MINISTRY LEADERSHIP
In Search of a Mirror
by Jeanie Miley
Sitting at the children’s table at his mother’s birthday dinner, Dylan had managed to smear his entire face with chocolate cake. From ear to ear, he was chocolate and cute.
Looking at his cousin, only five months older than he, Dylan said, “You have chocolate cake on your face.”
Projection starts early.
It’s always easier for us grown-ups to see the splinter in another’s eye and miss the beam in our own. It strikes me as comical that a two-year-old can be oblivious about the chocolate cake stuck to his own face and, at the same time, be so concerned about the cleanliness of another’s face. The tendency to project one’s own flaws onto others either starts very young or is inborn!
Serious studies and textbooks explore, explain and expose the human tendency to see in others what you can’t see in yourself, but of all the collected knowledge and wisdom about that nasty tendency, it seems to me that there is one really important aspect about projection that lies at the root of the problem. Projection is an announcement of a lack of self-awareness and an unconsciousness about one’s own flaws and character defects. Whether it’s egg or cake on your own face, you point at someone else’s face.
Projection is at work when one person says to another, “You’re angry, aren’t you?” but won’t admit her own anger.
Projection is at work when I spot the same irritating behavior or flaw in several people, collecting the data as evidence of my own innocence. It’s easy to forget that what I don’t like in others is generally to be found in myself. What I criticize in others is often a reflection of that which I won’t allow myself to see in another person.
Projection is focusing on one particular group of people as “the enemy” or “the problem,” letting them carry the badness so that another group can be the good ones.
It’s common knowledge that people who feel bad about themselves are always on other people, criticizing them, putting them down or bringing them down to size so that they can feel bigger or better, but just the fact that it is common knowledge doesn’t keep people from doing it. Indeed, what you don’t work out or talk out, you will take out, act out or project out onto others, and it is often the innocent who pay the dues of the guilty.
It is only a first step, but it is helpful to remember that when something about somebody else irritates me, I’d better use that irritation as a catalyst for some self-reflection. To avoid projection, I need to make self-awareness and consciousness an on-going daily discipline. To do my own moral inventory on an on-going basis and even daily basis is good citizenship; to own my own flaws is an act of kindness to others.
A wise man once said that the only real sin is unconsciousness.
I’ve thought a lot about that, worrying it around in my mind and trying to decide if I agree with that or not. I do know that not being aware of what you are doing or the consequences of your actions does in fact cause injury to innocent people.
Maybe that is why Jesus said from the cross, “Forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.”
We human beings do ghastly and terrible things when we are unconscious.
I’m headed for the mirror.
I want to know it when my own face is dirty.
The author of eight books, Jeanie Miley lives in Houston, Texas. Trained at the Spiritual Direction Institute in Houston, she is a spiritual director and teacher, retreat and workshop leader. She is married to Martus Miley, and they are the parents of three adult daughters
To check out Jeanie Miley’s latest book, Joining Forces, and others please click here.
|
