Finding Humility

I haven’t written anything in the last few weeks . . . honestly, I haven’t felt like I could.

A move to a bigger city has given me a lot to think about, and in the midst of what has felt like a mental hurricane, it’s been hard to process it all.

About a year and a half ago, my husband took a job with a company that does work all over the United States. It was definitely a change. He went from working in small remote areas with a crew of 2-3 people to working in a MUCH larger area with a crew about the size of 30 on job site that had over 600 workers. The kids and I went to being without him.

I can honestly say it was one of the most difficult years of my life. My husband and I have been together since I was 16, and not having him around was devastating. A teacher-friend of mine said “It’s probably like being without your right arm and you can’t do anything with your left.”

Exactly.

In June of this year, we made the decision to have the rest of our family join him in the Nomadic lifestyle. We purchased a fifth wheel, and made it our home, taking only the essentials needed. Our first location as a family was a fairly easy transition. The city was about the size of the more major cities where we’re from.

It was just like moving closer to one of them, and kinda fun being 5-10 minutes away from lots of restaurants, bigger stores, and plush movie theaters (they had electric recliners!).

In mid-October we moved from that area, which had about 230,000 people to a new city with about 3 million people.

Yes, my head has been spinning.

It’s more everything. More buildings, more people, more streets, more traffic, more diversity, just MORE. Yes, I said it. More diversity.

I’m somewhat embarrassed and fearful to admit that the diversity here has been a bit overwhelming to me. It’s just not something I’m used to. I’m not racist, and I’m not prejudice, and I wasn’t raised that way, we just didn’t talk about it much, and there was very little diversity in the small town I grew up in.

Anything I saw in the media I questioned, so, I didn’t really have much reference to what was truth.

And yet, I do feel a sense of paranoia and panic when I walk into a store, in which I’m obviously the minority, that I could be viewed as prejudice simply because of my lack of understanding of cultural differences. And that if I’m not in a constant state of acceptance of every person in there, that I’m doing something wrong.

As a society, we focus so much on making certain that we’re politically correct and must be anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-(fill in the blank) that I find myself being afraid of being.

Isn’t that an interesting statement?

We are too afraid to BE because it might be wrong.

I recently read an article written by Glennon Doyle Melton in her blog, Momastery, “Why I’m prejudiced and so are you.” In it, she talks about how we can be one thing in our hearts, yet another in our subconscious (leading to knee-jerk reactions) because of how we are raised by our families and our culture.

I thought it was very poignant.

This article made me start thinking more about my own reaction to situations I was in.

Not long after that, I was at a near by gas station filling up some gas containers for our generator. It was in an area that looks sketchy. There are bars on all the windows, and I’ve had multiple people tell me it was a bad neighborhood.

It was after dark, and I was by myself. As I pulled up and got out of the pickup, I looked at the person at the pump next to me, and it was a black man. Looking ahead of me, there was a Hispanic man, and I felt nervous.

A woman, by herself, after dark, bad neighborhood, black man, Hispanic man. I went on high alert.

Now, I’m not saying I shouldn’t have been, there are multiple stories on the news about people who have been victims who just weren’t aware of the danger they were in. So, I try to be aware of what’s around me whenever I’m out, and especially when I’m by myself.

In retrospect, it would probably have been better if I would have swallowed my pride and asked my husband to come along (he had fallen asleep after a long day, and my independent woman mindset kicked in).

I’m a huge believer (although not always perfect follower) in manifestation (or whatever you prefer to call it . . . prayer, intention, visualization, etc.), and so as I stood there I thought, “I don’t want to CREATE a bad situation for myself,” so I started thinking that the men were probably just husbands on their way home from work.

The black man left. The Hispanic man went inside to pay for his gas. As much as I tried to keep my thoughts focused, I still felt relieved. I filled up the containers. The Hispanic man walked out and walked over to me. He said something in Spanish, motioning to the back of the pickup. My first thought was he was asking me a question about the hitch in the back, and I thought, why would he be striking up a conversation with me? I felt a little uneasy. I tried to maintain my belief that all was ok. I said, “I’m sorry, what was that?” He said, “Do you want those in the back?” I then realized, he was talking about the gas jugs. Stunned, I said, “Oh, sure!” So, he grabbed them both, put them in the back, taking time to carefully situate them so they wouldn’t fall over. I thanked him, he told me to have a good night, and left.

In that moment, he wasn’t a Hispanic man, he was a man that saw that I was a woman by myself, filling up containers that could be heavy, and offered to help.

By definition, being racist is “Poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race; the belief that some races of people are better than others,” and being prejudice is “An unfair feeling of dislike for a person or group because of race, sex, religion, etc.; a feeling of dislike for someone or something especially when it is not reasonable or logical.”

I want to underline several things here.

The poor treatment of, the belief, unfair feeling, and when it is not reasonable or logical.

When it isn’t LOGICAL.

This may be perfect timing for this post, and it may be bad timing.

What I believe is that we judge naturally, and we shouldn’t condemn ourselves for that.

It’s how we determine what is LOGICAL.

We shouldn’t be afraid to BE judgmental, it’s how we stay safe, how we protect ourselves and those close to us. When I was growing up, your neighbors were your friends, and we looked out for one another, damn right they questioned things, they wanted to make sure they knew what to look out for and what not to.

I once read an article that said our knee-jerk judgments are a natural response. After all, the article stated, it’s better to mistake a stick for a snake and jump out of the way then mistake a snake for a stick and step on it. It’s how we’re designed.

I think we need to get better though at judging our judgments. Are they logical, are they fair? It’s about not REACTING on our knee-jerk judgments when it’s something that might not be warranted, and on the flip side that we don’t miss something that should be judged, because we’re too afraid to be considered anti-whatever.

We need to remove what we’ve been taught, what we’ve been conditioned to believe, what we’ve seen on TV so that we don’t mistake the stick for a snake and then burn the forest down, especially when the environment we’re in doesn’t house poisonous snakes.

Or, burn it down before we hike there because we’re too afraid there will be one. I understand that there’s probably a lot more politics involved on a global level, but at a local level, we can do our part by being willing to BE.

Be protective, be aware, be observant, but yet question the stories in our minds and compare it to what is in our hearts. “We must be humble about what we have become.

“We do not have a black problem. We do not have a white problem. Identity in blackness or whiteness alone is a problem. We have a Human Family problem. This moment is not asking us: are we racist or not? This moment in our country’s history is asking us: Are we humble or not? Do we have eyes to see what we have become and the courage it takes to unbecome. You can be one thing and your subconscious can be another thing.” Glennon Doyle Melton

Thank you again, stranger, for being the example and using a universal language: kindness.