By José Luis Vieyra

Human beings, in general, share some general distinctions derived from our biology, culture, profession, religion, life story and any other aspect that defines who we are.

If we consider the biological aspect, an example can be the hearing sense. Humans can perceive some sounds within a certain wavelength, frequency and amplitude spectrum, that allows us to appreciate some sound waves but not all. In the case of a deaf person he or she, has a condition that limits that distinction.

In the professional ambit, when a human collective develops a special field, he/she observes and names characteristics and attributes correspondent to his/her field, and this may not be appreciated by someone outside that field and knowledge. For example, a group of biologists have some distinctions regarding a flower, different from the distinctions that a group of architects, medics or actors could have.

Same thing happens in other social systems, the group of human beings who participate, will acquire distinctions which are common and obvious and that can be unnoticeable by others from a different group.

As an individual or group adds up more and more distinctions, they will have a wider repertoire that will allow them to increase their response capacity. Let’s point out that the space between distinctions to develop in each ambit, will also be limited by the same series of factors that were already mentioned: biology, culture, profession, religion, etc.

My intention with this preamble is that it serves as a context for sharing a couple of distinctions within the theory proposed by Michael Blumenstein and Katia Del Rivero: ENOUGHNESS and HELPLESSNESS.

It has been a privilege to be able to observe the behavior of babies with distinctions that I didn’t had when my daughters were born and that are outside the frames that boosted my behavior then. Today I can see that a baby shows full confidence in the process of being alive. It’s not afraid of crying to express its basic needs and trusts that they will be satisfied; neither it feels shame if it burps, vomits or urinates itself, I’ve even seen joyful reactions while it happens. That trust may be different in abandonment cases, both temporally and permanently just like in cases of constant overprotection. However, it won´t fully disappear, even if the infant is abandoned to his own luck at few hours of being born, life manifests itself through what Michael identified and called ENOUGHNESS.

Enoughness is the installed capacity which us humans are born with, to face life’s challenges. We manifest it as the intern and natural given certainty necessary for facing the uncertainty and the changes which life gives to us unexpectedly, since the moment of our birth.

It’s clear that in some moment of our life we learn to change the natural connection with the enoughness and we “plug” ourselves to another source: THE HELPLESSNESS. Sometimes, we learn it through abuse, some other through exaggerated consents. The connection we have with helplessness its generated when we forget we are enough and, through that forgetfulness, we learn mistrust.

We stop trusting, derived from the reality construction (perception and interpretation) that we experience when we were left alone as small children for too long and/or we lived hunger, discomfort, or abuse. We also generate distrust by emotional experiences where we feel cheated or excluded, and we install within our inner self the fear of being unworthy of love for what we authentically are, and we think we might be loved for what we do. Or maybe by a mental experience which led us to distrust because someone laughed at us because we expressed what we felt.

The point is that when we stop trusting, we connect with that inner discomfort which we have named as helplessness and we experience fear, scare, frustration, anger, anxiety, desperation, etc., and with that, we manifest behaviors like: concession, aggression, evasion, inaction, crying, etc., emotions that if they are present too much, may produce suffering — it’ll also affect the members of the social system we’re are in, by the way — for thinking/feeling we’re not enough to reach the standards, of others and our own. As a result, we lose confidence on ourselves, our capacities, potentialities, in our dignity itself.

Within what we’ve said so fair, it seems to me that the abrupt and exaggerated behaviors that we see or hear about happening in our country (and the rest of the world) on a daily basis, correspond with our connection with HELPLESSNES, and because we feel that way we choose behaviors that do not add to the social harmony because we put our needs and interests above the needs and interests of others, or vice versa, we diminish our needs and interest to favor those of the others. The paradox is that both things happen for the same reason: TO SURVIVE.

In that way, I’d like to underline that that’s one of the many paradoxes that Michael Blumenstein observed. The fact that by connecting with helplessness represent the best way we’ve learned to face life’s events.

The big point is that if that form builds transforms itself into a habit, we tend to act from that place and therefore we become experts in that way of doing things, in being aggressive, frustrated or sad.

From my point of view, Blumenstein Theory proposes that human beings are born with a deep connection to life and everything in it, as we grow, we are prone to lose that fundamental bond with life and Totality. If we recognize that there is a natural connection with enoughness and us, we can also recognize it in others and in consequence, the interests and concerns of others, will have the same value as ours.

A way to recover the connection with ourselves, with others and with the world, it may be being aware of what happens in our bodies, of the wonders that happen in it without our will, in looking that in ourselves there is so much confidence, which will help us remember that we are ENOUGH.

Our stomach digests our food to transform it in nutrients required for each cell, we trust in it. We can also trust that our lungs will take oxygen to our blood and that it will flow though our arterial and venous webs which beat because of our own heart’s impulses. Likewise, we can trust our scent to let us perceive aromas, and our eyes to let us perceive images and thanks to them they’re produced in our brains. Relearning to trust can start by recognizing our body’s autonomy, such as the interconnected structure where no organ overlays or takes advantage of other. All of our organs operate in an ambit of operational autonomy and an interconnected structure. Maybe observing our body allows us to remember and connect to our enoughness, confident that we have all the resources we need to have had survived up until now and, with that, amaze us, marvel us and thank the nice things in life, before which, we can choose to live a good life, instead of just surviving.

What can we do to connect with our ENOUGHNESS?

Michael postulated it with another paradox: “It’s too simple and too complex”, he used to say, “Believe it or not, think it or not, feel it or not, YOU ARE ENOUGH. You have to do nothing, just remember it”

What do you think?

José Luis Vieyra