All Too Often

Among the thousands of stones that have surfaced on the land I tend.

I have relatives who are Chinese.  Years ago I asked one of them why was it, did he suppose, that the eyes of Chinese people are shaped as they are.  What environmental circumstance caused their eyes to adapt in the particular way that they have?  An innocent query on my part, I presumed, yet my relative’s response lit up my heart with gratitude: “Why do you suppose your eyes are shaped as they are?,” he asked.

Of course I had no idea.  And in that reality was the lesson from which I continually learn. 

My question hadn’t been why do we humans have differently shaped eyes.  I had been taking myself for granted.  The norm, if you will.  The center of all things.  Seeing something as other being worthy of my curiosity.  

An understandable perspective on one level, stuck as we all are seeing the world through our own eyes, hearing it through our own ears, etc.  

Yet, how much of a step might it be from curiosity to condescension?  From unfamiliar to inferior?  From separate to less-than?  From different to dangerous?

Unfortunately, those are questions easy to answer.  Which is to say, not much of a step at all––all too often.

Long have I treasured my relative’s comment, representing, as it does, the antidote to bigotry: self-awareness.