"The occurring world includes the way in which objects,
others, and you yourself occur for you in this or that situation. The
occurring world is the world you live in, the one you respond to or
react to. It is this world with which your
mind,
body,
feelings,
and
actions
are correlated."
...
"There is no 'is'."
...
This essay,
Difficult People Occur As Difficult: The Occurring World,
is the companion piece to
The Way To Handle A Monster.
It was conceived and written at the same time as
Curveballs.
I am indebted to Mark Spirtos who contributed material for this
conversation.
I was quietly taking in / mesmerized by the spectacular vista from the
deck of a Marin
beach
house at a dinner party I was invited to last summer, when I overheard
this: "What do you think of (so and so)'s new girlfriend?". "Well,
she is very pretty, and they seem to like each other, but
... she is a challenge, she's difficult.". It was the first time
I had heard the descriptor "difficult" spoken in that context applied
to a person. I had a good guess what it alluded to.
This essay's title doesn't aver difficult people are difficult - which
would have been trivially self-referential. Rather, it avers difficult
people occur as difficult. What's the difference? What's
the point? The point is that when we say this person or
that person is "difficult", it implies being difficult is a fixed
quality or even a genetic trait they have, like a certain fixed way
they be. Yet that may not be
true
about the qualities we ascribe to people, especially being difficult.
What may actually be
closer
to
the truth
is that they simply occur as difficult ... which makes
their "difficult" something
we project onto them.
We assume they're that way. We assume "difficult" is what they
are. But look: "There is no 'is'" says
Werner.
They only occur that way. And in the occurring world it's
allour projection
(listen:
how could it ever not be?). So their being difficult may
be our creation, not a trait they are somehow imbued with. Gee! I hope
you get that. It carries the possibility of
being really free,
especially around (erstwhile)
considered-difficult
people. Over that which I create, I have a lot of control. Over that
which others create, I have less control. In both cases, the bailiwick
ie the milieu of my control over the occurring world, is
my
language.
It takes
a BIG person
to entertain even the remotest possibility that what I'm saying may
actually fit:
that people are not like any particular way. How ever we regard people
to be, is only how they occur for us. How people (or anything else for
that matter, but for now, let us confine this conversation to people)
are for us, known or not, realized or not, is
our projection
not their trait. The occurring world is the world we live in, assess
in, judge in. For all intents and purposes, we have no
access
to another world to live in other than the occurring world ie
we have no
access
to an "is-world" in which a person is difficult.
So
the beach
is just
the beach,
and it occurs for me (but not for everyone) as a refuge, as
home.
People are just people, and from time to time they occur for us (but
not for everyone) as difficult. There is no "is-refuge". There
is no
"is-home".
And there is no "is-difficult": there's only
"occurs-for ... as difficult".
