IN PRAISE OF STAYING ‘OPEN’

There’s a sweet recent video of my 6-year-old granddaughter at one of her first swimming lessons. You can see Celia enter the water eagerly, and then successfully swim the full length of the pool by kicking with her feet while holding a board—a first for her. 

Seeing that, I’m struck by how very “open” and available she is to that experience. 

Her body-language is wide-eyed and excited as she drinks in the new sights and sounds. She focuses on finishing and, when she’s done, the satisfaction beaming from her face is a sight to see. What seems so special is her full-bore and open presence to the full opportunity of the lesson, and the people there to help and teach.

We adults put great focus on what we can teach our children. But we would well remember that our young have every bit as much to show us as we to them. Consider these wise words from the Nazarene: “unless you become again as a little child, you cannot enter the realm of heaven.” Or again, the parallel advice from Zen Buddhism that we continually cultivate the openness of “beginner’s mind.”

What then can we grown-ups learn from kids? Our young demonstrate, first, the openness to rich, direct joy that we humans are all born into this world with. The simple delights of splashing in a pool, and mastering some new strokes there, are enough to light them up, and remind them that life is good. 

Kids also have a lot to teach us about staying open to growth. You don’t have to teach that to a child. When it comes to sprouting hair, or growing teeth. It all just happens, through the creating Intelligence of the universal divine Mind. And we elders are wise to remember that growth—not just physical but spiritual and psychological—can and must happen throughout all the stages of life, not just in youth.

Beyond this clear importance of staying open for us as individuals, it is also a necessity for a healthy society In these days of major change and challenge, millions among us are feeling great angst. And we often try to calm such anxiety by blindly embracing pre-packaged ideologies which seem to promise order and meaning in the chaos around us. But many of those ideologies perpetuate major falsehoods and fictions. 

When we see millions of people entranced by, and believing in, inaccurate worldviews, such self-delusion can and does happen precisely when people stop staying open; when people close down their minds to openly hearing and considering new information—or, even more dangerously—when people close down their hearts from feeling and showing affection and respect to those in different camps with different views.

The full range of what “staying open” entails is complex. But here is one place to start. A truly open person is—crucially—one who is willing to question and critique their own current beliefs. And, more pointedly, people who are truly open are ones who are willing to question and critique the prevailing beliefs of whatever groups they themselves belong to and identify with. 

As one example, to be a Christian (as I am) who is truly open requires being willing to critique unloving social attitudes (against sexual and racial minorities, for example) that may be tolerated in some our churches. And it also means being willing to listen to and learn from the insights of people from outside the familiarity of our own accustomed Christian teachings and traditions.

Or again, what does it mean to be a liberal (as I am) who is truly open? I would say that it means being willing to question oppressive approaches that some liberals condone (including active opposition to free speech at many colleges and universities, as well as in journalism and the workplace). And it means being willing to listen to the legitimate insights and observations of people who have more conservative viewpoints.

Staying open doesn’t mean that we lack convictions or worldviews. We clearly need both. But it DOES mean that we learn the mental skill of how to hold our beliefs tentatively; that we avoid the temptation to believe we have certainty. (All “certainty” is inherently illusory.) The mental openness I’m describing requires that we have the wisdom and humility to see that none of us has the whole truth; that all of us can always see and learn more; that even our best understandings are partial; and that those who have different views from our own often have legitimate insights too.

Today’s social tumult is triggering major anxiety in our population. And we need to notice how strongly that angst is collectively tilting us away from psycho-spiritual openness, as fear leads millions among us to seek emotional safety in pre-packaged belief-systems and stories—whether left or right; religious or anti-religious, social, economic or racial. 

The way forward? Yes, may we all keep refining our worldviews. But may we avoid, at all costs, the trap and temptation of becoming—or continuing to be—“true believers.”