Seeing Through the Lens of Capacity
Seeing Through the Lens of Capacity
Talk to my sisters and any of my friends and they will tell you I use the word “capacity” a lot in our conversations, especially in reference to relationships. It didn’t come to me as a concept in a book but more as an epiphany about my own blind sightedness. I was sharing with a wise friend the disappointment I felt in someone I loved. His inability to look more closely at an act of insensitivity was chipping away at my respect. She said something that surprised me and I’ve never forgotten. She said “Zan, you have spent most of your life focused on the heart, feelings, emotions, in yourself and others’, most people haven’t”. That moment shifted my paradigm. That’s when the word “capacity” became a friend of mine. Not only in reference to others but also within myself.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some we came in with, it’s our nature, and some we’ve developed or ignored. It’s possible to expand capacity in different areas, which often takes time, energy and focus. I liken this to a year in my life when I decided I wanted to complete a marathon. I didn’t have the capacity to go out the next day and run for 26 miles. I trained. I worked up to it. And some days I didn’t feel like going out for a 20-mile training run but I did. And months later I ran a marathon with 4000 other determined souls, some with their own different capacities, wheeling in chairs to the finish line.
I try to remember this metaphor of running and wheeling and walking and standing on the sidelines watching and not showing up at all as a lesson on capacities. As well as a lesson on interest. For where we put our attention is where we grow and all things are not equally interesting to us. When something is valuable, when it does hold our interest, most of us will work harder at it.
That’s why love has been so transformative in my life. And a privilege when I’ve been lucky enough to be in love. Love has shown me where I needed to grow, where I needed more capacity to be honest, open, compassionate, vulnerable. And like those long training days, it wasn’t always easy or comfortable. Sometimes it was disorienting, confusing, ego shattering. It takes humility. No matter the end result, it has grown my capacity to love and be real. I hope I always retain that spirit of being an ‘amateur’. From the Latin word, amare, ‘amateur’ means “to love”.
I suppose this is why I am deeply touched by watching capacities blossom through the interactions of two individuals.
I remember season 18 of Dancing with the Stars, watching Meryl Davis with her professional partner, Maksum Chmerkovskiy. Davis had ice skated professionally as part of a couple since she was 5. This woman knew how to flow together like breathing! Chmerkovskiy was also a seasoned couples’ dancer, passionate, controlled, disciplined, sharp in his movements but dancing with Davis that season brought out something different. It was not only her skill in partnering but her strength AND vulnerability that caused Chmerkovskiy to lean in more, soften and relax into his partner. The chemistry between these two on the dance floor was mesmerizing. I still occasionally watch the YouTube video of their free dance to Sam Smith’s song, Latch, as a reminder of what reciprocity looks like in motion.
Chmerkovskiy said at the end of the season, which they won, that Davis brought out qualities in his dancing he’d not known before and Davis said that he had brought out more individual confidence in her.
Truth is, we need each other to grow. Too often we hold another hostage for not having the same capacity in some area that we do. We blame or shame ourselves and each other for our weaker places and get smug about the stronger ones! Yet having compassion for capacity, is in a large part how we support authenticity, in ourselves and in each other. When we think someone should change, we come nose to nose with our own deep material. As I did that day I was being listened to by my friend. Alternatively, when we have the courage to communicate from that place of vulnerability and the humility to self-reflect, we often find that’s what unites us. The thing I want so badly for you to change has something to teach me about myself.
My wise friend was rightly observant; I have put a lot of attention on the heart. I came in with a big internal, emotional life and heartful conversations to this day are more interesting to me than are intellectual ones. Even when I taught in an academic setting, the heart, the emotional aspects of whatever subject I was teaching was present. Where was the learning connecting personally within my students? This foundation resulted in spontaneous and inspiring conversations in the classroom and more connection between the students. For me, it’s where the richness is. But I have also realized it’s not everyone’s cup of tea! And often others are far more gifted than I am, have more capacity, in the realm of the intellect. I’m the one that has a lower capacity in a room with brilliant intellectual minds. That’s the beauty of diversity and the wisdom in knowing a muscle that hasn’t been used is not guilty of weakness. And one that has, is not superior. When you think of differences in terms of capacity, individual interests, personal experiences, it allows for more compassion, patience, acceptance and grace. We are stronger together with a multitude of individual capacities.
In Buddhism, capacity is referred to as a “condition that is present”. A condition that has come from accumulated moments of consciousness or what they refer to as “cittas”. “Cittas”, they believe, are what creates Karma. In my travels, I experience Buddhist and Hindu cultures to be highly self-regulating. Knowing that every moment is meaningful in creating good Karma or bad Karma, positive intentions and behaviors and the ways people treat each other are noticeably kinder, more altruistic and helpful. This philosophy on life and the integration of ‘all is one’, creates an interdependent orientation and respect for ‘Namaste’, translated, ‘the God in me recognizes and greets the God in you’. Not a bad way to begin any exchange. Living with Karma as a fact of life, good creates good and bad creates bad and one never knows when the results of either will come back around.
The lens of capacity has become a spiritual practice that I sometimes fail seeing through in the moment! I may not always be able to bridge the gap of understanding when you and I have wide differences. And when there is abuse or blatant disrespect sometimes the best response is to leave. Yet I find honoring capacity to be a lot less damaging than trying to get you to change or me to change when it’s not who we innately are or aspire to be. And as in theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, there’s wisdom in that.
God grant me the serenity to accept things
I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
What we need is respect around capacity and a lot more curiosity about the conditions that have created it. That’s a deeper and richer conversation to have. It makes understanding perhaps more possible and as a bi-product, creates trust and intimacy. It’s also such good information. Wiser decisions come out of learning the deeper truth.
I love to savor the simple joys that come from being with others that do share similar capacities but I am also grateful for those that come into my life with capacities I don’t have. The ones that grow me, transform me and make me more real. And as I get older and can’t do everything as I used to when I was younger, I see how changing capacities are revealing a softer lens towards myself and others.
Capacity, when it’s integrated as deeply as Buddhists and Hindus have integrated Karma, grounds me in faith. Faith that “what is” holds a wisdom greater than my own. I’m no Pollyanna when it comes to the human condition of loss. I am like poet rupi kaur “when my heart is broken I don’t grieve I shatter” but I find, even in shattering loss, over time, a faith in things as they are, as you are, as we are, as I Am. I have faith in the dance when we stay with the core of our own innate authenticity and remain open to the exquisite influences that are more precious and far greater than we have the capacity to plan.