Difference Does Not Equate To Inferiority

"This Message is for Anyone Who Dares to Hear a Fool"*

Isn't it amazing when you turn on the radio, or, more timely, your Ipod, and it plays the exact song you needed to hear for that moment's emotion?

It feels like some kind of cosmic connection, some electrical influence that is below the surface of conscious control but hints at how powerful the emotional/hormonal/pheromonal/subconscious mind may be, drawing out a fellow artist's deep reaction to a similar set of experiences. The shared emotion makes of the songwriter or singer a kindred.

I went outside to take a walk. Don't want to work today. Had a phone fight with S last night that just didn't need to happen, then couldn't sleep. Laid there staring at the ceiling, my body tired, my mind racing desperately, trying to solve the conflict even in the absence of the combatant, coming up with responses to what he said, defenses, retaliations. How clear my mind is in the silence to just fight itself, how assertive I am with no one to hear.

I can't focus at all today. Exhausted. Coffee, now on second soda. Thought I'd read my Kindle as I walked around the building but I got a few words in and realized my mind was not up for reading about how to be a better parent. There are days when the cup runneth over with my shortcomings and cannot take another.

I heard Alanis Morissette through the ear buds, sound transforming from background noise to the message I needed to hear:

All I really want is some peace man
a place to find a common ground
And all I really want is a wavelength
All I really want is some comfort
A way to get my hands untied
And all I really want is some justice

 So I held the Kindle, closed, and walked, listening to the song a few times. It quickly transformed into a dialogue between S and I, a poem in two voices. I began to see the lyrics in columns, our faces sketched in comic strip simplicity. When I returned to my cubicle, I began to draw, and to write, separating sheets of discarded printer paper into three columns: my voice, our voices, his voice. He is a kindred spirit, but we are not identical. There is value in that. I appreciate our individuality. But with individuality comes the unavoidable disagreement. We will not always see eye-to-eye. I couldn't always handle this well. There was a time in my life when disagreement was akin to dislike, I received it as discrimination and ignorance and the inability to see from my perspective. I was hurt by this difference and saw it as disrespectful.

I am proud of myself for not faltering in this way. I never doubted his love for me. I didn't like the way he was speaking, but I was able to separate that from the man. I'm also pretty damn sure that the words he was saying were not an exact blueprint of the fears he was experiencing. He lashed out, as so many who have been hurt do, in order to protect his heart. We may not do it in the same way at the same time, but that is a behavior I am familiar with.

 Difference does not equate to inferiority.

A kindred spirit is not someone you will effortlessly and peacefully coexist with for eternity. That's a fallacy. We are inherently selfish and egocentric beings, even the most empathetic of us. I cannot see the world through his eyes, I will always see it through my collective experiences and values. The more I pondered on this, the more I began to realize that what he was saying and what he was feeling were probably very different things. His emotions better match the unspoken needs/concerns than the spoken ones. My motivations will not always be clear to him and I will not always be able to make them so. Love involves a certain measure of faith and trust in the other despite this.

 

*Lyrics "This Message is for Anyone Who Dares to Hear a Fool" from Smashing Pumpkins Fuck You (An Ode to No One), from the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, 1995.
All I Really Want from Alanis Morissette's album Jagged Little Pill, 1995.