy ground."

The relationship of that man to Eli turned from negative to positive, from collusion to consideration. Before, he was a man bitterly attentive to Eli's negative attitude toward both him and others; after, he was a man softened by Eli's truthful, considerate way with him, and perhaps even more by Eli's truthful, considerate way with others. He related to the truth about others through Eli and thereby became truthful himself, just as Eli had related to the truth about others through Hal. So truthful indeed did this man become that he could freely confess his own piously I-It ways and leave them behind him.

It is possible, as we have seen, to relate truthfully to someone who isn't being truthful—witness the stories of Jenny and Erin and Hal and Robby. But for most of us, most of the time, it is far easier when that person is being truthful. We most effectively influence one another to change by letting ourselves be changed. Then we invite them into a considerate rather than a collusory relationship.

Love is not Manipulative
Once we hear a story like Peter's, Bruce's, or Eli's, we may well be assailed by an almost irresistible temptation. We may think we can influence someone by deliberately mimicking the exemplary person's behavior. This seldom if ever works. We saw why in Part 21. When we manipulate in this manner, we aren't primarily responding to the need of another but are pursuing the goal of getting them to change. There's an accusation embedded in this effort; the message is, "You're inadequate; you need to shape up." Thus our motivation is not pure, and that makes what we do a counterfeit of caring.

This helps us appreciate the paradoxical, or at least ironic, quality of influence. If we try to influence others for our own sake and not strictly for theirs, our efforts will probably backfire. Those we seek to change will detect our intent. It is simply futile to try to change another if we do so in a critical spirit, even a mild one. Generally speaking, we influence others most profoundly when we do not seek to change them at all, but simply go about straightforwardly doing the right and loving thing.

We have already encountered several stories in which the contrast is clear between an apparently well-intentioned but self-absorbed and self-canceling effort to get another person to change and the power of a loving attitude. Jenny's and Erin's story is one of them; so is the story of Bruce and the buyer of his home. But none of them makes the point quite as forcefully as the following story-within-a-story.

I was speaking at a convention honoring a number of people for outstanding contributions to education. In my speech I told a story given to me by a friend whom I will call Marcel. This is what he told me:

My next-door neighbor, a man of about forty, was dying of emphysema. Though the doctors were alarmed, the man could not stop smoking. He smoked 180 cigarettes a day "and loved every one of them." He did everything he could have done to force or trap himself so that cigarettes would not be available. But he could not force himself to stop rationalizing. Always, when hard up against his cravings, he would talk himself out of his resolution to withdraw from his habit.

One evening, as the situation grew desperate, I went to the sick man's home. I said, "I have decided that if you are going to stop smoking, there has got to be something in your life that you can't rationalize away when the temptation gets too great. I've come here tonight to tell you what it is. As long as you are continuing to smoke, I am not going to eat. When you stop smoking, I will start eating again."

"But you can't do that. I won't let you."

"But don't you see? You can't stop me. So I am going to go now. And I hope you remember that I won't be eating as long as you are smoking."

I left, completely peaceful within, and I remained peaceful for two days. But as the third day of abstinence approached, I began to wonder whether I would ever eat again. I lost faith. Imperceptibly, my fasting changed from being something I was doing for my friend to an effort to try to force him to stop smoking. There is a profound difference between these two actions. I could not have failed in the first act, no matter what might have happened, but when I began to get involved in the second act I started to despair. For a while the essential ingredient was missing. I had to struggle to stop worrying about myself and regain the peace I had enjoyed.

At night after the third day, the sick man's wife appeared at my living-room door with a large cream pie. My heart sank: I feared my friend had ignored or forgotten or refused to believe what I had told him. But his wife told me to call him, and when I did he happily announced, "It's all right, you can eat the pie."

After I finished my speech at the convention, one of the honorees, a woman, came up and said, "That story was very inspirational. My children don't help at home as they should. For example, on Sunday, after I have worked hard to prepare a great meal, they take off to do their own thing. I have to chase and badger them to get them to help clean up, and by the time I get one rounded up the others are gone. I think I will tell them that as long as they won't do their part, I won't eat."

It won't surprise you to learn of the telephone report I got from this woman a week later. "It just doesn't work with my kids," she said. "I went without putting anything on my plate while they ate. When they asked me why I wasn't taking any food, I told them, 'As long as you aren't going to help me clean up the kitchen on Sunday, I'm not going to be eating.' And do you know what they said? 'You're sure going to be hungry, Mom.' And 'Maybe you'd better change your mind.' And 'Hey, this way you can lose a lot of weight.' And they were laughing when they said it!"

Of course, this woman could not have missed the point of Marcel's story more completely. It was not what he did that made his act influential. It was how he did it, or in other words, the attitude with which he did it. Indeed, I suspect that if he had encountered his sick friend on the day when he was more self-concerned than caring, he would have come across differently and might possibly even have discouraged his friend from trying to quit smoking.

Love is Power
We learned in Part 13 that when we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us. In the world of human affairs, the will to dominate, even for apparently good reasons, nullifies itself. "Every force," says the Tao te Ching, "calls forth a counter- force."

But love is a power unmitigated. It allows others their freedom. Most ironically, it "compels" them to use that freedom. They must respond one way or the other to our love. They must either accept and yield to this love, which is the truth about us, or resist it. If they yield, they do what our love has invited them to do, which is to love us in return. If they resist, they refuse that invitation and find a way to think of us as their enemy.

I want to illustrate this power with a story given to me by Jane Birch: