Lessons in Life: Inclusion
What experiences of inclusion in your life had made you question your prior beliefs and taught you a great lesson?
Flash Contest on Inclusion, sponsored by @bananafish
This is a great question, because if we haven't changed over the course of our lives, our time has pretty much been wasted. @calluna and @the ironfelix know that I attempted to answer this in the comment section, and sort of misinterpreted what was expected of me. I'll give it another shot :)
I always felt kind of marginalized, so I didn't see others in that way. I was the outsider. As I explained in my comment, the one thing I had to outgrow was the idea that it was important to dress a certain way, to have a certain manner, to project a certain style.
I think it helped that I went to college in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. This was a time and place of cultural revolution. My family lived in an attic, but we clung to our pretensions. Every day I'd take the subway from my modest Brooklyn apartment, go under the East River and come out in a different world. I went to New York University. Many of my classmates had gone to prep school. All of them, I was sure, were rich.
When I first went off to college my sister shopped with me to buy proper clothes so I could fit in. Everything was pretense that first year. I spoke to almost no one, because they might find out where I really came from. I was a scholarship student and felt like an imposter.
Then I met a few people. They had to actually pursue me to get me to open up. That was my "coming out". I once took a guy home to my apartment. I don't know why, because I was so embarrassed. But he was fascinated. I don't think he'd ever been in home like that.
We had to climb a winding dark stairway up three flights until we came to my door. My mother had built the couch in our front room from folding chairs and had sewed little green cushions that she attached to the seats with small ties. These ties also held the chairs together so they wouldn't separate when we sat on them. But of course, we never sat on them unless company came.
It took a few years for me to come full circle, to drop the idea that the way I dressed, the way I sipped soup or folded my napkin helped to define me. I think the moment I realized I had grown out of it came on another evening with another young man. His background was quite prestigious, he was sure to let me know. I think he was eager to impress me and took me out to a very expensive dinner. It was at dinner that I had a moment of clarity.
I was talking with a fork in my hand and I waved it as I gestured. He was horrified. The breach of etiquette cut him to the core. But I wasn't embarrassed. I had to stop myself from laughing. I recognized that he was still trapped in a place I had grown beyond.
So there it is, the inclusive lesson I learned: to eschew superficial differences, to disdain the unimportant. Inclusiveness meant accepting everyone without looking at the nonsense. The world was much more open for me then and I moved about it more freely, not only with greater acceptance of myself but with greater acceptance of everyone I met.
You ask if I would recommend a movie, book or television show that might sensitive others to the state of being marginalized. Yes. Definitely. One of the most effective movies I ever saw that dealt with this subject was *District 9. There are other great movies and books that come to mind, but I like this one because it doesn't highlight a particular group, but deals with marginalization as a state.
Thank you, I felt taken away from you on a journey back in time to your past. To feel like an outsider or otherwise is often unpleasant for young people. Having a moment of clarity and being able to laugh about the fact that someone else has not yet had that moment may lead exactly to him having it. And that etiquette is less important to him, less important what others think. Although not unimportant.
I don't know the film. I hope I can watch it.
Oh, I would have loved to, really loved to see your furniture and the chairs your mother sewed herself! Where exactly was your apartment? In what kind of house? How do I imagine the street?
I wish you could see my mother's couch. I've never seen anything like it since :) It takes a lot of imagination to see a couch in folding chairs. My mother was an artist with needle and thread. I never appreciated her enough.
This was a middle class neighborhood. My mother's family searched long and hard to find us affordable accommodations in a good neighborhood and excellent school district. An attic in a private home filled the bill. We were lucky.
Those years---they made a rebel out of me :)
Thanks so much for reading and enjoying this.
your mom's spirit has enough power to show up once in a while. :))
I am back in Hamburg and already miss the peace and quietness of the land surrounding where I grew up. My man and I made some nice trips to the nearby lake and the next day to an old castle where we strolled through the woods and met some cattle and a horse.
What lovely times. We had before some cake and coffee at a land restaurant where we met some Irish folks and talked a little to them.
Warm greetings!
Erika
🐇 🐇😇
If I didn't know any better, I would think this writing was fiction. To live in an attic with a couch that your mother made from folding chairs? It must have been intimidating for you at first to go to a college where the rich people attended. I was pretty much the opposite. I grew up with money and everything that went with it as you have written here, and I was miserable. Everything and everyone had to be "Just so." When you talked about waving your fork around at dinner I cracked up laughing because I did something similar one night while out to dinner with my parents. They were horrified and I couldn't stop laughing. To this day I hate fancy restaurants and fancy clothes. I am a down to earth woman and what you see is what you get. I really enjoyed your story @agmoore!
I guess it does sound like fiction. I never thought about it. We had all the middle class pretensions. The hollowness of them is obvious to me now, but as I explained, it took a bit of an awakening.
Thanks so much for reading and for that great comment.
My mom only acted that way around my father. It was sad to see that she wasn't her true self around him too. I began working when I was 15 and when I was 18 he disowned me because I wasn't working for a big corporation and didn't have a fancy title. That was everything to him. Appearances and bragging rights.
Wow! That must have had a powerful influence on your character. Made you strong, I'm sure.
Don't get me started on fathers...another story that sounds like fiction 😁
Well, you see, we turned out fine. I think our mothers get a lot of credit, although I'm sure when we were growing up we didn't see it that way.
I almost wrote "don't get me started on my father" also. I could write a book about him but that is the last thing I want to do. If you didn't have money, you were a nobody. Now I pinch pennies but at least I am happy.
I agree 100% about our Moms. : )
Great post, heartfelt and well written. You have came a long way, good for you!
Thank you so much! I'm still on the road...still learning :)
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