12/15/20
Elena,
We don’t really know one another. You know some details about my life and I yours. I’ve seen you interact with a very select group of people and vice versa. We’ve seen each other navigate very few circumstances directly. I wouldn't say I really know who you want to be, how you want to be seen. It's far too dynamic a desire, in my experience, to estimate given such a limited window. I've never read your writing or seen the types of pictures you take (in my experience, pictures I'm in are frequently a far cry from capturing how I want to be represented). Then again, maybe you're better than I am at making yourself known, and feeling known, through fleeting interaction.
I've come to believe it takes a lot to get to know people. I feel I'm still getting to know Luisa, and I'm confident I will feel that way for a long time. She's dynamic, with a life of experiences that only she knows how she interpreted and factored into her being. Honestly, I'm still getting to know my parents. Last month I visited them on my way to and from NOLA, when I visited you, and I spent 4 hours with each of my parents interviewing them, asking the kinds of questions you never ask in passing conversation. I learned about insecurities and dreams that, in 30 years, I never knew they had.
There is just SO much to know about people. It's overwhelming and it can make it feel impossible to judge others reactions, perceptions, positions, etc. I'm glad I've yet to be called for jury duty. I never had a desire to be a judge so I don't try to be.
I believe I am pretty skilled at empathizing. I made a practice of it at film school (film is the most robust art form for building empathy), but I try to deploy it strategically. Sometimes I feel it's worth while to understand the way struggles and successes impact peoples perspectives, and sometimes when I'm cognizant enough I try to realize that if I do, I will lose a part of myself - something that makes me strong or sensitive or unique and those are the qualities I want to amplify in ways that will bring me closer to my dreams.
So I feel I don't know you, and I feel you don't know me but I want that to shift in the direction of more knowing.
Who am I to have entered your family? It’s really hard to find a proper place in an existing group with strong bonds, like a family and yet here I am constantly hanging around. When I told Luisa I was writing you a letter her first reaction was worry about your reception. That really threw me off (letters are great! right?) and ultimately reinforced my desire to write and send this to you. I want to be known, robustly, how I think and how I communicate, because I find knowing these things about people leads both to less conflict and to more rewarding interactions, and yet I've got a barrier. I've got a thought log I call my Meditations, like Marcus Aurelius's Meditations (great book), it's more than 100 pages now and in 2012 or so I wrote this intro for it:
I seem to exist backward relative to my peers. Most seem to endeavor to keep relations light, happy, and humorous until an acquaintance blooms into a friend. At this point there is revelation of depth. Meanwhile I seek for others to know my deepest thoughts before I allow them to know my lighter sides.
The people I want to know more than anyone else is my family, but I rarely get to see them. You know, you grow up with your family and you're close but you're also going through some of the most tumultuous years of your life as you're coming into being and coming into yourself, figuring out the world and how you fit. It's hard times growing up, so while there's a deeper level bond, there's also a cloud or layer of burden on the relationship (at least I find in retrospect).
It's refreshing how you and your siblings, and your parents, are open on matters that my family is not. Likewise it's VERY hard for me to sit around when y'all are closed and silent with one another on matters and in situations where my family is open. Some times it's hard to balance knowing my place and being true to myself. It's an impossible feeling because I know if I am not true to myself I may become less myself over time, it's agony. It's really hard to find the proper place in an existing family.
I always wanted to know my brothers partners, and I have never really gotten the chance to know them. It felt like a responsibility to me, one that as far as I can tell has not been felt to the same degree in my brothers and parents.
There's 6 years between Eric and I and 3 between Ryan and I. Eric announced he and Jordan would marry when he was serving in Iraq. I’ve seen her about 5 times in the last 12 years. Ryan has had a few long term partners that I've met and now Alora, the second person he's been engaged to (apparently they're engaged now, I heard via word of mouth), who I've met twice. I barely know Jordan and Alora, and yet Jordan has been a family member for more than a decade and Alora is about to join. It's pretty weird. I've not really seen my niece and nephew that frequently either.
I worry about how well my family knows Luisa. I want them to know her as well as they know me, which at this point I suppose may not be very well. I guess I want them to know Luisa better than your family knows me. The frequency we see my family is a big burden to that goal. I haven't managed to find a way to establish a group family chat that includes Jordan and Luisa that gets used. That's kinda depressing. Even while my family chat isn't a very talkative forum it's still a window into our interactions and an opportunity to know and be known more fully.
I had a perspective growing up of my uncles and aunts and their partners and my parents all knowing one another and getting along rather well. I felt I knew my uncles and aunts and my cousins very well. We always had such fun at family gatherings. Maybe I didn't know them as well as I thought, perhaps it was just a childish perspective latching on to familiar bodies parents told me were connected... Now we all, aunts, uncles, cousins, have such disparate politics we rarely seem to talk about anything beyond our points of contention.
It feels like spar-type interactions online make in-person connection increasingly unlikely. Being moderate, it's hard to accept that things as intangible as politics and religion might be coming between my family regardless of how polarized some may be. We grew up together, we've been influenced by love for the same family members, we have so many similar skills. That we should allow a very temporary blip of political stalemate to divide our family makes me shake with fear. Are the bonds I've built with my extended family, built across overlapping life times, truly so frail? What does that mean for the friendships I hold dear, built in only months and years? What does it mean for the family I've recently gained? Will I have to sit idle and watch other families divide over perspectives held only in the mind, with nuance that is never expressed, and broad stroke ideas that are never exercised so as to hurt or suppress?
Right now it feels as if I'm not parroting one political agenda exactly as re-shared and re-tweeted unto oblivion I'm out of line and at risk of damaging a relationship. Is there really no room for nuance in gridlock? We wouldn't have gridlock if we all elaborated our nuance rather than repeating rhetoric... meanwhile I want to be an explorer. I think the drive to explore is one of the most important human drives, and the one least fulfilled at this moment in history. We're not exploring new lands, we're barely in space, and now we're not really exploring perspectives. This means to me. that we're not opening up many new realms to the imagination. We're trapped on a rock and so we're infighting and our politics are getting incestuous.
Some times I speak an idea in conversation and I can see my friend, roommate, family, whoever, physically pull back. It is said that ideas are bulletproof, not bullets with recoil. If I'm only saying what's accepted status quo, my potential value to the community is diminished and yet sometimes when I speak an idea the perception of my value is diminished with a correlation that is contrary to the fact simply because we exist in such a conflict averse society. Conflicts are good. We are too populace a species to expect uniformity and too co-dependent to desire isolation. We on this planet have to accept the value and importance of cordial conflict. Our government was designed around debate for a reason, it is a reflection of how humans work together (in as yet the most effective government the world has ever known) and as such it is the model by which we should strive to govern ourselves.