A beautiful framed print sits just opposite my desk chair in my home office. It includes art by the talented illustrator, Olly Costello: figures stretching out to hold hands and embrace, but represented as constellations of stars. It also features a quote from the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, and spiritual leader, Thích Nhất Hạnh that reads, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”
This teaching and visual feels like a perfect encapsulation of why I do what I do and I am reminded of its wisdom constantly. However, it came to mind most recently in a wonderful conversation I had with Monika Jiang. Monika leads The Oneliness Project, a community oriented around cultivating belonging and interconnection, and she invited me to record a discussion about restorative justice and conflict transformation for a cohort-based program she facilitates.
We spoke about how deeply embedded a logic of separation is in the United States – and elsewhere. This logic tells us that when someone does something wrong, they don’t get to be part of our community anymore. It is most iconically represented in our prison system but it is reflected all around us, from the overuse of exclusionary discipline (ie. suspension and expulsion) in schools to the phenomenon of “cancel culture.”
That’s not to say that time apart is never warranted or necessary but that, for the most part, it is a band-aid, at best. It doesn’t repair anything and it doesn’t address root issues, especially at the systems level. But most of all, it operates under the illusion of our separateness, as if by casting someone off we are not still impacted by each other, even in their absence.
One of my teachers and well-known restorative circle trainer, Kay Pranis, talks about how one of the biggest lessons from the environmental justice movement has been that, though we may believe we are throwing something away, there is no away. Whether in a landfill or floating in the ocean, whatever we dispose of continues to impact the planet and, therefore, all of us that live in it. Likewise, she explained, there is no away for people. They may be locked up in a prison cell or disallowed from a communal space but they are still part of a web of connections and continue to affect and be affected by others, wherever they are.
When I talked with Monika, she spoke about how this pattern of casting away offers us an easy assurance that we did the right thing by punishing someone who has been deemed wrong. Binaries are attractive in their simplicity. If there is just right and wrong, good and bad, in or out, then identifying others as bad and creating distance from them can convince us we are good. And, often, that feeling serves to temporarily cover up our own unease, even fear, about messing up, being deemed bad ourselves, and then losing our belonging – whether that’s with our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, our communities, or society as a whole.
Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation, and an influential teacher in restorative justice, offers an alternative lens:
"What is an offender? It is someone who shows little regard for right relationships. That person has little respect for others. Navajos say of such a person, ‘He acts as if he has no relatives.’ So what do you do when someone acts as if they have no relatives? You bring in the relatives!"
What a stark contrast to the separation logic. Bring in the relatives! Come closer, not farther away. The rationale that when someone does something harmful they should be cut off has it all backwards: in fact, that is when they most need other people there in order to understand how they’ve impacted them. To be clear, this is not a case for being permissive or making excuses for someone; this coming together is a precondition of true accountability. In contrast, if someone already feels irredeemably excised, what is there to do – why do anything to try to get back in?
Here I am reminded of an idea I was given not too long ago about supporting my 4-year-old (and, let’s be honest - myself) when she is acting out or experiencing an emotional breakdown. The idea was simple: ask her if she would like a hug. Though my instincts (or patience) might tell me to put distance at that moment, to have her feel the repercussions of her behavior on our connection, I knew that in practice that frequently led to her getting more upset. So, I tried it, and I was a bit surprised to find how effective it was and has been many times since. Of course, it doesn’t always work, and some situations call for something different. Usually, though, it enables her nervous system to calm down and, from there, we can actually talk about the effect of her actions and what alternatives might have been.
You may be thinking, but that’s a young child. It’s totally different with adults. And while it is certainly not the same, I’d encourage you to consider: is it really that different? The practical details notwithstanding, the underlying human principle seems to hold: that only if we feel a basic level of connection and safety will we do the challenging and very vulnerable work of acknowledging our mistakes and working to repair them.
I don’t propose this because it’s easy – in fact, I don’t think it is. But I invite you to consider what it would look like to draw close when someone messes up. I believe, in the big picture, that is our only hope to see real change and to - individually and collectively - be better than we were before.