The Downsides of the Nth
I am a great big fan of the Nth. Mostly because I know from experience how effective communication is when the goal is to keep the Nth open.
But recently a group of teachers pointed out to me that the Nth has downsides. Here are some (I would love to hear more!):
For those of you who need to “show up” in the face of conflict,
you risk being attacked. Relentlessly.
you have to honor your own reality (your garden).
you have to live with your fierce internal critic.
you are left alone with unbearable feelings of fear, guilt, shame, etc.
you must resist the defenses that have kept you from showing up in the first place.
you must trust in the unnatural (that is, in the power and value of showing up).
For those of you who need to back down,
you lose the thrill of righteousness.
you let go of power.
you have to honor others’ realities (their gardens), no matter how stupid they appear to you.
you abandon drama (the Nth, my group of teachers told me, is so much more “boring” than the performance of outrage).
you might lose popularity, which could open you up to attacks of the sort you yourself have been launching.
you lose control.
For both of you, the one who shows up and the one who backs down, a fundamental downside of co-creating the Nth is that you must open to the unknown. You must want to honor the other. You must want to learn something. You must want to collaborate in creating something new.
Another fundamental downside: It’s hard. It takes discipline and self-control. It requires effort to find a middle ground where you can both listen and be heard. Those don’t always feel good or right.
Of course, any of us can also want to destroy. There’s value to tearing down walls and oppressive structures. But, at some point, it seems to me that we’ll need to rebuild. And not something that just perpetuates the old ways in new guises.