Entry 1 — Nothing Human Can Be Alien To Me

It’s about 9p.m. on a Tuesday (2/7) and I’m half tuned in to the State of the Union address. I know that I’ll find it unbearably emotionally charged, but I’m trying to stay informed. Mainly, I’ve been thinking about and distracted by my move and the studies that probably should have begun months ago.

I’m originally from the Bronx, and being from the “big apple” — Hamilton’s “greatest city in the world,” it was assumed by me and others that it would be the place I would remain. Or at the very least, I would migrate to a large, east coast metro with comparable demographics.

And at first, I did, attending the dream school of my youth and subsequently taking a research fellowship in Baltimore. But then, in what could probably be described as a state of mid-pandemic, post-January 6th dissociation, I set my sights on the midwest.

Anywhere would do, but Indiana, the self-proclaimed “State That Works” and the birthplace of amazing writers (Kurt Vonnegut, Ashley C. Ford, and John Green, to name a few) hired me before Michigan did. So, I packed up my Baltimore life, said goodbye to my first apartment, and moved to Indianapolis with three suitcases that exceeded the weight of my own body. The crossroads of America. Naptown.

You can only meet others as deeply as you’ve met yourself.

It isn’t false to say that the sociopolitical state of America drove me west. Not because I thought I would find “my people”, or anything. Actually, quite the opposite. I don’t truly know if my move was decided despite the intense political redness of middle America, or because of it.

I was speaking to one of my bosses, who asked how I’d ended up in Indiana. I explained how much mystery and fear surrounded the middle states in the minds of many from the east coast.

“I guess, I didn’t want to be in a bubble,” I said. “I wanted to see what was going on out here.”

“And what is going on out here?” he replied.

“I don’t know, yet!” I threw my hands up and laughed.

When I was in college, I did all this breakdown/breakthrough-induced therapy work that allowed me to see myself, developing a newfound sense of “self-compassion” and “understanding” along the way. And once I’d practiced it enough with myself, it came near automatically when it came to other people.

It was a revolutionary expansion of curiosity that seemed to precede fear and reaction and judgment (at least in most cases). I found understanding in so much “bad behavior” I’d previously condemned harshly because I could see it was all within a few standard deviations of my own mishaps and shadows.

Angry people were not necessarily cruel or untrained — more likely anxious and unheard. Micromanagers weren’t judgemental and nitpicky — more likely insecure about their own abilities and in need of reassurance.

An undisclosed side effect of understanding and befriending your own emotions is seeing those emotions everywhere and in everyone. Seeing between the lines of another’s unsavory moments, allowing their heat to roll off of you, and trying to address the needs in between. I felt so lucky to have found this resource, and couldn’t help but recognize that others, too might be able to benefit from some therapeutic, unconditional positive regard.

After all, despite our immense capacity for reason, can anyone truly argue in good biological faith that they are “rational” before emotional? Doesn’t that contradict the way our nervous systems evolved? The nervous systems that allowed us to survive over three hundred thousand years of famine and plague and war and natural disasters?

My therapy overlapped with the pandemic, during which many of my friends had gone home to their families and I was living alone in a 300-square-foot studio, with no second room to escape to. It was only my voice. Only my needs, encouraged by the comforting wisdom of another.

And I was feeling pretty great about my new sense of calm and compassionate outlook, but I hit a stumbling block when it came to politics, which seemed dark and inescapable at the time. The president of my country seemed to revel in qualities I couldn’t understand and didn’t agree with or respect. He was among the most powerful individuals on the planet, and he reflected the behaviors of people who had caused immense suffering in my life and the lives of others — individuals who had hurt me greatly and twisted the knife through persistent gaslighting and manipulation. Left became right. Up became down. And everything fell apart.

So, seeing this and holding this perspective, I expected things to fall apart on a national scale. I couldn’t truly understand how a fellow American could be so enamored by him. And they were enamored by him — in the way we tend to be with the carefully coordinated performances of presidents and politicians, regardless of their good or bad works.

The most dramatic soundbites, even from the ongoing State of the Union, will make the news, rendering the economic and health plans actually relevant for the survival of Americans, the entire point of a State of the Union address, “less important”. Unsatiating. Not attention-grabbing enough to generate the ad revenue required for news organizations to survive in the modern economy.

And so, while my goal is to continue this practice of curiosity, so long as it works, my attempt at defiant compassion was hindered by a lack of understanding. My attempts to prove to myself that I can understand others without necessarily agreeing with them, and without abandoning my own values, were equally hindered. And I felt that I needed a more complete version of what is true — more data to churn.

Truth so frequently escapes us. And debates about truth rarely call upon the techniques that are historically robust methods of distinguishing it from falsehoods. And as someone who’d been told too often that I — by nature of my womanness, or my youth, or whatever discrediting hammer happened to be accessible — could not possibly perceive truth and had to defer to the wisdom of others, determining what was true and uncovering the techniques of deceivers became a core component of my study in college.

While our perceptions are limited, and we may therefore not actually be physiologically capable of determining an absolute truth (after all, the scientific truth of the early 15th century was that all life was visible to the naked eye), I want to get as close to it as possible. And to do that I need as much data as possible. A new place, a new job, and new relationships with new people.

Maya Angelou, a favorite writer of mine, once quoted Terence — a Roman African playwright who was enslaved in youth and later allowed an education and freed.

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.

I took this very seriously in my state of post-therapeutic bliss. Why should there be a forbidden topic? A limit to understanding? A limit to curiosity — lest the immorality of others infect us? If knowledge will change me, for better or worse, I’m only delaying the inevitable.

This is a long-winded way of saying the midwest is equally exciting and terrifying. I’m excited to learn who the Hoosiers are, who I will become, whether my perspective will change, and if I’ll stay true to myself or get swept up in local currents. The point is, I could’ve easily been born here. Or anywhere.

Maybe I’ll grow, maybe I’ll wilt. I’ve already had a water heater-induced breakdown in which I declared to no one that I should’ve “stayed my *blank blank* in Baltimore.”

Maybe I’ll find that there isn’t actually anything in between the lines. No deeper story behind the curtain — just confirmed stereotypes and confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecies. Maybe America’s crossroads will teach me that it’s all been done and discovered. Maybe I’ll become a better citizen or person or maybe I’ll learn that the cynicism of my youth was the right outlook after all.

Regardless of the outcome, I can at least say that I’m living a life of my own creation. And that’s all I’d ever desired.

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