The Mirror of Personal Semantics

There are words I have started to avoid. They are words I have come to think of in an entirely different way than I did for much of my life. Maybe it’s simply my maturity, or maybe it is cultural influences. I’m not sure.

The other day I was reminded of one of these words when I was catching up on news and wasting time on Facebook. It was the day that Prop 8 was ruled against in court in California, and the posts hitting Facebook all that day were a mixture of elation and disgust, with a majority of them crossing my page in favor of the court’s ruling. In some of the celebratory postings and comments, I was beginning to see the word “tolerance” surface frequently, and I began to think of that word and the context in which it was being used. Although those using the word meant something positive, I began to wonder if it were really true to be doing so and what it meant about us when we did.

When I tolerate something, it usually means it is something I may not like or agree with, but that I am willing to live with, or ignore, or dismiss as something too trivial with which to bother myself. It means I see my position or status as preferable, and that I see the other position in a negative manner, or maybe slightly above the mark of acceptable.

I don’t think I like this word “tolerance.”

I’m not sure it applies here. In fact, I think it marginalizes someone in this case, only because they were born with a sexual preference different than mine. And different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it as a negative.

I guess that bears repeating: different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it in the negative. Not when we define someone by their sexual preference. Not when we define them by their religious views. Not when we define them by the color of their skin. Not even when we define them by their lifestyle, no matter what it may, or may not, include. Different is just that: different. Different should mean parallel in value and significance, particularly when it comes to another person. There should be no positioning beyond that.

But “tolerance,” and “acceptance” are two words—the latter only slightly less potentially offending than the former—that are among those I feel are somewhat judgmental and that I try to avoid using. I’ve come to dislike them. I see them as condescending, and I know I have a history of using them before I came to feel about them as I do now. I dislike that I used to include them in my vocabulary, and I feel better knowing that my feelings about them, something as simple as those words, helps keep me a little more humble.

The extreme of this, or at least what I see as the extreme, is when I hear someone define themselves or someone else as either “straight” or “gay.” If you think about it, we apply a great deal of positive inference in the word “straight.” We think of it as true, as correct, as morally upstanding, and the best path from point A to point B. The opposite of “straight” is “crooked. Just about everything we think of as not being straight we think of as being wrong, or possibly not the norm.

I don’t think I like this word either, this word “straight.”

I posted something on Facebook that day that stated my dislike of the word “tolerance,” and I was a little surprised by the discussion it prompted. It eventually led to a debate about the use of certain words that many use in the positive, but that might mean something much different than what we intend when we use them in reference to someone else, or our relationship with someone else. Eventually we hit on a word that I have come to dislike for a long time now, that being the word “sympathy.”

Most of us see sympathy as a positive trait in ourselves. We see it as an ability to feel for someone else who is either struggling, or disadvantaged, or suffering in some manner. When we believe we feel sympathy for someone else, we feel we are being compassionate and understanding, and that we care about that other person.

But are we, really? Could it be that when I feel sympathy for someone I am not really feeling compassion, but instead feeling something entirely different, something that might even be considered selfish. If I feel sorry for someone, am I really wishing they were in a better state, or am I only affirming my own as the one I see as preferable?

Oddly enough, this is a word I came to feel differently about when I was a younger man, before I thought myself capable of such contemplation. At the emboldened age of 19, when young men tend to think themselves both invulnerable and wiser than their years, I set aside college and went to work for a railroad contractor. It may not have been the best long term strategy, as far as career decisions go, but it proved to be a springboard into my management career, and an experience that would serve me a lifetime.

I spent the next eleven years—including all of my twenties—roaming the continent, and getting paid for it. Much of my travel was through rural areas, and the largest portion of it spent in the deep south, where I often thought of myself as far out of my element. I had a dim view of the people of the rural south, because I saw them as people trapped in a way of life that was uneducated and apathetic. I felt sorry for them. From my perspective as a suburban-raised, modern, and “enlightened” boy, I thought their lives both difficult and backwards. I wondered how they could enjoy their lives, and why they never chose to leave them or do better for themselves. I defined their lives by the four-wheelers I saw parked on their front lawns, and, by their manner of speech. At times, I mocked them.

