EEDA Newsletter Vol 5, Iss 18: You Are My Other Me
This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!
Hi friends! Can you believe that August is just about over and it’s already Halloween?! It’s always Halloween in our home, of course, but it’s the time of year when I can start emerging from my cave. Summer weather is not my jam but summer produce can’t be beat. We already have some outdoor hangouts on the horizon. We were at a friend’s wedding back in May and I don’t know how the subject came up but apparently I am the person who has the most renaissance faire experience and some of our friends have never been so we plan on remedying that.
Last weekend, Nicole and I went thrifting over an hour away from where we live and found an absolute goldmine. I’m definitely going to brag here: Nicole got a pair of practically new Madewell jeans for $8 (retail cost is around $130). Bananas! That being said, I may have created a monster because she already wants to go back to that same area this weekend.
Just to keep me honest: sometimes when I take a break from work (I work from home) I wander around the house aimlessly, especially if Nicole isn’t also working from home that day. Left to my own devices, I start doing weird shit, like taking Glamor Shots™ of my food. So here is a photo I took of my cucumber sandwich the other day:
A couple weeks ago, we went to a community event put on by Sueños of Sisterhood (SOS) (their Instagram). From their site:
“Sueños of Sisterhood is a place for black and brown solidarity and empowerment, made for us and by us. Created by the amazing youth organizers and poets Ms. Bria y La Ceci, what started as a book idea turned into a platform to promote their values and missions within organizing while simultaneously empowering their peers and encouraging unity. I <3 Community being our motto, we strive for an equitable and just community and actively engage in the work to get there.”
We were invited by our new nibling (gender-neutral term for niece or nephew) and it was good for the soul. Together we recited Pensamiento Serpentino (Serpentine Thought), a poem by Luis Valdez, a Chicano playwright. According to Wikipedia, this poem draws on In Lak'ech, a Mayan philosophy meaning “you are the other me.”
In Lak'ech
Tú eres mi otro yo. / You are my other me.
Si te hago daño a ti, / If I do harm to you,
Me hago daño a mi mismo. / I do harm to myself.
Si te amo y respeto, / If I love and respect you,
Me amo y respeto yo. / I love and respect myself.
I have been so deeply moved by this poem and philosophy, especially reading it aloud as a call/response while in community. It is similar and different from the “Golden Rule,” which asks people to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves. I’m actually a bit critical of the Golden Rule, because it doesn’t take into account a person’s desires, needs, or unique identity. I much rather subscribe to treating others as they ask to be treated. Or rather, as George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”
But back to Pensamiento Serpentino.
I cannot stop thinking about what it would be like if I truly embodied the idea that you are my other me. Clearly, we are separate people but I often find a deep well of compassion and patience for people I know and love that I rarely have for myself. It’s incredibly easy to make this connection with the people I know and love. It is much harder for the people you don’t know, or people whose actions you don’t approve of. I don’t mean in a big way, like their beliefs are rooted in the oppression and extermination of marginalized folks. I mean in the ways that slip by, the ways we don’t notice. Like someone driving in a way that you think is “bad driving,” or someone walking in front of you that is walking slower than you would like to be walking. Maybe someone posts something on social media that you find annoying. The one I struggle with most? People standing in the middle of an aisle or sidewalk, blocking it for other people or shopping carts or whathaveyou. I fully admit that I am not my best self in those moments.
I’m also thinking a lot about something I learned from the intro of Relationality: How Moving from Transactional to Transformational Relationships Can Reshape Our Lonely World by David Jay (full disclosure: I’ve not read the whole book yet). David views relationship as fluid, as in we are all in relationship with one another to varying degrees.
We were at an outdoor dinner the other night and there were some people there who were very clearly “our kind of people” and maybe a few people who were “not” and I think about what if they are all “our kind of people,” just in different ways? We were all sitting around a table sharing a meal together for this very unique purpose so at some level in some way, we are each other’s kind of people.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’ve just been thinking a lot about how we are connected to people in ways that we don’t stop to imagine and that not stopping to imagine can sometimes cause more harm than good. Thank you for connecting with me by reading this newsletter. I hope that some of this resonated or at the very least, has given you something to chew on.
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