Day thirty one - Projection

I said I would write about Projection, and here it is. There are several defence mechanisms that people use to help them cope with life's many and varied situations. The one that I see most often is Projection". In my church plant in Eastbourne I used to talk about this a lot. I always said, "Everyone projects". Without giving a textbook definition, projection involves projecting onto others the flaws and faults that you see in yourself. If you can blame someone else for having the flaws that you have then you are pointing attention away from yourself. That's a rough description, but when I wrote about it yesterday I was meaning the way I experience it.

People tell me how I feel, when what they mean is: "If I was in your position, this is how I would feel."

When I used to talk about this in my church plant, occasionally I would be asked, "What do you project?". And I would say, "Nothing - it doesn't apply to me!"

You may think that sounds like I am not self-aware, but that's because you are already projecting onto me!

So, the other day someone told me that it was a relief to me to be told that I didn't have cancer because I had been worrying about it.

What they meant was, that if they were in my position they would be relieved because they would have been worrying about it.

I was neither relieved nor worried. I was just curious. I wanted to know how I would react to the diagnosis, firstly of cancer, and secondly of terminal cancer.

I cannot project onto anyone else because I don't know what it is like to be them, yet others think they know what it's like to be me.

I know a number of people who have, or have had, prostate cancer. Some of them say being alive with the problem is better than the alternative. So I then preach about the alternative: the resurrection body on the new earth, and how wonderful it will be to have a resurrection body with no more illness, or pain, or tiredness. Last time I did that the reaction from some of the congregation was that they wanted to live as long as they could because they don't want this to be over. I cannot project onto that because I don't understand that viewpoint - unless they are not really Christians and they don't believe in the resurrection. Most likely the case!

But to tell me that I was worried is to demonstrate that these people don't know me. Why would I worry about meeting Jesus face-to-face? Why would I be relieved when I wasn't worrying.

Am I just not normal? Well, I know the answer to that!

But maybe, instead of assuming everyone else is just like us; feels like us; reacts like we would; believes what we believe; maybe, just maybe, we could ask and listen, and not judge them by our understanding of how we should be reacting.

And so I was doing what I always do and I was viewing my collection of dis-eases from an academic viewpoint, mildly curious, examining myself to see: How would Martin Keenan react to a diagnosis/terminal diagnosis of cancer? I'll have to come back to that one if it happens in the future, But in the meantime: "Ouch!"