by David Van Diest
It’s weird!!
All the stuff “I’ve been meaning to do but just haven’t had the time” I now have time for.
As is my routine nowadays, in the morning after I work out, read, and meditate, I will look through Facebook for anything of interest. Okay, I don’t regularly do any of the things except scan Facebook. Sure, on occasion I’ll do some of that other stuff, but Facebook is so dang addicting – and vitriolic. One morning after scrolling through Facebook for, um, I don’t know, one to eight hours (there’s no way of knowing how long), I saw a meme that read, “I’ve finished Netflix, now what?”
It made me laugh.
One of the benefits of this Covid-19 quarantine is it has provided the necessary amount of boredom to finally get to some of the things I’ve been promising to get to for quite some time – but simply haven’t had time (I also may be fudging about the “haven’t had time” thing). However, the enthusiasm at which I attacked those suppressed “to-dos” has waned significantly in recent weeks as I get deeper into the list. What’s left now are the most unpleasant of tasks. You know, tasks like diving into the septic tank to retrieve my golf club [joking]. On occasion boredom still triumphs over the proverbial adhesive that has me stuck to the chair and glued me to the screen.
This past weekend was one of those occasions. On Saturday, I received a text from my son asking, “Hey Dad, do you want to help me build the deck on the side of our house on Monday and Tuesday?” Monday and Tuesdays are his weekend days and for me I’m not sure what day it is or for that matter, what a weekend is anymore. It all is beginning to look and feel the same. Building the deck is something we have talked about for over six months and amazingly enough, I had time, and the idea of doing a project with my son is always fun.
Now, I’m an optimist at heart.
At the start of a project, I typically look at best-case-scenario to come up with a timeframe. At that moment it doesn’t feel like the best-case-scenario to me, rather just a reasonable time in which the job will take. I do that with nearly everything from predicting travel times to writing projects. It’s become a joke around our family when I say, “This shouldn’t take too long.” In fact, our boys have said they’re going to put that on my tombstone. That’s a lovely thought. I would imagine it will read something like, “His dying words were, ‘This shouldn’t take too long. I’ll be right back.’”
Just past noon on Monday, after finishing my mandatory five hours of wading through the ever increasing “muck” of Facebook, my son and I jumped in the truck and headed for the lumber yard. As I always do, I’m thinking, this shouldn’t take very long. How hard can this be?
By 5pm, we’re screwing down the last decking board. My son blurts out, “Dad, for once you were right. This didn’t take very long!” I’m thinking, What in the world is going on here? There’s been a cosmic swing in the world’s equilibrium. Something big is about to happen, like a pandemic or shifting of the world on its axis.
I was right, something big was about to happen… at least in my little Covid-19 lockdown world.
Anyone who has ever built or has a cedar deck knows that cedar needs protection from the elements – especially the sun. Left unprotected, cedar quickly turns an ugly gray color. So, on Tuesday afternoon, when I thought we would be finishing up the last touches of the deck, I’m headed to Home Depot to pick up some deck sealer.
Going to Home Depot these days feels like walking onto the set of some sci-fi apocalyptic movie. Everyone seems suspicious of each other. Mask adorn nearly everyone’s faces except for those stupid people who think they’re invincible – those dang conspiracy theorists or God will protect me idiots. Of course, I’m one of the only ones not wearing a mask and feel like I’ve forgotten to put on pants or something.
It’s hard to read people’s emotions and facial language with just their eyes exposed – except when someone steps into another’s “space.” You don’t need to see their whole face to know their displeasure as instantaneously they retreat in fear of contracting a deadly virus. Their eyes and their body tell the story. It’s like a weird dance trying to keep appropriate space while carrying heavy and bulky building materials through what just two months ago were spacious aisles.
Buying the “right” deck sealer is hard during times where people have little fear. But, in our new “Covid-19 normal,” it seems employees do more avoiding of customers than helping. Like the plexiglass protection employees now stand behind, I want something that’s going to protect my deck well. How do you know which one will provide the best protection for my time, energy, and financial investment?
There are deck stains that are like paint and they’re called “solid.” I think that means they’re paint. Then there are ones with varying degrees of transparency – semi solid (which I think is still basically paint), semi-transparent, and finally transparent. With the “transparent” line you have differing color types as with all the other levels of transparency. It’s all very confusing.
To add to the difficulty in understanding, it should be noted that I can’t see as well as I once could, and it’s worse in limited light. At a distance of three feet or more things become clearer, but my arms aren’t that long. I need readers (magnified glasses) to read things up close. So, there I am in a dark Home Depot aisle trying read the back of the variety of deck sealers to determine which would be the best. Of course, I forgot my reading glasses. Luckily, I can make out enough words to get the gist of each option.
There’s a man to my left who is ignoring the social distancing policy of six feet or more. I would guess he was about five and a half feet tall wearing a matching tweed suit jacket, vest, pants, and a fedora hat. He was in his mid to late 70’s and looked like he could have played a role in the Godfather movies. We both arrived at the deck stain section about the same time, and as time went on, it became apparent (at least to me) that we both were having the same trouble determining which deck stain to buy. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him struggling to read and understand the various deck sealing options.
After about five minutes where we seemed to both be doing the same thing – pulling cans of deck stain off the shelf and reading the back and returning them to their place – I turned to him and said, “It looks like we’re both struggling with the same thing.”
He looked my direction and simply said, “I don’t know,” and walked away.
