A red M&M sits in meditation
Authenticity is something I reflect upon often, and I believe it’s an essential ingredient in empathy. For me, authenticity means living from what’s underneath, with the shell as part of me but not all of me. Recently, I was sitting with the question: where is my true self right now?
Perhaps because Halloween was approaching, the image of a red M&M sitting in meditation appeared in my mind.
What stayed with me was the shell. It’s cracked open on one side, and the chocolate underneath wears the same peaceful smile as the shell.
“Narrowing the Gap Between self and Self” came to me alongside the image, and it’s adapted from the teaching of Taizan Maezumi, a renowned Japanese Zen master who helped bring meditation practice to the United States. He encouraged his students to close the gap between yourself and Yourself. As I understand it, the small self is the one we manage all day, with its worries and its reputation to protect. The larger Self is who we are underneath all that, connected to everyone else.
Same chocolate, different shells
The thing about M&Ms is that brown, blue and red all taste the same. The chocolate inside is identical, and only the color of the shell changes.
People still have favorites. Some will tell you the blue ones are better, or that they always eat the red ones last. Nothing in the candy supports it. The difference lives entirely in the person looking.
I catch myself doing the same thing with people. I hear an accent, or notice a body, clothes, a job title, a political sign in a yard. I react to the color of the shell and decide what must be inside. Sometimes I don’t get past that first glance, and I don’t notice I stopped there.
For me, deep empathy means holding that first impression lightly, long enough to meet the person underneath. Looking past the shell doesn’t mean ignoring it. Our experiences really are different, and bearing witness means seeing that too. What we share is the wish to be seen. My eye will still land on the shell first. What I’m learning is to keep looking after it does.
Some shells feel thicker than others, and they form in different ways. Some come from being hurt, and they kept a person safe once. Others develop from what we learn about how we should be: what a professional sounds like, what success is supposed to look like, what our family or culture expects of us. Over time those ideas harden into a coating that can be hard to see through, from the outside and sometimes from the inside too. Other people’s shells are thin, and the chocolate shows with very little effort.
However a shell formed, it doesn’t mean there’s less chocolate inside. At some point it made sense, as protection or as a way to belong. I try to remember that when someone seems closed off, and when I’m impatient with myself.
That’s also why a shell doesn’t come off on demand, and it shouldn’t be pried open. In my experience it softens slowly, and not on its own. It takes someone willing to understand and appreciate the shell, whether that’s another person or ourselves. With enough safety and kindness, I’ve seen people start to feel free to be more of who they are.
My own shell
I do the same thing to myself. I have confused myself with my roles and my history, and with the running story of what I got right and what I got wrong. That story is the small self, or what I call the “identity self,” and it can feel like the whole candy.
There are also parts of myself I would rather not look at, and I suspect that’s true for most people. It might be a body that doesn’t match the picture in my head, an identity I was taught to hide or apologize for, a fear, or an old habit that keeps repeating. It’s easy to treat these as the truth about me and then either fight them or cover them up.
The M&M suggests another way. The shell is real and it’s part of me, but it isn’t all of me. I’m learning to hold the parts I don’t like with the patience I’d offer a difficult friend. When I manage that, they stop feeling like something standing between me and the true Self.
I’ve come to appreciate that bearing witness starts with myself, including the parts I’d rather not see. When I can stay present with my own shell without turning away, it gets easier to do the same for someone else.
At work
At work, this image has been most useful to me when things are hard. I think of the colleague who grates on me, or a client relationship that has grown strained over time. In those moments the shell is all I see, mostly the history between us. Remembering their “inner chocolate” doesn’t excuse anything they’ve done. It does help me respond to a person instead of a coating, and that usually changes the conversation.
I decided to try this on purpose. For a week, I spent a few moments with this image before each work meeting. I used it as a short meditation, looking past how the other person presents and sitting with what we share underneath. Conversations went deeper, and I found I needed to repeat myself less. I listened more closely, and I believe the people I was meeting with felt heard. Even the meetings that are usually tense felt lighter and less stressful for me.
The habit of judging the shell shows up in design work too. As a designer and marketer, I have missed the mark by assuming I understood the people I was trying to reach. I could imagine myself in their shoes, and that felt like empathy, but it was only partial. I saw the shell and missed key things underneath. Now, as a consultant, I see the same pattern in many of the teams I work with. Helping them see past the shell is at the heart of Bearing Witness Design.
I see this a lot in products for people living with mental illness, including addiction. Many are designed by people who haven’t lived with the condition. The intentions are good, but the understanding often stays at the surface. I’ve done this myself. When I was working on a product for alcohol addiction, I was focused on treatment and on giving the patient tools. I discovered what I’d missed when we talked with people living with alcohol addiction during market research. Shame emerged as something I hadn’t considered enough, and it could keep people from using the very tools we were building. I was seeing the illness at a surface level and missing the whole person.
All the same chocolate
Look again at the M&M in the image. Most of its shell is still there. It is still red and still has the white m on its chest. The crack didn’t erase who it is in the world. It opened a window.
That’s how I understand contemplative practice and deep empathy work, whether it’s meditation or some other way of paying close attention to ourselves and others. It doesn’t strip away personality or history, and we get to keep our shell. Practice wears a small opening in it, enough for the chocolate to show through and for us to stop mistaking the coating for the whole thing.
I still catch myself judging the shell, with people and with myself. These days, when I notice it, I picture that meditating M&M and try to smile. It reminds me that it’s all the same chocolate, including me.