And then, I met O.D., a man assigned by the railroad to work with me for an entire week. O.D. was a big man, the epitome of a rough and tumble railroader who had worked the rails all of his life. He was adept at every nuance of the communication and cooperation necessary to expedite my work, and he was respected widely by peers and supervisors. He had an affable air about him and an infectious laugh, which was easily stirred even though he seemed a serious man as he went about his tasks. I grew to like O.D the first day we worked together, because he was candid, not self-conscious, and a little rough around the edges. He made me comfortable. We began to click, and the work flew past us.

On the third day of working together O.D. had me pull off the rails in a small town just north of the next major rail yard, deep in the heart of Arkansas. It would be a stretch to try and make it all the way in before the dark and other rail traffic caught up to us. I raised my gear and pulled on to the road at the crossing, and looked at O.D. from across the cab to ask him which way I should head to find a motel.

“We’re not staying in a motel tonight,” he said. “That right there’s my house.”

The house that O.D. was pointing at was a somewhat-kept, brick ranch not more than 50 yards from the tracks, with a beat up and muddied Chevy 4-wheel drive parked in a driveway hard to pick out in the sparse lawn. It was one of only about a dozen homes that were clustered in between an expanse of rice fields and the railroad. On the front lawn was also parked—you guessed it—two equally muddied four-wheelers. I felt immediate dread, and desperately reached for excuses to not stay with him and his family, all of which failed. O.D. was having nothing of me driving to a motel, and if I could even manage to convince him I should, he was not about to let me do so on an empty stomach.

O.D.’s wife met us in the drive. She was a pretty, petite woman, who seemed dwarfed by O.D.’s heft as he enveloped her in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet. She laughed as he did. She seemed a little embarrassed by his affectionate exhibition in front of a stranger.

“This must be Co-o-ody,” she said, in a syrup-thick drawl, and she extended a hand to me to shake. Her smile was warm. “Supper’s ready, come on in.”

What followed dinner that evening, and for the next three days I was rained out of working, was an education about people who live differently than I do, and an education about myself. Because of the kindness of O.D. and his family, I came to understand that my sympathy for people in their lifestyles was misplaced, and I felt humbled to understand I had ever thought less of them. These people loved life, and loved their lifestyle, no less than I did. In fact, I felt ashamed of how they could be so kind to me, when I had previously thought so little of them without really knowing them. I came to care deeply for them, and I stopped in and stayed with them every time I was in the area over the years. Without fail, they always welcomed me, and they treated me as family.

Because of O.D. and his family, I came to dislike the word, this word “sympathy.”

And I came to distrust and examine other things and people I had long held thoughts and opinions about, including words I often used to define or describe them. Over the following years, and through my life’s experiences, I would hold these words and my beliefs up in the mirror and ask myself if they pass the test that earns them the meanings I assign them, and what might I learn about myself in my examination of them? Do I carry nuances of bigotry, or judgment, in what I say, even when I mean the best with what I say? And if I do, how do I go about eliminating those shadowy errors, and say what I really intend? How do I act and reflect the best of someone else, without posturing, or without minimizing or marginalizing someone else?

I haven’t entirely figured that out yet, because I know that not only my vocabulary is loaded with things like that, but that my actions and deeds are as well. Actions and deeds are habits more deeply entrenched and rooted in our psyches than any words. I, like many people my age, have lived through ages that have seen rapid cultural changes on many fronts, and in our struggle to accept and live with those changes, we’ve had to go through the process of unlearning what we’ve often been taught and had reinforced. Our families may have engrained things in us that we later decide are wrong, or learn are wrong through changes in our lives, and changes in ourselves. Sometimes we even have to do so reluctantly, because we have to reconcile what we’ve known with the cultural changes going on around us. Sometimes we have to adapt, or we suffer for it in some way, or unwittingly lessen our quality of life by remaining steadfast in our outdated and erroneous beliefs.

Either that…or we tolerate it.

© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Margins of Error

And there it was: that little signal. It came from one of the least suspected places, a handcrafted sign being held by a fellow Occupy activist. Later I would learn this person did not intend its effect, but I didn’t have the luxury of considering that at the moment I first spotted it in the photo.

