I have learned something recently that has liberated me from
struggle of accepting people and situations to a great extent…
It’s a concept called P.I.E.S.
Physical, Intellectual, Emotional and Social safety.
The assumption is each person is doing his or her best, at
that point in time to keep his or her PIES intact
And whatever is being done (may be wrong as per your judgment)
is what that person genuinely believes in for keeping the PIES intact.
So for example I work for issues related to dams…. and much
of my energy goes in dealing with ‘Why on earth would politicians bulldoze on
someone else’s life for their own selfish monetary gains and their own fancy vision of
development? (Most of the dam projects are not proposed in a participatory manner... have too many technical shortcomings, vested interests, political lobbies and cater to only a few people marginalising people who have to give up their lands for the submergence of back waters of the dams... Whose development and at whose expense? remains unanswered)… I couldn’t accept it…
now this PIES theory sort of gives an explanation… they genuinely believe that
this is how they have got to do to win the game… they need to earn more to
retain power and they need more power to earn more money and this is what they
ought to do in politics… money and power at any cost is probably their idea of
their social safety…
Now the beauty of understanding this is…. I do not have to
agree with what they believe but I sort of can understand the helplessness of
the situation…
So even if I still completely disagree with what they do…. there
is a space around it which helps me not get entangled in judging the person and
reacting emotionally….
Another classic example is my dad…. He is brilliant and that’s
his biggest problem….
He naturally has the best solution for everything or best
approach for everything…. He has been managing at highest levels in his work
all his life… been best in acads… cracked IIT (only he and a friend of his were
selected for IIT from Nasik for his batch)… so it’s all excellent …. BUT…. That
makes him a perfectionist manager at home as well all the time… and he keeps
dominating every decision… every situation…. very casually orders for things to
be done… keeps giving instructions and most importantly keeps insisting on
going by his advice all the time….and it is very difficult to deal with… what
he does not understand is that my very foundation.... my very core values are
all borrowed from him… and I look up to him more than he understands…. only my
definition of looking up to him differs than his own one…
I have had a tough time to deal with this for years…. I
struggled for getting my freedom of making mistakes and learning from it… of
exploring the world without tainting a perspective… without being given any
kind of advice…..
And he is still the same…. All the more annoyed because I
listen to him a lot less than I used to….
But after understanding the PIES theory I got a new
perspective…. He actually completely and honestly believes that his advice is
the best to go by for everyone in the house and especially me… so it gives me a little more space to
understand him and not react hastily to what he is saying or doing… at the same
time I still am free to disagree with what he believes….
Its so liberating seriously…. because constantly judging people
takes toll on you in various forms…
I learned about PIES very accidentally
I was talking to a friend who was working with a class of 6th
standard in a school on experiential education… ExpEd essentially believes in getting
the emotional continuum of students right before teaching them any acads… if
the children are emotionally stable… and happy …. they learn a lot more easily….
and efficiently is what ExpEd assumption is…. So he was telling that at first there
was a lot of emotional drain out in his class… which stabilized only after
about two months… this also involved sorting out gender issues in the class…. Now mention of gender issues triggered my
interest because I was struggling to accept something for past 2-3 years… When
I had gone to Melghat to conduct a
regional camp of Nirman for Medical students of some college from Yawatmal…. what
I had encountered with was an immense sexist behavior of the boys in the
participants… there were comments on me… teasing…. and not in a very healthy
way…. All I kept wondering was ‘do they not understand that this is hurting me?’….
I had lost my confidence of dealing with groups entirely
after that incidence…. I kept that question alive in my heart that what makes
them behave like this…. When I talked with Aditya (the ExpEd friend) … he tried
to explain this based on PIES theory… that these people are brought up the way
that they feel like being macho is THE thing and being macho means being sexist….
They genuinely believe that they got to be macho for their social acceptance
and being macho for them means being sexist….
So I do not have to label them as MSPs and discard them… I just
need to understand that they are a product of too many processes…. And they are
doing so to keep their PIES intact…
It was a eureka moment…. !!!!
I know its no way the answer…. But as I have said repeatedly
said…. It just created a space around it and I can look at it in a sort of a detatched
way….
It’s much much a freedom….
P.S. Matured readers will understand that I mean no disrespect for my dad... I love him :)
