Check the Mirror

Sometimes the useful question is not about the other seat.

It is very easy to spend a lot of time looking across the bus.

Why are they doing that?

How do I make them understand?

What do I need to say so they finally respond differently?

Reasonable questions can quietly turn into a full-time surveillance operation of somebody else's seat.

The Sassiverse Mirror turns the view around.

What can I see from my side?

Not: What is wrong with me?

Not: This must all be my responsibility.

And not: The other person's experience doesn't matter.

The Mirror is simply a place to get curious about the Traveler whose choices you can actually reach.

Jedi and the question Jenny couldn't see yet

Jenny learned this slowly with Jedi.

She was dedicated. Jedi was smart. When things became difficult, Jenny did what Jenny does: she learned more.

Information came from everywhere. Some of it conflicted. She tried approaches she liked, approaches she didn't particularly want to try, learned more about behavior, adjusted, and tried again.

For a long time, most of the questions still pointed toward Jedi:

What do I need to do to change this?

The experiments were not wasted. They gave Jenny information and taught her a great deal.

But eventually the Mirror revealed another set of questions.

What am I assuming success is supposed to look like?

Am I listening to the information in front of me—or only looking for the result I expected?

What can I change on my side?

A behavior professional eventually helped Jenny see that they could manage what was happening and work with the dog who was actually there.

And after a very, very, very long time, Jenny finally heard what Jedi had been telling her:

Let Jedi be Jedi.

That did not mean Jenny was the problem. It did not mean Jedi was the problem. It did not mean stop learning, stop caring, or pretend all the earlier experiments had been pointless.

It meant Jenny could finally see the part of the experiment that was hers.

She could listen. Manage. Support him. Change conditions. Keep learning. Make different choices on her side of their life together.

And she could stop treating Jedi becoming a different Jedi as the measurement of whether she had succeeded.

Good for Jedi that she finally saw it.

Good for Jenny, too.

The Mirror did not hand her a verdict.

It gave her somewhere else to look.

What am I bringing to this—and what might I notice if I turn the question toward my side for a moment?

You do not have to discover that you are wrong.

You do not have to decide the other person is right.

You do not have to take responsibility for somebody else's choices.

You might simply notice an assumption. A pattern. A choice. A boundary. A piece of information you had been looking past.

And sometimes the Mirror reveals one more useful thing:

There are controls on your side.

Your words. Your timing. Your boundaries. Whether you pause. Whether you ask for help. Whether you keep participating. What you do with the information you receive.

Other people's controls remain inconveniently located on their side of the bus.

Apparently the bus designers were very serious about this.

Probably for the best.