Bonni Blue
The 2016 election has viciously shaken our snow globe until our country has become unmoored and is free-floating in disarray.
Our beautiful planet has an estimated 8.7 million species and 7.4 billion people with four major races, 6500 spoken languages and 4200 religions that are situated on a tiny rock that’s been divided into sections as it rotates in space. This means that 7.4 billion people are interacting alongside 8.7 million species in 196 countries, speaking with 6500 different linguistic interpretations, guided under 4200 beliefs, living an inestimable number of situations and experiencing them from widely differing viewpoints while coexisting on a speck in a Universe of unimaginable size.
That’s what we’re dealing with in our interactions with each other, like grocery carts, carefully passing in an overstuffed aisle of unknowns.
These are the filters through which everything is sifted as we argue about acceptance over an election, cluster around the holiday table to give thanks, when discussing if or how to protest, demand immigration reform while living on a climate-raging planet, and speak of our individual and global pain. From the outside, filters are difficult to discern unless a tattoo or a “defining characteristic” alludes to a person’s demographic. A census can sort out a few filters, but it is a surface dissection at best.
Every time I fill out a census questionnaire my pen hovers over several boxes. Half my heritage is a blend of Mexican, Spanish and Indian, the other half of European descent. I'm a mutt, with ancestors who came across borders from the south and the east, plus a few hand-me-down cells that according to family lore were from the originating people of our country—Native Americans.
My pen has hovered over boxes on the census because I’m all those options, but I don’t look like any of them. This was considered “good” when I was growing up. It was “better” not to look like I’d come here illegally, though that’s exactly what my maternal grandparents did. By the time I came into the picture they had become naturalized citizens, but the illegal status settled over anyone who looked Mexican.
Since I have the ability to walk the streets in heritage incognito, I am often told things people would not tell me if they were aware of my DNA. That’s probably a little disconcerting to read. Gauging ethnicity is a filter that many people use to determine how to interact with someone. This sorting is similar to high school cliques, but in the 21st century, it is extremely dangerous for a stable and functioning society. You’ll see why when I relate some of what my margarine appearance may have made it seem permissible for people to say.
“Mexicans are ruining our country”, “Mexicans should be piled on trains and tossed back over the border”, “Mexican are________”, fill in the blank with a hundred different mean descriptors, I’ve heard them all. Many times I whisper, “I’m Mexican”, and the frequent response is an incongruous “No you’re not, you don’t look Mexican.” That statement clarifies what is often a determining factor in categorization, a person’s appearance. The look of someone is perception-based and that may not be reality-based. From the outside, other people can force a person into a role or as my son recently said, “into characters that suit their story”. This means filling in someone else’s box with imaginings and judgments. Here’s what people might assess of me from the outside.
I’m a woman of indeterminate age or race. My body is bigger than some and flabby in more places than I would choose. I’m a business owner. I work hard on many days and doodle away precious hours on the internet. My husband and I recently had the siding redone on our mid-sized old house situated in a suburban town. I have two dogs who pee inside when I’m not looking. I’m mother to two adult children who visit and talk to me on the phone.
These stats from the outside might be perceived as “That woman’s got it easy and she’s lazy, has untrained dogs, can’t stop eating, has more money than most, popped out a couple of kids and has never struggled a day in her life.” Those are outside the box filters that can be hazardous and untrue. They’re too easy, like a paintball gun direct-shot at a wall and going splat without conscious thought. From inside a person, there’s usually a more complex story. I’m opening my box to illustrate a point about perception and for another more important reason that I’ll offer at the end of this post.
I’ve lived with Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder for decades. I went through multiple miscarriages before finally having a high-risk pregnancy that ended with twins and post-partum depression bordering on psychosis. When the kids were five I lost what small amount of control I had and spanked them both. This event scared them and me so bad I went to therapy where I remained for the duration of their childhood.
My box has never had money, not as a child or an adult. My husband and I will likely be paying for our kids’ college tuition and the house improvement loans until we’re at least eighty-five. I choose to have my own business because I suffered through multiple sexual harassment and assault situations with previous bosses. My ass is this big because I have a metabolic problem that came from taking steroids for five years to carry a baby to term. And my ill-behaved dogs were adopted from a shelter and none of the approaches I’ve tried has worked. Perception is in the eye of the beholder.
After a chaotic election, that has left a pause button depressed while our snow globe innards smack against our glass sides, I have wrestled with my own perception. After all, I’m almost-famous for believing that if I were in charge of the world it could be a better place. The world would not be a better place if I was in charge. That’s called a self-idealized delusion.
