One night, I was walking around the neighborhood with my girlfriend Ree who is Chinese. As we walked and talked, I noticed people kept staring at me.
This is China and I’m a foreigner. I’ve been living here for 7yrs so I’m used to the judgy looks from time to time but on this night it was annoyingly persistent. All the locals were looking at me as if to say, “what’s this foreigner doing here? He doesn’t belong here.”
It’s not something I need to take personally but this impression does cross my mind at times. One lady looked at Ree up and down and then glanced at me, staring with judgment as if to say, “how could they be together?”
People are prisoners to their own judgments, which has no impact on a bird flying by a prison cell. But on this night, I was affected and the more I noticed people staring at me the more I became angry. In my mind, I flipped the bird and looked back at them like, “The fuck you looking at?”
I noticed the frustration and asked myself, “why am I so angry?”
The next day at work, I took some time to be alone and journaled during the break. I realized that when people stare at me it makes me feel frustrated because it gives me the impression that I don’t belong; I’m not wanted.
This impression traces back to childhood and the effects of generational trauma. The frustration I experience from people’s stares reflects what’s happening inside of me.
The hard truth is that we don’t see others as they are, we see others as we are. There’s something in me that is sensitive to the sense of belonging. It’s why I obsess over the process of listening and why I’m a therapist and why I’m involved with the work of inclusion.
The fog of frustration lifts with compassion to reveal insight into ourselves and our values.
In an insanely noisy world, sanity is found in the capacity to quiet the mind.
Before one can belong anywhere, he must learn to be alone and belong with himself.
This is a lesson on self-awareness and owning one’s emotions and actions rather than reacting to other people’s judgments. It would be insane to do otherwise. This is a story about protecting one’s sanity by taking an honest look in the mirror and bringing attention to the condition of one’s own heart.
The need for belonging and aloneness is universal. I shared this story with my students at the college where I teach soft skills and one student admitted she has the same feeling because even though she’s Chinese, she’s not from Sichuan and she feels lonely here at times and it’s hard. I asked her, “what helps you cope?” She said “reading poetry.” She introduced me to the poetry of Borges, an Argentinian poet from the 1800’s.
The bottom line is that the work of diversity and inclusion begins by looking inside.
Author
Arya Salehi is a storyteller, comedian, and therapist, co-designing for inclusion.