Your Values Are Right!

What is the best way to deal with this? The feeling of having retreated five years, when I hated and judged my mother blindly for whatever series of events led to my losing respect for her (read: probably just adolescence). A conversation with her about fulfillment left me with more understanding about how she thinks of her life, but still no satisfaction with that understanding on my end. Brooklyn Book Lover says it's all about the disease, my frustration comes from the disease my mother has of not seeing the world for how we see it.

But "not seeing the world for how we see it" sounds oddly like the meaning of a disability, and you are supposed to be so accepting and open-minded when interacting with people who have disabilities - the definition of which term could cause a ruckus of its own. That is, disabilities is a hazy category, but we have to understand that everyone may see and interact with a world that is different from the "expected," like a so-called person with disabilities is said to do. But then, who is to say that our expectations are the right ones, or even that the majority of society's expectations are the right ones? I grew up in a middle-class, predominantly white place, and let's face it, middle-class white people are full of themselves. I do mean that in a sort of terrible, racist way, but also in a hopefully forgivable, neutral way - i.e. that people in such privileged groups are confident in the rightness of how they live and think. Truthfully, this should be theoretically true of any ethnic or socioeconomic group. Be confident! Know that what you think is good! Your values are right!

The problem arises when you impose your own thoughts about what is good on other people who are not necessarily the same kind of thinkers as you. I don't mean that race divides us, because my so-called objective, liberal education tells me I should reject the idea of race or socioeconomic status as any kind of divider, negative or otherwise. But I guess I really need to take a look at how I see the world and finally put into practice that simpering, thoughtless principle that I thought I lived by but don't: treat everyone as an individual, because it is in their individuality that their value lies, not in your eyes or anyone else's.

The problem I face now is of how to acknowledge my wrongness in a delicate way that is not so delicate as to erase all the true feelings I expressed in our conversation earlier. What a tiring challenge I did not expect to face today!