lauantai 19. lokakuuta 2013

Day 336: Reaching out to strangers


18-19102013



I was just walking down the street next to the university and a young man around my age walked past me. I saw him looking at me and so I looked back, and I saw that me looking at him encouraged him to look back at me after already turning his eyes away. It was a fun moment where I simply looked at another to express my curiosity, but I noticed that I kinda felt like smiling but couldn't do it until he had already passed me by. This has happened to me many times before, that I look at someone and feel like smiling but suppress it until the other cannot see it (or the smile escapes onto my face and I feel embarrassed), or I look at another without smiling and later on fear that maybe I appeared hostile because I did not smile.

I have been born and raised in a culture where strangers do not look at each other on the streets and do not smile, not to each other or to themselves. The lack of smiles is why a lot of foreigners find this place difficult to adapt into, because it appears hostile and cold even though under the serious faces people are really friendly. While talking to a mobile phone one is excused to express oneself because there is someone “familiar” one is talking to – someone from the “inner circle” that has “earned the right” to interact with this person – and after the phone call people revert back to silence and become serious and withdrawn. The phone call is not something you can share with the strangers next to you even though they're right there and heard and saw every bit of the phone call.

Having traveled in cultures where people do engage in contact with strangers much more easily, even if it's somehow superficial, I see that the culture I live in is very fearful, because even when one participates in apparently meaningless small talk one is at least giving oneself a chance to learn something from interaction. Here in Finland we don't even give ourselves that chance. Instead we keep to the small realities we create from the people we “trust” (have allowed ourselves not to be terrified with) and keep the rest of the world away and alienated.

When I look at it from this cultural perspective it is easier for me to see what exactly is wrong with the approach to strangers I have learned while growing up here. Why do I fear smiling to people? Why do I fear looking at people? Why do I fear opening conversations with people? It comes down to self-trust, self-honesty and self-expression – it all comes down to SELF, not who the others are.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear smiling at strangers because I have wanted to appear cool and distant to uphold an appearance of superiority so that the other one would fear me more than I fear him/her. *

* This may date really far back in genetics, even.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to intimidate a stranger with my appearance because I have feared that they might possibly be hostile and thus tried to keep them at a “safe distance”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the behavioral pattern of attempting to intimidate others to protect myself is a defense mechanism I have created in my childhood / teen years when I didn't have the capacity to deal with all kinds of people, and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that this defense mechanism is no longer necessary as I am no longer a child / teenager.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear showing friendliness (good intent) through a smile towards strangers because as a child I learned that I my friendliness is dependent upon the other one's intentions as I was unable to defend myself from bad intent. *

* Just think of a small child: many of them do not smile unconditionally to strangers (at least not after a certain point of development) but instead become restrained and nervous around strange adults. This only wears out after the adult has shown the child that he/she is “safe” to be around and approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being unconditionally “open” to all people (welcoming, friendly, warm) because as a child I have learned to protect myself by clamming up until my environment appears “safe” as I could not yet fully rely on myself regardless of my environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my environment was “unsafe” in my childhood because I did not have the tools and the capacity to deal with everything that there is to the world, and that the fear of “unsafe” environments and people is therefore no longer valid as I now do have the tools and the capacity to deal with whatever I come across. (May sound “big”, but the basics are actually really simple.)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though I still come across “new” situations where things feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and strange, these situations are not in fact “unsafe” - such where I would have to fear for my well-being – but that I can support myself through these uncomfortable, unfamiliar and strange situations unharmed (although most likely I will be changed) with the cognitive, social and physical tools I have learned while growing up to become a self-supported adult being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear looking at a stranger because I have perceived it as a threat, not realizing that it is in fact a window of opportunity and that my perception is outdated.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear smiling at people because I have perceived it to be a threat – that I am exposing myself to abuse by inviting another closer – not realizing that abuse will not simply “happen” to me but that I am capable of NOT accepting and allowing myself to be abused numerous times “along the way” (during the course of the interaction).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the action “inviting people closer” as something negative because this has sometimes resulted to me being abused, thus blaming and guilting myself in advance to protect myself from getting abused again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the act of “inviting people closer” or choosing to trust people (which is initially self-trust - “I can trust myself to survive around this person” - “my abilities are enough to survive with this person”) is NOT in fact a negative act but that I have labeled it as such to protect myself from getting hurt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear talking to strangers because I have feared getting judged because in this culture strangers talking comfortably to each other is uncommon.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that the people in Finland will think that I am “strange”, “weird” or “crazy” for talking comfortably to strangers as my equals and that people will not want to interact with me because of how they perceive and believe me to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if another chooses to seclude me from their reality because of their perception of me, it is not because I am somehow “not good enough” but because I trigger discomfort in the person on such a level that the person cannot / will not face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on interacting with the locals after the first difficult words/sentences because I have interpreted this difficulty/stiffness to mean that the other doesn't like me and that I should just shut up – not realizing that the people who have grown up here just “warm up” really slowly because they're (we're) so afraid of each other, and that it may take a while to actually get close to a new person. *

* I witnessed an interesting scene in the bus where a man was talking to a woman with a dog. The woman was replying with very short sentences, just one or two words, but after a couple of silent moments the man kept on going in a very friendly manner. Little by little the woman's sentences got longer (which is also when I heard her accent and realized finnish is not her first language) and she got more comfortable with the man talking to her, even though in the beginning she seemed very uncomfortable. I admire that man for his uncompromised perseverance! I will learn from his example.



Whenever I remember to do this, I commit myself to practice looking at, smiling at and talking to strangers on the streets by walking with my posture straight, eyes forward and face “open” (no scarves or hats “blocking” my face) and by keeping myself grounded in breath aware of my movements and aware of what I see around me. I commit myself to take note of all reactions that occur in me when I do this and to go through each revealed point in written or spoken self-forgiveness.

When and as I feel resistance/hesitation to look at, smile at or talk to a stranger, I stop, I breathe and I realize that the resistance is a remnant of a childhood defense mechanism that is no longer valid because I am no longer a child. I realize that I am now in fact fully capable of facing and supporting myself through everything that may come about within interaction with other human beings, because I know how to learn, adapt, express and communicate. I bring my focus to breath and ground myself back into my body and allow myself and my existence to rely on my physical completely. If the stranger is still there, I return to the interaction within and as self-trust. If not, I utilize my stabilized state otherwise.

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