On Acceptance - A Review

I've got tote bag filled with groceries slung over my shoulder and a six pack of paper towels tucked under my other arm. I walk past the church and turn right. I'm nearly home. In front of me is a parent, walking in the same direction. Except now they’re hurrying their two kids across the street. They're not at a crosswalk. And while Onderdonk isn't a very busy street, we are still in New York. And I mean, they're jaywalking in front of a church no less. The whole thing seemed strange, but I didn't have to wonder why they practically shooed their kids across a relatively busy road. Because walking toward me was a 6'7" tall person in a form fitting wedding dress. Their massively haggard beard draped over their bouquet of wilted roses. Beside them stood someone in a full burqa. Covered head to toe in black.

But unlike the scared parent, I just walked forward. And so did the bearded bride and the burqa’d pedestrian. And like any other interaction on the sidewalk, we both did the most respectful thing you can do in a big city and pretended the other person didn't exist. That was by no means the strangest thing I've seen in New York, but it certainly was the strangest thing I've seen this close to home. The weird stuff I usually experience is relegated to my rare trips to Manhattan or when I'm on the G train late at night. I would probably have completely forgotten about this experience had it not been for the parent, who was so scared that they risked being hit by a car, rather than be near someone who didn't care about norms.

I can’t blame the parent for being scared. That’s how they decided to act in the moment. That’s how they thought they’d protect their kids. That’s what they thought was the best thing to do.

There is a lot to the pressure to be normal and unsurprisingly, even more when you’re not. I’m not going to join the legions of blogs that go over the definition of what is or what isn’t “normal.” Rather than play with semantics, I’d much prefer to just address the dictionary definition and move on with my day.

But there is something to normalcy. The concept of it is entirely antithetical to the human condition. Heck, it’s even contradictory to half of the tenets of evolutionary biology, you know, the thing that has defined and decided decades of social and primal interaction?

But of course, there’s always the fear of the unknown. The thing that keeps a lot of us closed in, because we think we know what we don’t. We think we know the intentions of the hooded man walking toward us at night, the door-to-door saleswoman, the towering hunk of muscle bursting out of a bridal dress.

There is a reality to some of these fears, but it comes from us guessing outcomes, rather than the incalculable number of different directions a chance interaction can lead to. So we suppose. And we make those assumptions based entirely on histories that are populated by the extremes, the things we remember or think we remember. Meaning, we’re not afraid of the unknown at all, but instead what our imagination fills that unknown with.

Here we see that Occam’s razor is double edged. Our snap judgements and decisions prove that both sides of the razor are fine enough to cut your teeth on, but it seems like the edges are not fine enough to be able to cut a dividing line in the concrete spectrum of “how should we act?”

And the thing about a razor is that it cuts deeper when you use it on someone else.

Respect costs a lot. But, strangely enough, it costs less when you consistently give it (it also, somewhat moronically, means you have more for yourself).

It’s hard, but I do my best to give as much respect as I can afford to everyone. To my best friends, to the people who’ve done me wrong, to the people who have walked out of my life, to the people who have just stepped in. And of course, to the random strangers on the sidewalk, who are just trying to get to where they need to go.

Have a good week.

And while you’re out there, respect yourself and do your best to respect others.