Personalizing-perception is an easy slip-up because we humans tend to like our own viewpoint—a lot. That’s why our lives look the way they do. We’re born with or individually choose a life course and that approach becomes “ours”. In this instance, I’m using “ours” as a global term meaning “everyone”. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a perfect example of a singular viewpoint, combined with cultural absolutism. It is funny in the movie but not so much in real life because real life has consequences, like when relationships implode over entrenched perceptions.
Over a long period of time, I endured trauma and abuse. There were others who lived through some of those events with me and we each responded in our own way. We each went through much of the same experiences but perceived and handled the situation and the aftereffects differently. Since there was very little awareness of our individuality, my wounded tribe morphed into throwing judgmental tomatoes at one another. I had wanted and thought I needed the other people to think and feel like me and they had wanted/needed the same in return. None of us could understand nor support the other with their individual coping and healing choices. Consider it an “I survived this way, now you do the same” relationship clause.
Fast forward a couple of decades and this became a deal breaker. That’s what happens when events are personalized for other people. Taking away someone else’s freedom to choose how they live with or after an event, will squash an ability to communicate with one another. That’s what’s been happening during this election and for several decades prior. We’ve created so many deal breakers there’s no commonality or consideration for what other people may be living through.
I was recently a part of a discussion about some women knowing for all women. The heated exchange covered race, age, experience, relationships and financial circumstances. Women felt bundled and tossed into the same vagina bag. No vagina is the same. No man, woman, teenager or child is the same. No DNA ladled experience is the same. To further flesh out this concept, these comments came from conversations about protests. “They’re ruining the opportunity for change”, and “Why don’t they just protest with their vote?” I don’t know why. That’s the point. I can only know why for me.
Perception is a slippery slope slicked with a single viewpoint that shoots society out of a cannon into a volatile land of persecution. Anger will oftentimes rise in situations where a person or group has an ingrained desire to coerce, bully, mute, alienate, institutionalize and humiliate another person or group into doing, thinking or feeling the same way they do. This sounds an awful lot like what’s been going on with our political parties, during our legislative processes, in neighborhood interactions, and at the very root of our society—within families.
This year has been a reflection of what we are as a country. I know that sounds harsh, but our politics come from how we are interacting in our relationships and the way we think as individuals. Nothing bubbles to the top that doesn’t come from beneath the surface. That is a sad and scary pronouncement on the state of our union.
I’ve seen marriages crumble, families stop speaking to one another, and children leave home to never look back when a singular perception has devolved into persecution. If we choose to aspire to a better union, not a splintered, dysfunctional, chaotic union, we’ll have to put some time and sweat into understanding perception.
Perception exists because there are so many fucked up and amazing circumstances happening to so many fucked up and amazing people. Everyone owning exactly the same skin color, the same gender, the same sexual preference, the same beliefs, the same attitude, the same histories, the same coping and avoidance choices, the same conscious objectivity—the same boxes, isn’t going to happen.
Therefore we are never going to ever have the same perceptions.
Our national and global family is in trouble. We’re at a crossroads. One direction appears catastrophic and the other seems grueling because it involves listening to people we may not want to listen to. But the process that would lead us away from our current circumstances requires educating ourselves about our individual perception and the interiors of other people’s lives. Which brings me to “the ask” in this post.
I invite those who know me and those who I have yet to encounter, to open their boxes and share who they are.
That may be scary, it was for me. Unveiling who we are doesn’t come naturally, it’s like giving a potential enemy our annihilation code. It is a societally entrenched no-no. Our emotional and situational stories have been pushed into closets and poked ignobly under beds so that we blend and become one entity with the same allegiances, hopes, and plans for action.
BREAKING NEWS: We are never going to blend. That’s a societally-idealized delusion.
So instead of imbibing in a delusion cocktail, let’s explain to ourselves and each other how we have come to think and believe the way that we do. We may discover commonalities, but even in those there will probably be deep divisions. In places, there will likely be diametrically opposing viewpoints, yet within them perhaps astonishingly there are similarities. With study and engagement, our awareness of our commonalities and differences may enable us to heal and then sustain our collective humanity.
It is a difficult undertaking, seeing the world from a worldview while living individually. Understanding our perception is something we can more easily do together.
May our global tribe have awareness of the individual other, the will to stand for peace, the heart for all life, and a love-based intention to embrace the uniqueness of this experience.
I’d love it if you’d open your box in the comments section and share the why of YOU for the benefit of US.
Edit Credit: Jo Marie Bankston