“Occupying is in tents.”

Although those words would be benign to most who would see them, people within Occupy Des Moines—and myself in particular—would clearly understand the message. There had been tensions growing within the group for some time about what our next step should be, and whether or not resources should continue to be dedicated to the camp. A wide divide was growing between members that physically occupied the camp, and those that did not.

By then, most of the camps in major cities had been shut down, including Liberty Plaza in New York City. Ours was still going, despite the fact that less than a dozen people stayed there and the local fire marshal kept finding ways to prevent the camp occupants from maintaining heat. Iowa’s winter, and the patience of the city government, loomed large.

And, in the process of debating the decisions ahead of us, Occupy Des Moines slowly became a group eating away at its own flesh and paring itself down to its hardest bone. People began to turn away from the negativity, and as a result, away from the movement.

My personal reaction to this sign was one of anger. I thought it was terribly selfish and disrespectful that the one message someone would choose to express at an action designed to speak up and speak out was—instead of being directed at an injustice--aimed antagonistically at others within the group.

I took it personally.

But, I do that too easily: take things personally. So much so that I have had to develop mental tricks to make myself step back any time I feel a reaction to something building within me. It doesn’t always work, and most often doesn’t work in my interactions with those dearest to me, but when it does it usually yields useful introspection.

In stepping back and away, I’m able to disengage and see myself, and the situation, from a different perspective that makes it easier to deflect anything intentionally directed at me, or dismiss something that I shouldn’t have interpreted as being directed at me. From that space I can also often determine someone’s motivation. Motivation, to me, is the single, most important thing to recognize of something someone has done to cause my reaction, and whether or not I should give it any more credence than I already have.

And so I began to mull this over, this sign, and its intention, and my feelings about it, and I began to wonder why it mattered to me so. That was when I was struck by the thought that I was possibly too involved, too connected, and that stepping back and away—not just for introspection, but for emotional protection, as well—was the best thing to do. It would be the safest thing to do.

Step back. Stay on the sidelines.

Because on the sidelines, in the margins, I could remove myself from the judgment of those words, that I was not really a part of the movement as defined by this person. And in removing myself from that judgment, I also removed the emotional risk, or harm, caused by that narrow definition. I also removed myself from any future risk, which, for me was an even greater motivation to move myself to safe harbor.

It was as simple as that. Or maybe not so. Because, to be honest, it pained me to not feel a part of the group, because so many I had come to know in my involvement with Occupy had become very important to me. I had come to know their personal stories that brought them to the movement, and I had come to care about them. I had learned their struggles that were common with mine, their morals and sense of fairness I shared, their concerns for others and for a better world, and their deep desires to affect change. I was going to miss all that, and them.

So instead, I resolved to hover. I decided that if I placed that buffer between myself and what I saw as the new definition of the movement, I could still maintain those relationships from a comfortable and safe distance. I could even serve a role—a practiced one—as observer and recorder, that would allow me to still feel involved, and would allow for the personal relationships, but would position me out of harm’s way.

It seemed appropriate. I have often thought that some of us are wired to be on the edges looking inward, be the ones that observe, record, and recount from a perspective that allows for a detached commentary. I’ve been a writer and a photographer for much of my life, or thought myself as much, and both of those are skills that require, at least, a certain amount of detachment, because you lose the ability to artfully, and completely, express something if you are essentially involved in what it is you are trying to capture, portray, or project.

However, there is a danger in turning yourself into Life’s spectator; you can often miss out on the sweeter nuances that life itself can bring you. You can make your life absent of real passion, or utter joy, or even contentment. You can forget what it is like to ride the rollercoaster of emotions that are supposed to be an innate aspect of the human experience. You can also lose that sense of sharing that comes with genuine attachment to others, or to one, and, both easily and imperceptibly, you may turn yourself cynical, or bitter.

It is something I have toyed with for much of my life; I’ve carefully and curiously studied and observed others for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been intrigued by the actions of others and what motivates them to those actions. I imagine, when I am not allowed to know, or have not had shared with me, the personal narrative of others that has brought them to be the person I know at the moment, and what motivates them to do the things they do.

