by Lisa Koshkarian, Ph.D. 

DIGNITY 

The woman lives on the same city corridor where I pass multiple times each week on the way to my spin gym. While her garb, physique, and hairstyle shift regularly, her facial expression remains lifeless and vacant. She paces up and down a two-block stretch, ostensibly with purpose and destination. The other day, I glanced over from my car window to see her urinating in the gutter. I feel devastated that she must squat in front of everybody to relieve herself. My heart sinks into despair for the unimaginable barbarity that absconded with her life. The horror…the horror… Because I have seen her so often, for so long, I can bear the tension of sensing and witnessing but not knowing her stories. I am mournful for the many whom I am unable to meet with the same spaciousness.

How do I nevertheless attempt to carry my experience of anonymous others with wholeness and humanity when the rapid pace of my life presses on me to bracket each set of stimuli? I need wise others, such as Chimananda Ngozi Adichi, to help ground me in a state of being which elaborates multiplicity. In her TED Talk entitled, The Danger of a Single Story, she reminds me to take solemn responsibility for how I might embellish or else come up short in remaining curious about the snippets of “information” I read, see, hear, and feel about people(s). Ngozi Adichi calls me to consider the power inherent in telling or even re-telling another subject’s story. That power has the potency to rob dignity from others. A single story is an incomplete story, which has the potential to dehumanize. Equipped with this perspective, I orient toward being a reverently silent companion to strangers like the woman on the street.

I notice that when I go through moments or periods of stress and overwhelm, my psychic machinery which processes feelings and thoughts and then captures them with little stories, becomes prone to getting jammed up. The obstruction can occur at any point along the way. I can fail to see or feel or sense. Formed thoughts may elude me. Cohesive conclusions are unavailable. I try to afford myself the same grace and compassion that I endeavor to offer to others. This includes working to refrain from creating a single story about my own vulnerable states such as, “Once that ambiguous situation is resolved, you’ll feel better” or, “You just need to eat more carbs.” These phrases may very well be true, but they are incomplete. I need communities of other humans to help dignify my own multiplicity. I also acknowledge the coexisting truth that many are unable to recognize my complexities, just as I lack the capacity to take in everyone’s stories. Some of our limitations as humans feel cruel. While the woman’s adversities are limitless compared to mine, we both need at least a subset of others to attempt to behold the intricacies of our experience with receptivity and truth.