How do invisible expectations affect us?
Beth Bonness, Author ??
Writer. Poet. Photographer. Vegan chef. Exploring the ripple effects of our thought echoes and chasing vegan umami.????
Standing outside a fitting room waiting for my youngest daughter to model wedding dresses, I held my iPhone. My job was to take photos and document what she liked and didn't.
As I stood there bursting a little bit, but trying to chill, I remembered trying on wedding dresses with my mom. And hating it. None of the dresses felt like me, but I went through the motions anyway.
My daughter’s first dress had spaghetti straps with a long train. She liked the cut “from the waist down.”
I stood taking photos and typing notes into my phone until I realized it was faster to whisper into the microphone, like a reporter capturing firsthand commentary for a story.
In the next dress, she resembled Audrey Hepburn. “Looks great on me, but I can’t dance.” She was drawn to mermaid cuts, but almost all of them wouldn’t let her move around freely.
At one point, she asked me which was my favorite. I was honest: it wasn’t her favorite one, at first. She could have worn any number of them, but I was drawn to an elegant one with little pearls running along the seams with a low back. I thought of my mother’s pearl necklace as part of the something-borrowed, something-blue tradition. As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth, an inside voice made me want to scrunch my face and pull the words back in. It only matters what’s her favorite.
Of course it was, but why was I so drawn to more traditional dresses decades after I chose to get married in a non-traditional dress?
What invisible expectations did we grow up with and still carry? How can we practice getting out of our bubbles to recognize invisible influences? And maybe in the process learn to build more empathy?
What invisible expectations do we carry?
This month’s thought echoes podcast guest, Nilanjana Buju Dasgupta , author of Change the Wallpaper, Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities, invites us to become aware of the invisible assumptions in the wallpaper of our lives. We walk through rooms all the time, never noticing the wallpaper. The same can be said for our childhood wallpaper that we seem to carry with us as adults, quietly gets added to by work, living in our communities, and from global influences as well.
Most of us don't notice the wallpaper when circumstances favor us and we're running with the current. But we sure do notice when conditions make us feel like we're fighting against the current.
Dr. Nilanjana describes four varieties of wallpaper: 1) group identities of those being valued and recognized in influential roles, or the “portraits on the walls” that all look the same, 2) our material culture like the design of buildings and neighborhoods and access to technology, or not, 3) our symbolic culture communicated through popular stories shared by word of mouth and internalized — like working hard will make you successful and any inequality is deserved, and 4) everyday norms and expectations allowing people to navigate, but if people don't know the rules of the game, they miss opportunities.
My daughter’s shopping for wedding dresses followed another social norm, the elaborate rituals around marriage.
how can leaving our bubbles build empathy?
As we talked, Dr. Nilanjana started sharing advice for how to change the wallpaper. I chuckled a bit, because I felt like I was at the starting gate of realizing the concept and asking myself — “What is the wallpaper of my life?”
Took me a hot minute to appreciate how learning about other people could help me understand what they were going through and how, from my position of privilege (which I often take for granted), I might also be able to help.
If you had a mom like mine, as a kid when I hurt a friend or said something mean, I suspect you too were encouraged to walk in someone else's shoes to appreciate what they were going through. Our little lessons to practice empathy and compassion as we grew up.
There are three types of empathy:
Research has shown another way to increase empathy is by reading fiction. When our brains enter a new world, we naturally find ourselves identifying with people and groups outside our normal bubbles.
After interviewing Dr. Nilanjana, I saw a piece in the local newspaper about a documentary series. Food Foray explored stories of immigrants who live 20 minutes east of me — in one of the most diverse counties in the state. The director, Ivana Horvet, an immigrant herself, wanted to explore the stories of immigrants while shopping, preparing, and sharing food with the film crew. As Horvet says, “Food kind of disarms us and connects us.”
I went to Food Foray with two of my daughters here in Portland. Before the screening, people stood in long lines in the theater to taste sample foods from the segments. We sat through three heartbreaking — yet hopeful immigrant stories. All pained by not being able to go back to their birth countries.
The Oaxaca mother likened her story of moving to the US as similar to someone having a birth mother (Mexico) and being adopted by a rich family (America) because her birth mother couldn’t take care of her. She loves them both, Mexico and America, but she’s sad because she can’t go back and see her family.
And a Burma father talked of racism in his country of birth, where his wife didn’t like him at first because he had darker skin. Her expectation? They would never marry. He spoke of the open systemic racism, even in a Buddhist country. I thought, and you see the US as better? Wholeheartedly, yes, he did. That surprised me. His sense of humor and easy smile were disarming. Why Oregon? A friend came here first and convinced them to come here for a fresh start.
Hearing stories of not seeing family back in their home countries made me wonder about my great-great-grandparents. How they must have missed family when they moved from Germany, France, Prussia, and Luxembourg to the US in the mid-1800s due to war, looking for safety and opportunity. I cannot imagine not being able to see one of my siblings as an adult ever again, knowing they were alive half a world away.
During the Q&A, I was drawn to the immigrants’ courage for sharing such personal stories, and also curious about the recipes and how they reminded them of their home country and how they wanted to share them with everyone here. I can't wait to visit Supermercados grocery store and shop their wall of chilis and avocado leaves and listen to more stories.
“It’s through those little stories that we often understand the circumstances of someone’s life that is different from our own.” — Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta
Understanding privilege means realizing how much the current is carrying you forward, and appreciating the perspective of others who are swimming against that same current.
In our interview, Dr. Nilanjana offers some positive steps we can take:
1. Step into a new space to interact with a new person different from you.
2. Listen to stories of people whose perspectives you don’t understand.
3. Look for ways to mix food or music as ways to change the wallpaper.
4. If you’re a person connected to many others, use your influence to open doors for others with less privilege.
Watching my youngest in her favorite dress, I was reminded of four generations of wedding dresses: a 3/4-length 1920s flapper dress for my grandmother, a Grace Kelly long, satin gown with pearls for my mother, a 3/4-length, one-size-fits-all my husband found on the cover of Cosmopolitan in 1980 standing in line at a grocery store for me, and a donated one-time-use, proceeds go to charity Brides for a Cause gown for my youngest daughter. I wonder what kind of dress the woman from Burma wore?
Uncertainty swirls around expectations. We all have expectations of other people, and other people have expectations of us. Uncovering those can be tricky; they’re so intertwined in our perspective that we don’t notice, like the wallpaper in many rooms we walk around in.
Uncertainty swirls around expectations. We all have expectations of others, and they have expectations of us. Unraveling these can be challenging because they’re deeply ingrained in our perspectives, often unnoticed like the wallpaper in many rooms we pass through.
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