When I was younger and traveled a great deal for my work, I used to spend a lot of time in airport terminals, and I found the people there fascinating. I would pass the time and entertain myself by imagining the lives of people I would observe there, and what it was they were coming from and going to.

At social events I could almost always be found near the corner watching everything happen in the room from an advantageous perspective. Add a touch of alcohol and a little music, and human behavior becomes a fascinating spectacle to observe.

In thinking about all of this, I realized that I have often placed myself at the edge of things to be able to observe them. But in considering it within the context of what prompted this particular contemplation, I also realized I’ve done so for other reasons. I’ve done it most often to protect myself.

And, that has also been the case with relationships; it’s safer. The single most frightening thing I believe we may ever do with our lives is to entrust our feelings with someone other than ourselves. Those feelings may be the most precious thing we personally own, and giving over control or care of them, or placing them in a space of vulnerability, is to risk great emotional harm.

Nearly every time I have, I’ve been reminded somehow of the safety, comfort, and ease of those margins, and I’ve returned to them. But, I’ve done so, at times, with some regret, and with an understanding of what I may have denied myself.

And, I’ve even realized at times that doing this can sometimes be a mistake, as was the case with the misinterpreted protest sign that I took personally, and that made me consider my usual retreat. Because this time, I felt too much was at stake, and too many people had become too dear to me. I couldn’t simply resort to being a casual observer. This time, I stuck it out, and I’m glad I did.

I might just try doing that again sometime.
   
© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

When I Grow Up

As a young boy, I grew up in the small town of Mosby, Missouri. There is not much more to that town now than there was then, possibly even less. I remember it as a town of about 300 people, with little or no economic basis. The only businesses in town were a farm implement repair shop that always seemed to be full of the same equipment waiting to be worked on, and Bill Dew’s bait and tackle shop and grocery store, which he ran out of his garage not far from the banks of the Fishing River. Bill’s shop was the most popular place, since it was the one and only source of candy in the entire town.

Life in Mosby was pretty simple, as were most of the people. The two social hubs, around which everything in town seemed to center, were the church and the school. Attendance at one seemed as required as attendance at the other; anything less either deprived you of half the active life in the town, or subjected you to the potential scorn of wagging tongues. Neither was desirable, in a town where everyone knows everyone and everything, and any escape or transportation away from it limited by your access or actual ownership of a car, or even gainful employment.

We did not have much, in our lives there, but we seemed satisfied with that. When I was that age, I don’t remember being pummeled with television advertising that awakened any desires for things I did not have, and so I never knew any different. We ran loose in the town creating our own fun in all the ways that young boys did, either at the school yard, in the woods, or on and even in the muddy river—whatever could keep our energies and active imaginations occupied.

But it would be safe to say that our economic situation was—like that of pretty much everyone in town—not the best. The house was small and rented, and our landlord not fabulous. My mother, who had never worked a day in her life before the divorce, only held one job that I ever remember, as the part-time clerk for the city. Just the same, we managed somehow, and my memories of my time there are filled more with what I had than they are of what we did not have.

During those years, there was one person who came around once in a while and brought a little magic to my days: my Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Jimmy (somehow, I can still only call him that even now), was someone who had and shared things I never would have known existed had it not been for him. He was a seemingly successful car salesman (if that is possible) in Liberty, which to me seemed a thriving metropolis a world away from Mosby, and he always came to visit in the coolest of cars. To this day I can still picture the green Mustang Mach One—my personal favorite—that he drove for quite a while.

It was Uncle Jimmy who loaned or gave (I can’t remember which) my brothers and me a reel-to-reel tape player, which was considered the highest end of HiFi at the time, and reel after reel of music to listen to on it. At a very young age I got exposed to the likes of the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Uncle Jimmy would often pop into town and load up my mother, brothers, and me, and carry us out of Mosby to see movies at the drive in theater in town, or help us get some grocery shopping done, or sometimes just out to get fast food in Liberty or Excelsior Springs. Looking back, I have to believe now that it was Uncle Jimmy who probably helped mom enhance our Christmases a little, given some of the gifts I remember and mom’s and dad’s incomes.

