Maybe you’re familiar with the saying, “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” It all depends on who you are. I say that about San Diego because I hated living in San Diego County but some people love it.
Like Persephone I love the underworld. I love the Moon and all of her silvery glory. I like to vacation in the light of the Sun if there’s a cool breeze and plenty of clouds to diffuse the heat and light but I am absolutely not a light worker or in love with the blazing hot brightness of the Sun. That’s me. It’s a part of who I am.
That said, I love chiaroscuro. It was my email address for a while and I really felt for the rat of that name in The Tale of Despereaux. I saw myself in him.
I’ve always seen myself in villains because, as I’ve recently come to understand about myself, I am very frequently rejected by humans around me because I don’t meet their expectations. I don’t conform to cultures I don’t understand or relate to, so I am treated as a problem by those with control issues and those who lack the courage or strength or motivation to engage in self reflection. My values don’t match with theirs so I don’t behave the way they expect people to behave and the result is disdain or at the very least dismissal.
But what it’s come to is that I have a sense of self based in that rejection. I am used to it even though it has never been comfortable. I am primed to walk away and give up hope of being valued. That’s what happens to lots of people we reject because they aren’t what or who we expect them to be. We do it without thinking about it but it marks people for a long, long time. The fault is not with those rejected. It lies with any of us who reject others who don’t conform.
It gives me a unique perspective. I can see outside of groups, systems, relationships, etcetera because I AM outside of them. My way of being is not reinforced and is not welcomed. It doesn’t matter why.
It doesn’t matter why.
Say it after me.
What matters is the impact it has had on me and that matters way outside of me and my experience because I am not the only one who has experienced that impact.
Two years ago I was asked to observe in a teacher’s classroom because two students were having severe escalation episodes quite regularly. They would both be taken from the room to “calm down” in the social worker’s office. They would come to some peace and go back to the room and escalate again. Why? Because the teacher would greet them with a laundry list of what they did wrong and what was wrong with them and why they were such a problem. I heard one of them say, “You want me to die.”
(Do not complain that I told this story before if I have told this story before. Read it again or don’t. It’s an opportunity for you to see new things in the same thing and if you don’t want that then you are free to stop reading at any time.)
I heard that and realized that’s how I feel in my office. I feel like my bosses and some of my coworkers want me to die. I feel like they hate me. They would protest at both of those things and last year I gave some of them the chance to protest.
Realizing that gave me a lot of insight into my own choices and how they are influenced by that kind of behavior. For years I have sought to reject the conformists, to sneer and display my sincere shock at what they do so that they get an idea of what it feels like.
The problem with that is that they have years of having power behind them. They have years of acceptance and reward behind them. I am standing on thin ice.
It’s hard for me to have compassion for someone like that, someone who naturally makes others feel inferior because it’s always worked well for them. The thing is, though, there is no other way. When someone’s foot is on your neck it is unlikely that you are going to force them to see what’s wrong with what they are doing.
If you can’t avoid them, enlist the help of someone more powerful until you can avoid them. If you can’t do that, then use passive non-resistance. Go limp.
Don’t fight. They get stronger when you fight.
Blues for Persephone 