Is content the most significant thing? Or, are the dynamics that surround content the more significant thing?
Without content, some would say, you don’t really have anything of substance. Others might argue that it is what surrounds content that actually makes it significant.
I still remember, as a kid, our family camping with a bunch of other families. I remember what seemed like (but actually wasn’t) the massive tent we stayed in, the sounds of people talking and laughing, the smell of the campground, the sense of what I would identify as a kind of belonging to something even bigger than my own family. While a few details still float around in my memory, it was the feeling that has stuck with me the most. This has often been true of other experiences over the course of my life.
In reality, content and dynamic are commingled. But, sometimes content really isn’t as significant as the dynamic…especially in terms of effect.
Take generational dynamics. At some point, you start to see that the dynamics between generations are often quite similar, even though the content involved between (even just two or three) generations back is substantially different.
Another example might be that of differing cultures. Many of the reasons that I have affection for certain things may likely be because of what we did as a family when I was young, particularly in the context of the community we were involved in. Which, actually, are many of the same reasons that other people who grew up in very different family structures, and dynamics and communities, have affection for their way of doing things. The dynamic involved in such things is a kind of socialization that touches on the number of needs we have as human beings, whatever the context is for that to occur. Certain times of the year, for example, when certain things are celebrated that are familiar to me, I can have feelings of deep enjoyment, appreciation, and gratitude for our way of doing things. And, once you are exposed to people in other cultures and their practices, you start to notice some of the same dynamics, even though what and how they do them can be quite different.
What does this mean? Or, what is the import of this observation?
For one thing, if I want to be respected in my experience, then I should do the same with the experience of other people. After all, neither way of doing things is necessarily more right than the other (even though we often tend to think that it is); it’s just different. And, the beauty of recognizing this is that it disarms our need to assume that our approach is automatically and necessarily better than someone else’s. This gives us more capacity to allow other peoples to go about their lives, in the ways that mean something to them, just as mine do for me.
After all, it is the content AND the dynamics that surround it that make anything meaningful.
And, we can respect that, not to mention others.