Life was not bad then, but Uncle Jimmy made it better in ways that he could, and I always looked up to him as kind of a magical figure in my life. But when mom moved out of Mosby and in to the city, I stayed behind to finish out grade school, living first with another family for a while, and then with my grandparents for a couple of years. During that time, I did not see Uncle Jimmy much; I think the only time I saw him was when he was at my mother’s apartment in town when I came to visit.

The summer I turned twelve I moved to Parkville with my dad, because the family thought it best—and I agreed--that I went to school in the Park Hill district rather than the Kansas City District (I would have been enrolled in Paseo). It was a confusing time for me, adjusting to a step family in the totally new environment of the suburbs, but dad and Margaret and my sisters did everything they could to help me get acclimated.

One night that summer, after dad got home from work, he asked if he and Margaret and I could talk privately after dinner, and so we went off to their bedroom, the designated private conversation spot in the house. It was then that dad asked me about what I might know about Uncle Jimmy, and if I had an understanding of Uncle Jimmy being gay. In the small-town life of Mosby in the 60’s and early 70’s, I had never even heard the term, let alone have any understanding of it. Dad explained things, as gingerly as he could, his own definition of men and his challenges in communicating on that level making it very difficult and uncomfortable for him.

The conversation was a huge emotional moment for me. I remember coming out of it in tears, feeling confused at having learned about something so foreign to me in such an abrupt manner and having someone I looked up to torn down and made into—what I felt like—a monster. It was never dad’s intent to paint Uncle Jimmy that way; he was trying his best to be as sensitive as he could, knowing what Uncle Jimmy had meant to me and my brothers during those years in Mosby. But the edict from both my dad and my mother, where I was never allowed to see Uncle Jimmy or have contact with him again, left me with the indelible impression that he was a deviant to be avoided, and I needed protection from him.

It was years before I ever saw Uncle Jimmy again, well into my twenties, but for reasons besides his sexuality or those years of banishment, we were never close again. Seeing him then brought up the unpleasant memories of that night and that discussion with dad, and also reminded me of how far I thought I had come as a person since then. I had a little more life experience behind me, had shed many of the superficial notions of my youth, and had learned to appreciate diversity more and judge less. Or so I thought.

A few months ago I shared a link on my Facebook page that supported same-sex marriage, and it touched off a heated statement or two from friends that I didn’t necessarily agree with, but respected as their opinions driven by their own personal background and experience. I was discussing the comments with a friend a few days later when she shared with me that she had someone ask her about my sexuality. I was on my way to work at the time, and I remember that news angered me, that someone would think that about me and be discussing it. It was on my mind a great deal of the night while I worked, wondering what it possibly could have been that would ever give anyone that idea of me. I thought it was a huge leap from my sharing a link on Facebook to wondering about my sexuality, so I kept asking myself what else it could be that I had done or said that would support such a question. By the end of the night, I had worked myself into a fair amount of frustration and anger, and I was determined to make a public response in order to set the record straight.

Fortunately, I came to my senses first, and I didn’t. At first it was because I thought it best I just let something like that die, not poke sticks at the animals and be the bigger person. But then I began to wonder about why it was I felt so compelled to respond in the first place, and that was when I discovered something about myself I did not necessarily appreciate.

When I took the time to ask myself why I felt the need to define myself, I realized that declaring myself heterosexual was, in fact, inferring my heterosexuality was better, or the best, or the only acceptable norm, and it was at the very least me marginalizing any friends or anyone I’ve ever known whose sexual preferences were different than mine. Declaring my preference one way was tantamount to saying that my friends who were different were lesser persons. I was a little ashamed to see that I could possibly do that, and it became a learning moment for me.

Some things die, or are killed off, with great difficulty, and sometimes only accomplished with diligence and reflection. Sometimes the remnants—even the smallest bits—of what I learned as a child, as a teen, even as a younger adult, can linger in the deep recesses of my conscience until something creates the opportunity to fully examine them, understand them, and work a little more on expunging or modifying them. But hopefully, that is a process that never stops, no matter my age. Otherwise, it would be a pretty boring life going forward from here, if I’ve already managed to learn all there was to learn. Even about myself.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.