camouflage
reflections on fitting into many places
I was on my typical morning walk today when an older lady stopped me and asked for directions in Portuguese. I looked at her apologetically, explaining that I didn’t speak her native tongue. We fumbled through a few broken English sentences until we could resolve her problem together. But it had me reflecting on how frequently this happens to me — that I seem to be adopted into, or mistaken for, a culture or denomination that I am not necessarily affiliated to but could easily blend into, based on the ambiguity of my appearance. I have never really known what to make of this experience, what to think of my face seeming to evoke a sense of familiarity in so many cultures, often ones completely different than those I was steeped in growing up.
If I am to mythologize it, it feels like there is something deeply universal about the spirit that occupies this vessel I am in. I am able to find common ground with others rather rapidly and deeply. I seem to have access to something universally human within most people and can usually find the words to articulate it. I am rarely intimidated by anyone, and have been told I would be ranked negatively on an intimidation scale of 1-10. There is a flatness to my presence; not in its quality of intensity, but in that I tend to flatten any implicit hierarchical charge between myself and another; whether I am ‘supposed to’ perceive them as superior or inferior. I don’t really know how to do such a thing—to worship or condescend. I have been told that I’m audacious, but I experience that aspect of myself as being honest. It bothers me to pretend, to perform, to revere or to rise above anyone.
To me, everyone is a human. A complicated, beautiful, messy, loving human being. We all have layers; we all have mechanisms that get in the way of us being seen—by us or anyone else. But that is what we are. And something about the disarming generality my face seems to exude taps into that somehow: I am able to strike some deeper, more resonant chord with people like me and unlike me, and instead just focus on what we have in common.