Minding the Gap

The life areas where we find ourselves at odds with the Hive may present the greatest opportunities for growth

A loosely-defined friend (Facebook and meeting in passing) calls herself an EpiscoPagan. Since googling the word doesn’t bring up anything relevant, I imagine that she may have coined the term. I love it; it somewhat describes me. She seems to be one of those who live in the Gap, navigating between two seemingly opposite belief systems, lifestyles and aesthetics. In the very liberal Episcopalian church where I did music for ten years, members could also be Zen Buddhist mindfulness meditators, attend Jewish Seders and Muslim Eid-al-Fitr, be partial agnostics or in the case of the Latino congregation, pre-Columbian Aztec dancers, but a Witch would still raise eyebrows.

She’s not either/or. She’s both/and. Good for her.

I’m guessing that many more people than I’m aware of are living in some sort of gap, the place where we veer off from the official party line of the group with whom we mostly identify. Or where we straddle officially opposing sides. The life areas vary. For me it’s probably class, and among older white Democrats, that’s a big one. I grew up in a family of white-collar professionals which includes three MDs (including Dad), numerous medical professionals and researchers, two university professors (geopolitics and physics), a social worker, a meteorologist and the Artistic Director of a theater company in Washington DC, among others.

But the immediate world I’ve lived in for 30 years is distinctly working-class, and that includes large parts of my neighborhood in spite of gentrification, my students, and my kid and his friends (food service industry). It also includes my A-team, the goal group, also fellow writers, where I’m the only college graduate who didn’t spend her working life in retail (and the best fiction writer among us is not me, the college grad!). At times I’ve been confronted with stereotypical statements from one side about the other. It runs both ways, and both sides are equally prone to it. Living with one foot in one milieu and the other on the opposite side of the fence can get uncomfortable. But I’ve come to see that maybe that’s part of my life purpose during the upcoming years - mediating the divisions that get in the way of mutual respect for our varying gifts and contributions, all of which count.

For some, the gap may involve family relationships. For others, a situation at work. For yet others, different philosophies about one’s artistic work, including whether to monetize or not. Or it could center around religion or politics. For some it’s not identifying with the gender they were born with. But in any event, those of us who see the side of an issue that our usual Hive ignores may find that the group experience has come to feel like an imperfect fit, like the pants that don’t quite hang right. We can smile, nod, ignore barbs and pretend to agree for the sake of preserving the status quo. Or we can venture another viewpoint and risk getting dismissed.

It’s damned uncomfortable. But the discomforting corners and ends may be where we find not only our greatest opportunities to contribute to more understanding, but also to our own personal growth. There is no such thing as growth without some discomfort. I’ve learned how to speak up in certain situations, aspiring toward a manner that is both confident and civil, hopefully avoiding being either deferential or aggressive towards those to whom I’m presenting a different viewpoint.

This summer I’ve been reading a mystery series that takes place in the Great Lakes region. Several books focus on the Boundary Waters, the incredibly complex geography of wetlands and tiny lakes and streams on the Canadian-American border. The detective protagonist himself is part Ojibway and often not completely accepted by either the white people in town or peole on the reservation. I’ve come to see the Boundary Waters as a geographical metaphor for where some of us may find ourselves now, in dealings with family, friends, circles, political parties or other tribes. It might be nice to remain black-and-white, but our experiences tell us that the grayscale is more truthful.

Probably nothing can make this easy. But I think that there are a lot more of us out there than we realize. As we row along, we’ll eventually find each other. And the Gap will become friendly rather than threatening.