Taken
literally, “if I were you” seems to be an entirely redundant turn of phrase.
And yet we hear it a lot.
“If I were you, I would have turned left at
that last junction.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t have called my
boss a bitch.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t take that job.”
Often, the
phrase is simply a convenient way to offer advice. We aren’t really thinking
about what we would do if we were
someone else; we are advising someone on what we think they should do or should
have done. Or perhaps we’re just chatting about what we would do if we were in similar circumstances. Either way,
there’s no problem.
But taking
the phrase literally does offer us a very important tool for being more
understanding, compassionate and forgiving towards other people in general. Take
a moment to consider what you would actually have done if you were somebody else in some scenario or
another.
Hopefully,
after a little thought you’ll come to the somewhat unintuitive but ultimately
inescapable conclusion that you would have done precisely what they did,
whatever that was. Why? Because you were
them. There is no getting around this simple but powerful fact. If you were
in someone else’s shoes entirely – body, mind, soul (if you believe in such a
thing), memories, environmental influences and more – there would be no extra
part of you to make you do differently to them, and so you would do precisely what
they did. Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Adam Lanza, George Bush, your
mother-in-law, the guy that knocked you off your bike last year… everyone. If
you were them, you would have done what they did.
But so what?
How does this change anything? It may, but it may not. That depends on your
current view of the world. But please do me a favour and try something:
whenever someone annoys you or upsets you or otherwise does something you see
as worthy of punishment or suffering, just remember this fact: if you were
them, you would have done the same. You might not like it, but it is simple
truth, and I wager it will make you see some things very differently.
And don’t
stop there. Think about this the next time someone is talking about the justice
system, too. How do we justify revenge (or retributive justice, as the more “civilised”
among us like to call it)? With difficulty, I think. How can we condone
punishment for its own sake whilst simultaneously admitting that we’d have done
the same as the perpetrator if we were them? This thought experiment supports
the ever-more-popular view that the purpose of the justice system should be
protection of the public and prevention of reoffending. So do think about it,
please.