This Is What Changed Me

 

Fear. Everyone has it. Here are my top three fears from my early childhood:

• Being forced to participate in gymnastics activities in PE class.
• Going for car rides after dark with my family.
• Old, wrinkled, dusty balloons.

My top three today look different:

• Having my Social Security cut off.
• What the future holds for my children.
• Unremediated pain or asthma

But I’m not here today to talk about what I’m afraid of. I here to talk about what I am not afraid of. 

I am not afraid of Zohran Mamdani. 

There are a lot of folks out there telling me I should be, but: I’m not. I spent some time on Thursday investigating my feelings about this and I realized I have been blessed by something that a lot of people haven’t: I have a Muslim friend. 

I’m not saying: I can’t be Islamophobic because I have a Muslim friend. That’s not a claim I could fairly make because I was raised swimming in white culture and I make mistakes all the time. I am saying that I look at this candidate for mayor, read about his proposed polices, his professional background, and not for one moment does the fact that he doesn’t look like me or share my religious beliefs evoke any fear inside of me.

The fact that I have a Muslim friend is largely due to her persistence. In general I’m a very shy and insecure person and it’s hard for me to believe someone would want to be my friend. It’s far, far easier to crawl back in one’s shell than to keep moving forward and see what happens. What if I fail somehow? What if something bad happens?

And yet, here we are. Hopefully I’m getting better at it.

When you decide you are going to keep moving forward with someone in friendship, you learn things. You learn what you agree and disagree on. You share the stories that made you who you are today. You discover the rough places where you will need to negotiate or apologize. You learn the deep joy of acceptance and support.

These days I have begun to realize that so many hateful responses to things on social media could truly be replaced with the words “I don’t understand.” Whether it’s LGBTQIA rights, social justice, fair housing, or a new community initiative, when trolls come out of the woodwork what they are are betraying more than anything else is that they don't understand.

And, somewhere along the line, they have been taught that the natural thing to do in those circumstances is this:

• I don’t understand and I am afraid.
• I don’t understand and I mock this.
• I don’t understand and I reject this.
• I don’t understand and I must destroy this.

The opportunities we have in life to move beyond that can come at school, in libraries and in neighborhoods where not everyone is like us. Have you noticed that those are the precisely the places that are under attack right now?

Any place where it is safe to say “I don’t understand” and then be welcomed to learn what you need to know to understand is a place where bridges of empathy can be built. That is why Social Emotional Learning is so important. That is why the Arts and Humanities are so important.

We all have fear. We all have things we don’t understand. It can wreck us, or it can invite us into a different place. A better place. Not perfect, and not without fear, but a place where we have more of the tools to be fully human.

What changed me? Having a friend.

******

nota bene

If anyone comes back at me after reading this to lecture me about what’s wrong with the candidate from New York I will know that they really, really didn’t understand.