Compassionate detachment: Seeing a situation clearly without adding or eliminating details is critical in making ethical decisions.

One of my favorite end-of-the-day mindless TV shows is Beat Bobby Flay. Last night, as I watched him take out a skilled chef a-gain, I found myself thinking about the TV editing process. Even though we all know that what we see can’t be done in half-an-hour, we have this sense that the cooking and cleaning process is a seamless whole. Continuity—making sure that the images flow in an expected order—is crucial to maintain the illusion. Continuity is broken when a sequence with Bobby not wearing his apron is put in after we’ve seen him mixing up the blackberry sauce with his apron protecting him from splatters.

As I noted the continuity error, I found myself reflecting on how we edit our lives. As we recount our day to ourselves, pour out our woes to our friends, and position ourselves to seek a redress from wrongs, we are as skillful at only noticing what supports our cause and reinforces our image of ourselves as the Flay crew is at building suspense and keeping us intrigued with the cooking process.

Interestingly, our mind, which is supposed to be the impartial arbiter of reality, conspires to create our alternate reality TV. First, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, our minds anticipate what we are going to see and begin to fill in the details for us—even before we experience the event. Thus, if we are not really paying attention, we may “see” details that we expect but aren’t really there. The only way we snap back to attention is when we see something we don’t expect—like Bobby without an apron after he ostensibly put one on.

And then, to add insult to injury, our minds will reinforce what we thought we saw until we are absolutely convinced that up is down, even when we see a video clip showing us we are wrong.

A core skill for ethical maturity is being able to fully pay attention and neither unfairly edit our experience nor our response as we retell our stories. A core component of this skill is compassionate detachment. If we had no skin in the game, what would we see and how would we name the event? As we evaluate our emotions, to what degree are we really responding to the actual event, and is the response appropriate?

Our ethics—how we treat ourselves and others—flow from beliefs that inform behaviors. If our beliefs are based on an interpretation of life that omits key details or recounts events out of their actual sequence, we will not respond appropriately to our environment. And, we might miss the opportunity to contribute to a world where people can thrive.

Compassionate detachment is tricky. We can’t be too harsh or we’ll fall into a cycle of blame and discouragement. Nor can we be too optimistic or we’ll miss an opportunity for right action and reconciliation. A useful technique is to begin by asking what we really saw or experienced. What details did we add that we expected to see but weren’t truly there? What details did we omit that didn’t match our expected picture?

This morning, I watched a short video where a young man tried to set up a homeless man by giving him $100. The man was then followed and filmed. Predictably, he went to a liquor store. The filmmaker was not surprised. But then the man began seeking out other homeless people and giving them—food. He had gone to the liquor store, bought food, and was handing out lunch to others stranded at park benches and picnic tables. Those filming did not see what they expected and were schooled in compassion when they asked the man why he shared. He stated that he ended up homeless after caring for his mother who recently died. He had quit his job to be her full-time caretaker and then realized that he did not have money for rent and couldn’t quickly get a job. He said that those on the street often had one turn of bad luck that landed them at a soup kitchen or shelter.

That story reminds us again not to fill in the details of the story without doing a bit more investigation. What we expect to see may in fact be far from the actual truth. From seeking out the unseen details of an event, we can move to evaluating what we saw and choose an appropriate response—often one that is kinder and more effective than our usual knee-jerk reactions. The young man who watched the homeless person buy food for others gave him another $100 to continue the good work. In our professional life, leadership guru Kendall Lyman calls this process learning to be creative in our response instead of reactive. But we cannot creatively respond unless the foundation upon which we act is based on fact and not fantasy—or prejudice.

Give it a try! Take one day and practice looking carefully at what is happening. When you think you have seen clearly what is going on, go back and look again. And then with compassionate detachment carefully evaluate your response rather than editing your personal TV show as you go. You might be surprised at what you see—and then how you behave.