For the next however long it takes to read these words, I'm declaring this column a safe space. That means I'm giving myself permission to think out loud--in print--and that I'd appreciate it if you'd just suspend judgment and contempt until we get to the end. (Same goes for applause, if you feel so compelled.)
All of us are born into tight little boxes, defined by the limits of what we think we know. We receive our identity as we interrogate our caretakers and whatever bits of the world we encounter. The first people we meet are generally our people, our parents and others with access to our boxes. They peep over the side to coo and giggle and stretch out the edges, making room for more and more stuff--experience and notions that may or may not have any genuine correlation to the real world. They can't help but indoctrinate you, to infect you with a set of beliefs and prejudices you might embrace or rebel against but never genuinely escape. (Like Philip Larkin said, they may not mean to, but they do.)
After a while we get our legs under us and we're able to push out the walls of our boxes a little bit. Sometimes we back up, get a running start and slam into the limits of our understanding. More often we just push gently and are surprised to find that our boxes get bigger, that we are suddenly able to fit more into them. We begin to understand that it's possible to hold two conflicting ideas in our head at the same time. We might begin to see, for example, that our experience is unique and that there is no other consciousness in the universe that has precisely the same set of thoughts and encounters, yet we are somehow exactly the same as all the other people who have been born in boxes and are grappling with the infinite on the other side of the wall.
Now most of us, most of the time, don't think much about the box that contains us. We have our worlds and we live in them and most of the other people don't impinge upon our particular box. We may have vague feelings about them, we may have been told to eat our zucchini because children are starving in China, and once upon a time we may have even felt a little sad for starving children, but the truth is most of us care far more for the dog we remember from our childhood--a dog that was at one time in our box with us--than we do for, say, thousands crushed in an earthquake in Pakistan or dozens murdered by terrorists in Paris.
(Or maybe I'm wrong; maybe I'm just a terrible person and you're not, because you do feel something more than a vague and fleeting sorrow for the unmet victims of faraway catastrophes. But this is my unenlightened conscience we're talking about.)
None of us can help the box we're born in, and from a certain perspective, it's really not fair that some are born with access to more resources than others. This is why you should think about whatever advantages you might have over other people and understand that when people talk about privileges sometimes what they mean is the stuff you take for granted. If you were born in America, you probably have a better chance of being happy than if you were born in someplace where there's a lot of war and disease and where the people who are supposed to peep into your box to check on you are either dead or preoccupied with staying alive.
But then there are places in America that aren't so great too. And the only thing we can say about that is that it's too bad, those are the breaks.
Everybody has to take some trouble into their box. Not everyone has the same quality or amount of trouble, but all we really know is our trouble. And trouble isn't fun, even if by the lights of 90 percent of the world's population it's a tea party with pony rides. ("But it's a mean pony!")
So while I can find lots of things to complain about in my box, if I am the least bit self-aware and cognizant of the sorrows of others, I probably ought not do so too loudly. Because then I show up in other people's boxes as the ungrateful complaining guy who doesn't have a clue what it's like to be marginalized, disenfranchised, silenced, shut out or told that my opinions are irrelevant.
It is very true that none of us can know what someone else has had to put up with every day of their lives. It is very true that each one of us is a minority of one, in some ways isolated and alienated from each other. You cannot know my heart, just as you must take on faith the proposition that you are not a robot (or that you are not the only authentic being in the world while the rest of us are simulations). It is very true that I have no idea what it is like to be black, gay, female, trans, short, a cat fancier or a person with so-called "normal color vision."
That's not fair. But those are the breaks.
None of what I'm saying (writing) should be construed as an argument against multiculturalism or diversity or against anyone saying whatever is on their minds. It's not an argument against revolution or for the slavish maintenance of the status quo. It's just an acknowledgment that certain historical factors have led to all of us living in a world that we never made, and that there's only so much (or little) that any of us can do about it other than push against those stupid walls.
Which means we shouldn't seek out only the company of what we see as our own kind. That instead of narrowing our definitions of who we are, we ought to look for the commonalities between ourselves and those who appear most different. We all ought to make an effort to understand that we're not so different as we pretend, and that sometimes what we take for granted can feel like insult or oppression to other folks.
I know this all sounds really naive when I put it down in words. I know it's not likely to be well received by people who have genuine problems and don't want to hear what they are likely to perceive as more straight white mansplaining. But I really do believe the best hope for the world is for us all to push out the walls as far as we are able, and that empathy and miscegenation and all the other things that are the best hope for humanity.
Our only way forward is through love and patience, and Kurt Vonnegut's imperative to be kind ought to be our prime directive. But it's not. Those are the breaks.
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pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 06/05/2016