He was gone before I could get any clarification. He just walked away. Because he was wearing a facemask it made it even more difficult to know what he meant. There were no visible facial expressions to offer any clues. I knew nothing of his background or origin to help in deciphering his cryptic response.
Hey, wait a minute… what do you mean by that? What don’t you know? Are you offended or afraid? Are you unsure if were “both struggling with the same thing?” Or is it too confusing and you’re just giving up? Maybe you don’t know what you need?
What could it be?
This brief encounter illustrated for me something profound.
The information I had about this man was miniscule. I knew he was small in stature, that he was likely looking for deck stain, and he was concerned about Covid-19 enough to wear a mask. Most encounters with people leave us knowing a ridiculously small portion of the story. These encounters happen in the Home Depot aisle, on Facebook, at restaurants, over the phone, or on the television news. Unfortunately, we often come to conclusions about people based on extremely small amounts of information. We frequently condemn without knowing the story – we categorize, judge, and act with less information than most of us have about the breakfast cereal we consume.
This is what author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the danger of a single story.” I had a single story of the man in the deck stain aisle but the likelihood of it representing him accurately was small. In my story he worked for the mafia based in Italy and he spoke very little English. His face mask kept his identity from the “target” he was surveilling and was just about to extract justice for the mob family when I spoke to him – foiling his plan.
It’s possible. Okay maybe I’ve watched too many movies.
While I can’t detect any negative emotions toward this man there were likely biases at work for me to create the narrative above, and I have only a fraction of the story. The danger comes when there are negative connotations involved or ugly actions. For negative single stories to work, there must be no possibility that we have similarities with the one we despise. We see this on Facebook and other media platforms all the time when we dehumanize another – make someone into a one issue caricature –to boost our agenda or belief. They must have just the one narrative.
In her 2009 TedTalk presentation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains, “… In this single story … there is no possibility of a connection as human equals…. [the single story emphasizes] how we are different, rather than how we are similar.” This is true with most single stories. There can be no extenuating circumstances or experiences that can add depth and clarification to one’s actions because then our distain needs to be tempered, transformed, and our approach toward them changed.
Americans have fallen in love with the single story because it makes everything so clean and neat. With the single story we can easily identify the enemy or those we should oppose – or hate. The problem is, there is never a single story about anyone, any movement, or any event. The more we try to cram someone or something into a “single story box,” the more divisions are created, and humanity suffers. Empathy, mercy, grace, and truth fade as our need for retribution, along with our need to be right, drive and direct the narrative. People become a single event or a single belief, not the breadth of their experiences which give depth and enlightenment to their actions.
In the single story, people not wearing masks at Home Depot must be religious zealot, God will protect me idiots or conspiracy theorists. They obviously care more for the economy than the health and lives of real people. There can’t be any other explanation or extenuating circumstance. Even if we are accurate in our assessment of that specific issue, we can’t give latitude to how they arrived at those conclusions. They must remain ignorant rubes or narrow minded bigots.
Things are too tenuous in our country – our world, to continue to accept the single story narrative. We can no longer be so lazy to just accept the single story; our already contentious world can’t survive additional divisiveness. We need the full breadth of the narrative. We need to come together or will be ripped apart.
I was recently watching a video where the speaker said, “When you hate someone, move in. It’s much more difficult to hate someone when you get to know them.”
Daryl Davis experienced firsthand the effects of a single story. While today he is considered one of the greatest Blues and Rock’n’Roll pianists of all time, it isn’t his music that makes him so unique. At the age of ten, Davis experienced for the first time people who saw him as a single story. He was asked by his Boy Scout troop leader to carry the American flag during a parade. He describes his confusion as he was hit with one object and then another. As he walked down the parade path, he continued to be hit with objects thrown from onlookers. He had no idea the other scouts weren’t being targeted until his troop leader came to shield him from the aerial assault and escort him to safety. You see Daryl Davis was the only African American in that Boy Scout troop.
But the story doesn’t stop there. Many African Americans have experience similar treatment as Davis, but he didn’t accept the single story narrative of his attackers. Most would have considered him justified if he had, but he pushed through. For Daryl Davis, one simple question kept coming up: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”
It was this question that many years later drove Davis to request a meeting with Roger Kelly, the Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Maryland. While their first meeting was filled with skepticism and tension on both sides, Davis and Kelly continued to meet at Davis’ home. It wasn’t long before Davis was invited to Klan gatherings. While Davis didn’t initially change Kelly’s beliefs, there was a mutual respect formed. Eventually Kelly abandoned the KKK and gave Davis his robe as a gesture, because of Davis’ persistence in understanding. To date, Davis has been given over 200 Klansmen robes. Davis says that once a friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may have been misguided. His advice is, “Take the time to sit down and talk with your adversaries…. Respecting each other to air their points of view.” Because Daryl Davis was unwilling to accept the single story narrative, he has forever affected over 200 KKK members for the better.
When you disagree or hate someone, move in. Move closer. Find out who they are. Don’t settle for the lazy – the flat caricature narrative that’s being told. There’s always more there. And while you may not change anyone else’s mind, you’ll likely change yours toward a more compassionate, caring, empathetic individual.
Can you handle that?
David Van Diest has his master's degree in counseling from Multnomah University and is an LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor) Intern in Gresham Oregon, a suburb of Portland. He is trained in EMDR and focuses on helping men and women through depression, addictions, anxiety, life transitions, men's issues, parenting & family, etc. To contact David, email him at davidvandiest@gmail.com, call 971.276.5675, or visit www.davidvandiest.com.
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