My 3 eyed daughter
Daughter #4 was feeling jaded this morning - someone told her she was struggling with identity issues - and said that we were like people with 3 eyes. "Its okay to ask people with 3 eyes personal questions. You know, 'So what does if feel like to have three eyes?' And its okay if people with three eyes know your secrets."
Sigh....
I've had identity issues ever since I can remember. I seem to have been born out of time, out of place. I was born during the baby boom but I never was really a boomer. I grew up during the generation gap but my parents were my best friends. I didn't fit at school because I was a Christian but we weren't exactly like everyone else at church because my father had a beard, my mother was into health food and we sometimes brought our goats to church... This could be a very long list. But usually I'm really not all that bothered with not "fitting".
I think it has something to do with not having a t.v.
My moral framework came from novels.
"First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – "
"Sir?"
" – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
- From Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"
I guess that's why Japanese ways don't seem so strange to me. Considered from the inside, most things make sense.
8 comments:
Not to be complicated, but it sounds more like issues with people who have issues with your* identity... And I think everyone has those at some stages...
Or possibly like someone who likes to pass off complex things with words like "issues"...
*in the general sense, like "one's" but without sounding like the queen...
How astute of you! Yes, I have issues with people who have issues with my identity - I happen to be rather attachd to my identity - and I think I also have issues with the word issue! :-) But most of the time I am entirely unbothered by the subject of identity.
Perhaps I should amend my post slightly to make that clearer.
Yeah, beginning with those uniformed ding-dongs sitting in the immigration booths at the airports, everybody's always trying to ID us. A geater issue for me, though, is that I am totally baffled by the three-eyed monster dialogue . . . or is it a monologue by Sarah's friend? Who are all the yous and theys?
The "three eyed monster dialogue" is Sarah's soliloquy on the nature of our experience as "Gaijin for Life".
I don't actually mind airport immigration BTW, they're usually pretty nice to me. At least in NYC and Tokyo. They very seldom ask me anything at all.
Ahh, I understand now . . . about the tree-eyed monsters, not about why airport immigration doesn't bother you. They're EVil :-)
Just to clarify...
I meant that the problem isn't your identity as much as people's reaction to it.
I guess if you don't have time or place to get to know an Elliot they can seem a little extraordinary!
Sorry, that was me! (John O)
Do we really seem extraordinary? :-) We miss you, John. Hurry back!
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