ich und du

Martin Buber is my kind of guy. His keen mind was made to think things through. To me, he’s like someone who started digging a hole to China and actually got somewhere. 

Best known for his work, Ich und Du (I and Thou), Buber’s theological approach to the world translated into this small treatise that reveals, by contrast, the fundamental workings of true and false relationships. Reading him gives answer to why there is often so much pain in relationships.

This small but powerful book delves into a philosophical issue that could either bore some or frighten many if it wasn’t so good. He addresses the hidden madness behind the I-It relationship, in which the other is objectified and subjected to meeting another’s needs and purposes. He carefully probes at the problem and, by dissection, lifts up the the more perfect I-Thou relationship, which grants the other the fullness of their reality. This type of relationship is where another’s dignity is preserved and a person is truly encountered. Ah, the discovery of a new land, indeed.

I first heard of Buber’s observation over twenty years ago, but it has nested in my psyche ever since and it springs me free from impingement whenever I’m objectified and treated like an It rather than the I that I am. But this distinction is usually made only after I’ve been impinged or, to speak more plainly, used to satisfy someone else’s suffering ego state. The experience of being objectified is hard to put your finger on. To describe the feeling, it feels like being treated as though you’re only half there. Half a face, half a body, half a world. Being objectified is when the other does not see the all of you. They do not see your potential or regard the sanctity of your life. They do not see your world, but only see themselves and how you fit in theirs to meet their need.

I see it as a subtle form of abuse. A blunt generalization, I know, but I stand by it. All too often, people are not genuinely and sufficiently cared for. It’s what all the silent screaming is about. 

When I became a mother, I was met with the common parental challenge of having a screaming baby I could not console. The uncontrollable ever-rising pitch was an affront to my sense of control and power. 

It’s my job to make him stop! Why won’t he stop? He must stop! I wish he would stop! Hey, who’s in charge here?

I soon learned in God’s school of humility that I was not so much in charge as much as I was given a human being to love and care for, and it was my job to give him sufficient air and space to be who he was: made in the image of God. Somewhere on the upswing of the learning curve, it was no longer about tears but it became about tears and allowing them to fall. If my soothing helped to stop them, then fine, I was doing my job as a mother. I was equally doing my job by interpreting the tears as his way of working through his emotional/physical/spiritual disorganization. There is One greater than I who brings order out of chaos, and He’s in charge of both tears and smiles. I didn’t need to objectify him to gain peace for myself. Instead, by allowing a little more oxygen to his need to cry, we both ended up breathing a little better.

If I foist machinations upon my infant child to stop him from crying so that only I may be relieved, he is only partially alive. If I value others only for what they can do for me or give me, they are only partially alive. I see only half their face and they are robbed of their full reality.

But if I can look, even by some small measure, into the light of someone’s face and enter their world as a delighted guest, and they can do the same, we are both living in a greater reality. Then we have intimacy; what every heart yearns for.

I and Thou.

~ by findingthemotherlode on August 8, 2008.