what the circumstances allow

an original poem by a 13-year old, each copy with slightly different illustrations

I listened to a talk by novelist Elik Shafak, who remembers a teen asking if she tastes the words in her books.  Rather than responding fully, she gave a rushed answer that was incomplete.

She reflects on her experience.  "We don’t have time to give the answer.  And actually it did make sense…But I was worried that if I tell all of this to the teenager, it might sound either too abstract, or perhaps too weird, and there wasn’t enough time anyhow, because people were waiting in the queue, so it suddenly felt like what I was trying to convey was more complicated and detailed than what the circumstances allowed me to say.  And I did what I usually do in such situations: I stammered, I shut down, and I stopped talking.  I stopped talking because the truth was complicated, even though I knew, deep within, that one should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity.”  Elik highlights that in conversation, we often don't give the fullest, truest answers. 

I thought about what composes our identities while illustrating this poem, written by a 13-year old.  In most cases, even regarding the identities we most associate with, there are ways we do not think we fit those identities.  In conversation, we give what we have time to give, in terms that we think are most digestible for another.  This includes elements of empathy, but also may truncate our truths because there's not time or energy for that and, as Elik says, people are waiting in the queue.

I consider what, at any given moment, might be my top ten identities.  

Catholic

Occupational therapist

Creative

Female

Irish

Chicago

32

Virginia

Christmas

Notre Dame

There are spheres of each of these identities I fill, and there are areas of each stereotype I do not fill.  I am and am not each.

I am a therapist 40/168 hours (24%) of the week. There are ways I am literally not a therapist and there are also ways I do not feel a therapist.  For example, I do not fulfill this stereotype when I remember that I usually don’t like touching other people, when I am asked specifics about the hand or ergonomics and do not know the answer, when I fail to act as an occupational therapist should act.  I do not feel a therapist when I am off work and get annoyed with someone asking me about what’s wrong with his neck, or when I am in a grocery store and do not want to be called upon to perform CPR.

We read descriptors in print.  For example, we absorb information about a 68-year old Anglican clergyman from London.  Surely this man does not hold all these identifiers as part of his self-image each day, and surely in each of his roles there are ways he perceives himself conforming to the stereotype and not conforming to it.

We give quick and easy answers about who we are, but wouldn’t it be a richer conversation if we could also answer who and how we are not?  

Or perhaps it is only that more often we should speak nuanced truths: we are from cherry trees and stubbornness.