Someone who I respect and admire recently said to me “we haven’t worked together, but I’ve heard about you.” My immediate reaction was “oh god, why?!”
I didn’t stop to think that this might be actually be a positive thing. I spend so much energy feeling frustrated by the negative perceptions that tar or contradict my way of being, it didn’t occur to me the opposite may also be happening.
This person held space – engaged in a deep discussion about my ideas and interests, it surely couldn’t have been for negative reasons at all. Yet my brain immediately jumped to conclusions.
I guess when you’re so used to being ridiculed and criticised, you’re hardwired to believe that you’re unremarkable, difficult and overly complicated (in a derogatory way). Hard to contend with when you’re so transparent in your way of self-advocacy. You immediately think the worst because it’s what you’re used to. You expect your fervent challenges to be disreputed just as harshly. In my experience, a lot of the time it has been.
Bearing all for the sake of presenting your most authentic self, clutching the fraying edge of your humanity (and sanity) initially appears undignifying, but wholly necessary to disrupt commonly held discursive perceptions.
Given the nature of how we perceive those who stray from the norm and rip-up the rule book, celebration of our difference appears to be an elusive mythical creature. Hard to believe, even if you’re seeing and experiencing it with your own eyes. Equally difficult for others who are stubbornly set in their own belief. It cannot be real because I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. Or, this cannot exist because I already hold fixed assumptions about what I believe to be true.
Holding up a mirror, I see the cryptid. I am fixed in the lived-truth of my own experience, unable to accept or believe in an alternative truth. Even in my conceptual understanding of perspective being subject to the individual with varying intersectional factors that contribute towards this personally held understanding. And because I’m so fixed in my way of thinking, the subversion of my core belief (that I have been led to believe and have acted upon as though it’s a universal truth) is incredibly difficult to stomach.
Several factors contribute towards this: perfectionism, preoccupation with my own neuroticism, and a longing for belonging and acceptance.
I try to exercise what I tell my students: challenge this by revisiting the glimmers of positive feedback, by taking a step back and assessing (feeling) what may be occurring in the moment. And most importantly, consider the events and interactions that led you to this point in time.
It’s a big ask to be that reflexive and it’s a skill that requires lifelong dedication. I acknowledge how difficult this can be, especially if your life circumstances disallow the space for you to think with the clarity and consideration required to explore the depth of your experiences.
Some people are born with the innate skill to compartmentalise whatever challenging experience they have. They’re able to leave it alone. Move on. I am unfortunately not one of those people. To satiate my own desire to deconstruct and chew over every interaction, I must make time to challenge my knee-jerk responses in order to seek an internally comfortable resolution. Part of the reason for this blog.
Of course, it doesn’t always go to plan. I tell myself those mythical creatures don’t exist. I will find a way to bargain with my core beliefs, and this is usually reinforced by our dominant discourse where, by and large, difference is not tolerated.
I finalise this reflection by returning to the root of a philosophy that often alludes me in the throes of excessive rumination: that if it isn’t exciting and dangerous, it isn’t worth exploring.
By its very nature, difference is exciting and dangerous. It’s progressive and expansive. The lens for which these mythical creatures are viewed distort the existence of multiple realities and serve to challenge all that we hold to be true.