Fitting in

One thing I enjoyed about watching Star Trek was that there were all sorts of characters and civilizations. The barber was blue. The Klingons had ridges on their foreheads. Spock had pointed ears. Geordi wore a visor that enabled him to see. Data was a pale-skinned android who wanted to be human. Differences were a given, sometimes commented on, sometimes the central point of the story, but most often just accepted. 

We spend a great deal of our lives trying to fit in, to be like everyone else, to be invited to the cool table in the lunchroom. Even if you are with the 'in crowd,' I've learned that as soon as you have three people in a space, there will eventually be a division resulting in a duo and an outcast. Over time, who is in and who is out, who sides with who shifts. It's part of being human. In the animal world it is more visceral and has to do with survival. The strongest duo carries on and leaves the weaker behind. Civilization is supposed to be better than that.

During the past year, the climate in our country has highlighted our differences - race, status, wealth, philosophies, beliefs, locale, gender, abilities. It has also brought to the forefront the fact that the barriers that once so visibly existed and that divided us - the Jim Crow laws, redlining, quotas, norms, fears - simply shifted into subtle rather than blatant dividers. Saying it another way, the bridges we thought we'd made as a people, as a culture, connecting us across all those differences are not very sturdy. They are surface bridges, not stable below the waterline. Unfortunately, it is what is below the waterline that matters the most, that provides the foundation on which all our "we are the world" rhetoric must stand. 

So, perhaps all this turmoil is a good thing. It makes us face and work at the hardest stuff. To be honest. To verbalize basic beliefs. Do we really mean health care for all? Nutritious food for the hungry? Are we our brother's keeper or does he need to pull himself up by his bootstraps so we only embrace him standing up and not when he is down? Do we assume the best or the worst? As I said, this not easy. The questions are difficult. The consequences will impact and define each of us. Each of us needs to do more than grumble. We need to get down to our own basics and ask, in our own world, where does everyone fit in? Once we have an answer, we need to make our stand.

Marilyn