Accomodating the Peculiar.

I once went to a lot of trouble to explain something about myself to somebody. It was something she needed to know, and so I made the effort to explain it carefully, comprehensively and rationally. Today she asked me a question which indicated that she either hadn’t listened to me or hadn’t understood. If the former, does that indicate disrespect? If the latter, why hadn’t she understood? She’s a highly intelligent person who generally makes it her business to understand the vagaries of the human condition.

What am I trying to say here? It’s difficult to wrap it up in terms that are both succinct and explicit, but let me give it a go.

Every human being is complex up to a point. Each of us is an individual collection of attitudes, opinions, sensibilities, strengths, weaknesses and so on. It’s been my observation, however, that most people’s complex set of traits fall within a set of vaguely defined boundaries that are established by, and acceptable to, the culture in which they’re brought up.

Some of us have traits that fall outside those boundaries. Charlotte Bronte occasionally made reference to her sister Emily’s ‘peculiarities.’ Someone else recently referred to them as ‘my strangeness,’ and it seems that the majority of people are ill-equipped to understand such traits, or maybe don’t want to make the effort. It’s easier to think of us ‘extra-boundary’ people as odd, eccentric or weird. By and large, that’s OK, but not always. Sometimes a person’s peculiarities need to be understood if they’re not to be left out in the cold or have sore psychological spots rubbed raw. If somebody says ‘the very mention of that stuff that comes out of cows’ udders makes me sick to my stomach,’ the right response is not ‘what, you mean milk?’

That’s why I make the effort, even if not always successfully, to understand others’ peculiarities, and why I’m disappointed when others don’t understand and accommodate mine.