But, you know, at some point I think it's important to understand that there are some things where finding common ground is not the point. If you want to go with the dead mother example: when my husband's mother died, my mom tried to empathize with him about it by sharing her experience of when her own mother died, and he got really, really angry.
My mom was offended, and at first so was I (she's my mom, she was just trying to be nice/helpful/condole). But at some point I realized, and told her, that in this case her similar experiences are not the point. The point was, his mother had died. He had had a particular relationship with her that was unique to his childhood; he lost her in a way that was uniquely tragic; and he didn't need anyone to try to share the experience, he needed his experience to be heard and comprehended. I also discovered that if I listened to my husband talk about that loss and talked with him only about what I heard him saying, that helped him a lot more than trying to interpret his words through my own filter.
...and that's the point at which the metaphor fails, because my husband can get past that event in his life. People of color, on the other hand, go on dealing with racism in all its forms.
I don't know. I'm not trying to offer a rule or interpretation or whatever. It's just that having tried to find a way to comprehend what I was hearing by using some kind of shared experience or other experience that I felt I had a better understanding of, I eventually got to the point where it occurred to me that it shouldn't be about me at all. I can't share the experience I was hearing, ever, in any form, because I'm not a person of color, and really it might be more offensive and/or more missing-the-point-entirely to try.
It's kind of like that conversational thing where the moral of the story is 'you're not listening if you're also already composing your own response in your head.' I.e., if I'm hearing something and trying to cross-reference with knowledge already in my mental filing system, I'm not listening. I'm not getting it. So I think maybe I should just only listen, whenever someone speaks.
And as far as eventually wanting to stop tying one's shoelaces and follow, I get that. But maybe this isn't necessarily a question of following. Maybe it's more a question of...after a while you find yourself tying your shoelaces in a more efficient, more secure way because you've been soaking in some ideas from someone else without constantly referring back to what you used to know about how to tie shoelaces. Or something. Er. Yeah, I'm not sure how to carry on that metaphor either. :P
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My mom was offended, and at first so was I (she's my mom, she was just trying to be nice/helpful/condole). But at some point I realized, and told her, that in this case her similar experiences are not the point. The point was, his mother had died. He had had a particular relationship with her that was unique to his childhood; he lost her in a way that was uniquely tragic; and he didn't need anyone to try to share the experience, he needed his experience to be heard and comprehended. I also discovered that if I listened to my husband talk about that loss and talked with him only about what I heard him saying, that helped him a lot more than trying to interpret his words through my own filter.
...and that's the point at which the metaphor fails, because my husband can get past that event in his life. People of color, on the other hand, go on dealing with racism in all its forms.
I don't know. I'm not trying to offer a rule or interpretation or whatever. It's just that having tried to find a way to comprehend what I was hearing by using some kind of shared experience or other experience that I felt I had a better understanding of, I eventually got to the point where it occurred to me that it shouldn't be about me at all. I can't share the experience I was hearing, ever, in any form, because I'm not a person of color, and really it might be more offensive and/or more missing-the-point-entirely to try.
It's kind of like that conversational thing where the moral of the story is 'you're not listening if you're also already composing your own response in your head.' I.e., if I'm hearing something and trying to cross-reference with knowledge already in my mental filing system, I'm not listening. I'm not getting it. So I think maybe I should just only listen, whenever someone speaks.
And as far as eventually wanting to stop tying one's shoelaces and follow, I get that. But maybe this isn't necessarily a question of following. Maybe it's more a question of...after a while you find yourself tying your shoelaces in a more efficient, more secure way because you've been soaking in some ideas from someone else without constantly referring back to what you used to know about how to tie shoelaces. Or something. Er. Yeah, I'm not sure how to carry on that metaphor either. :P