Crawling Out of the Cave

For this blog post to make sense, you must have read last month's. This could easily be a book, but I'll do my best to keep it succinct.

Escaping the cave I grew up in took time, distance and experience.

First, I had to age out and leave school and home. I needed to experience others' lives, homes and ways and I needed to form my own manner of living. I had to work back and forth between living as I always had and trying new ways. I had to recognize the difference between the concepts of right/wrong and different (wherein falls better and not-so-good).

I'll share a few pivotal moments. I dropped and broke something that belonged to a boyfriend. I remember bracing myself for his ire. Instead, he gasped and said intently, "Are you alright?" I was gob-smacked. Instead of chiding me for clumsiness or inattentiveness, he showed concern. Instead of being punished, I was being cared for.

I was a big fan of Walt Richardson and the Morningstar Band back in the day in Phoenix. I remember being on the dance floor at one club where they were performing. Some guy jumped up on the stage, danced around and sang. Walt just kept playing, watching him and waiting. The guy eventually jumped down. Walt kept playing and watching him until he caught his eye. Then Walt gently shook his head and said, "Don't do that, man." They guy nodded and kept dancing. On the dance floor.

These are two of many instances that showed me that the entire world was not waiting for someone to err and pile on punitive consequences.

While this is not as specific as the above incidents, I remember when I first started hanging around people who, when they didn't know something that someone else was talking about, listened, asked questions, then listened some more rather than laughing in discomfort or rolling their eyes in mockery. I learned to respect those who had knowledge I lacked, rather than calling them a nerd (back when it was not a compliment) or taking on a snide well, good for you attitude. This worked two ways. I also learned to comfortably admit I didn't know something, because I knew I'd be taught rather than ridiculed. While I refused to take pedagogy in college, I grew up loving to teach, perhaps as a result of those experiences.

Crawling out of the cave is a long, ongoing process. It takes my mind a long time to catch up to newfound knowledge and ways. I'm still surprised when I go out to eat and order a salad. In a moment of determination, I signed up to run ten kilometers in the local Bridge Run last Saturday. I made it! (No walking!) I've been practicing. (I can't bring myself to call it training, as I still don't see myself as an athlete after all these years.) When I started the run, my mind flooded with thoughts of: Who am I trying to fool? I'll never make it. I'm glad I brought money to get a cab ride home. I can always just walk. Etc. And those are doubts I still have of physically proven changes in myself. Imagine how long it takes my mind to catch up to realizations like: Not every clerk or waiter who doesn't smile is unfriendly. Not every homeless person is a lazy addict. Not everyone of a different faith is doomed to hell.

We create caves. The people who elected Donald Trump, who behaves abominably by making untrue, bigoted, racist and sexist comments unapologetically, create caves of ignorance and intolerant, punitive, loveless judgement. (I guess I must admit that he is, unfortunately, a sadly accurate representation of a large part of the United States of America, some whom I know and love. He is not a representation of me.) We are so intent on not changing the way we live, that we mock science rather than prepare for great changes in attempt to keep our natural world functioning the best it can. We believe news as we comfortably hear it rather than researching to verity its truth. We so want to be right that we surround ourselves with like thinkers and don't develop the ability to share opposing thoughts and sort out truth from fallacy.

Jochen Wegner gave a good TED talk on matching up people of opposing viewpoints to have conversations about their differences. That is what I want to hear about, not political rally violence incited by a presidential candidate.

Even if what you teach in your cave is the truth, opposing viewpoints need to be known to better teach. I can't tell you how many times Douglas and I have gone round and round on an issue only to eventually, finally realize that one of us (usually me) had a misconception they were going by. Some people would have said we were arguing, but we weren't; we were discussing opposing viewpoints until one of us realized we'd somehow latched on to misinformation. It's exhausting, it's rewarding and it's vital to our society.

If we cannot, in our own society, crawl out of our caves and see the array of truths outside of it, we can have no hope that religious zealots who want to leave women indoors covered with bolts of fabric or lop off our heads for our beliefs will ever hear us. Not the least reason being that we are shamefully unprepared to formulate and gently, wisely share what we know and believe. We need to find our way out of our various caves and practice experiencing more of life.

Next month, I promise something lighter, more fun, with some pictures from Vladivostok.