A Tango: Day 19
I decided to pick up some trash on the beach this morning. On the way back to my car I came across a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I asked him if he wanted to grab a quick coffee, and we met up at the coffee shop. When we were ordering our coffee, I was introduced to the woman behind the counter who said that she was from the Dominican Republic. She greeted my friend in Spanish knowing that he is fluent, but she asked me if I spoke Spanish. I felt slightly embarrassed, but I said “Mi aprender Espanol,” to which she said “Estoy aprender Espanol,” a gentle correction of my response. We conversed a little bit in English after that.
When someone speaks to me in another language, particularly Spanish, I feel a deep sense of discomfort. Knowing a language helps me to tap into the person’s humanity in a way that does not feel possible when I can not participate in their verbal dance. Nevertheless, I am reminded that in my own life the moments where I feel most understood are often not the ones where people communicate to me with words, but simply demonstrate their understanding of my humanness by sharing that moment with me and just existing. To do this of course requires dissolving the imagined boundaries between you and the other, remembering that you are just two human beings sharing space and time, and you are defined first and foremost by your humanness not your culture, language, race, religion, or sexual orientation. In reality, every degree of separation that we have for ourselves is imagined in some way or another, because human beings are still human no matter the circumstances they encounter. To overcome these imagined differences is a practical challenge that we all must face, especially when we must respect these differences and the implications that they have in people’s lives. I see it as being a worthwhile goal, but that’s just me.
Day 19.
