august 8, 2019
A Turnip Sized Bigot
I’m going to be writing about some things here in a way that might sound like I know what I’m talking about, but this is all very new to me. I’m at a new beginning with living many of these concepts. Through recent events, my deaf ears have turned into fertile ground for these life-lessons. So much of this has come up through other people who have practiced these things and been willing to share their wisdom with me. I’m humbled by and excited to share these insights.
The word “bigot” is thrown around a lot these days. Just so we’re clear, a bigot is someone who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions. I’ll add, someone acting differently than we’re accustomed to or comfortable with, as well.
My mother just recently finished reading “Go Set A Watchman,” Harper Lee’s posthumously published sequel to “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Mom told me a lot about it as she was reading it, but she wanted me to actually hear the ending, as it had really resonated with her own sense of herself. So one afternoon, as we found ourselves at her brother’s house in Ohio, we sat on the back porch and listened to Reese Witherspoon narrate the ending of the book (spoiler alert).
In the novel, Scout is grown up and back home in the south after having lived and worked in New York City. Atticus, her father, had been her moral compass growing up and, if I remember correctly, she had gone to NYC to continue working for human rights and equality as she had seen him do. She is confronted with some of her greatest biases via Atticus, as she is disillusioned when he meets with members of the Klan and allows them to have a voice in their community. She is flabbergasted that he could allow the voices of bigotry to come to the table. She gets so angry, calls him all sorts of horrible things, threatens to leave and never come home, etc., and all Atticus does is listen, his heart breaking. When she is done spewing, he says something very soft and simple like “As you wish. I love you.”
The aftermath of this diatribe shows Scout’s uncle trying to talk some sense into her. “I am trying to get your attention,” he says, firmly and deliberately after slapping her back to her senses and handing her a small glass of whiskey. After she calms down a bit, he straightforwardly and lovingly starts to tell her how her father isn’t the bigot—she is. She’s not willing to listen to people who think differently than her. She flies off the handle and makes harmful accusations. She decides not to stick around—she’s gotta get out of there. As she listens, she comes to terms with the fact that her father was willing to listen respectfully to others, even if he didn’t agree or intend to uphold their views. He was trying to find middle ground, a place of human contact, where reason and flow are accessible. Her uncle alludes to the fact that this point of contact is one of the only things that propels us forward when we are faced with strong differences. She on the other hand, had not yet found the maturity or courage to sit with her opposite and meet it with love. My favorite line is when her uncle says something like “Don’t worry. You’re not a huge bigot. You’re a turnip-sized bigot.”
A turnip-sized bigot. I see this as someone who is not using their fear of difference to physically harm or oppress others, but someone who is still blind to their fear of difference, someone who compulsively reacts with fear rather than acts in love when their hair is bristled in just the right way.
I see me.
I recently came to an impasse with a person I love. After having what seemed to be the same conversation for the dozenth time and not feeling like much progress had been made, I was still using my old tactics. Despite my best efforts to be loving, I was still unwilling to listen, see, and consider their point of view, or if I was willing to do so, after they shared it, I was immediately stirred to try and explain my side and get them to understand me yet again, rather than holding space for them. When what I call “constricted-yet-calm” explanation has failed in these situations, my fear comes out masked as anger, arrogance, self-centeredness, resistance, and even distain. It did this time. And after being unwilling to budge, the decision to step away was made, with them feeling (to me) far more aligned with their integrity and at peace with this choice than I.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I now suspect that our inability to move forward had a lot to do with my turnip-sized bigotry. While they had attempted to understand me and my side, I really had not been able to do the same. This is hard to admit because good communication is something I have worked so hard toward and prided myself on. Yet here I was, with someone I love deeply, not being able to access good communication because my fear was just too big.
It helped to be reminded via my trauma therapy training that, when something such as someone else’s differences shine a light on my wounding and I get fearful or angry, I am in fight or flight. While in fight or flight mode, the body is sending blood to the extremities to act, but very little to the brain to think. No wonder I have been unable to be in my loving, right mind during these kinds of exchanges, as I have very limited mental faculties to utilize when I allow fear to drive the bus.
This reminder made me think of many of the times in my life where I have tried to have a conversation, or worse, make a decision with fear coursing through my veins. It made me think about the countless conversations and decisions that are evidently made from this same place, daily and around the world, at the level of business, global politics, etc. This realization humbled and softened me greatly and influenced me in a new direction: that of cultivating love and acceptance for self and other no matter what, especially in the face of fear. This is the place that authentic connection to self and other arises. The practicalities of cultivating love and acceptance begin with being able to catch myself in fear, using tools to bring myself back to my senses, or if I can’t, being able to walk away and come back later. And if none of this is accessible, finding my first step toward empowerment by surrendering to my powerlessness to fear (this admitting powerlessness is the part I’ve been known to suck at.)
The kind of conversation I would have while one or both parties are in fight or flight is probably very different than the kind of conversation I would have if I waited until I was able to find my love only a tiny big bigger than my fear. This prompts me to remind myself that fear is absolutely allowed to be present during a conversation or decision. It is part of being human. But fear can be miraculously circumnavigated or alchemized in these moments if we just allow love to be a tiny bit stronger. Love makes us stronger at the same time that it softens our rigidity, makes us pliable and able to flow around obstacles, like a plant growing through concrete.
While I’m feeling excited about all of this, it has also been incredibly painful to see. I have amends to make and behavior to change in more areas of my life than I anticipated. One thing that has been popping up all over the place, seemingly trying to get my attention, and providing some direction is the St. Francis prayer. Prayer has often been a trigger for old wounds for me, and all of a sudden this one has been giving me solace in the wake of these discoveries. The SFP has come up in many ways in the past few weeks: played over the speakers at my dance collective, finding it written on a bookmark in my car, even sung recently by the person I was struggling alongside:
Lord make me an instrument of thy peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy
O divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it's in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen
This prayer is the simplest instruction manual toward how to allow differences to co-exist. It’s an illustration of how I always have a choice of how to meet injury, despair, or sadness; not just that of another, but my own. In the end, these states of struggle or well-being are not confined to one person, but are a shared experience. Any of these states are contagious and it takes one person to choose well-being over struggle for the alchemy to have a chance.
I’ll expound on this final point— the reminder that we are the only person who lives with our experience. Everything we see and do exists for us only within our frame of our consciousness— our bodies, minds, and hearts. If something outside of myself makes me uncomfortable, challenges my viewpoint or my identity, it is actually a gift. It is a sign pointing to a choice to change my own mind or heart, or ask to be changed by a power greater than my humanity. No matter how much peace or war exists outside of me, I can choose what exists within me, where I put my focus. I am feeling the freedom of this realization in a new way.
Only I can cultivate love within myself by loving self and other. Only I can cultivate understanding within myself by seeking to understand self and other. While others can show me love and understanding, and that helps ease the pain of any moment, no one else can do love and understanding for me. It’s a hard pill to swallow—I can see how I’ve been relying on the love, compassion, faith, light of others to be surrogates for my own. And we need that example as much as we can get it—we need to be touched and influenced by the well-being generated by others. But relying on others to DO these things FOR me is just as silly as relying on other people to not be afraid or to not have different opinions than mine during conversations. It is relying on outside circumstances, that which I have no control over, to be my source of suffering or well-being. WHAT? That’ not a thing. This is all an inside job. Learning to tap into and choose well-being, love and acceptance, no matter what I am faced with outside of me, is trusting my own connection to source. And trusting my connection to source is my only means of authentically connecting to other.
May we support ourselves and each other via love and acceptance to cultivate the inside so we can authentically dance together on the outside.