Can We Ever Really Know what it’s Like to be Somebody Else?

Every so often, we read or see something that opens our eyes to the wider world.  Lately I’ve been reading a book that really got me thinking.  Not like that’s an unusual thing, but I started thinking in some different directions than I most usually do.  Have you ever stopped to consider how different other people’s life experiences are from your own?  More often than not, it’s easy to be caught up in our own doings and limit our focus to the world closest to us.  Sure, we watch the news or read the newspapers, and have a decent idea of what’s going on here and there in the world – but do we ever really think about what other people might be feeling and experiencing?

The book I’m reading is called Bury Me Standing, by Isabel Fonseca.  Fonseca spent a great deal of time in the early 1990’s with European Gypsies, also commonly known as the Roma.  In the first section of the book, she lives with a group of Albanian Roma, who, compared to some of the people she meets later in the book, are fairly well off.  I was struck immediately by the fact that the matriarch of the family was only 44 years old (just a mere three years older than me).  This woman was already a great-grandmother!  Roma commonly marry very early, around the age of 13 or 14, and begin having children right away.  They then begin a life of tending to their families – feeding, cleaning, and making sure their needs are seen to day after day.

What were you doing when you were 13?  I seem to recall some angst-ridden years that we Americans call junior high, or middle school.  We worried about whether our friends really liked us, and if we could ever hope to get the attention of that cute guy or girl, and why, why did we have to get a pimple now?  The last thing on our mind was getting married and wishing to have a child in the first year of marriage so we wouldn’t be sent back to our family in shame.  In America, for the majority of people, at age 13 we still have several years of school, and in effect, childhood, before we’re required to grow up.

Not only do the Roma begin their adult life much earlier than most of us, they have also spent centuries as a hated people.  Why is that?  I’ve been trying to piece it together in my mind as I read the book.  To me, it seems just ridiculous that an entire group of people should be hated so much, just because of who they are.  Hatred against the Roma is so severe, that in 1689 the kings of both Denmark and Sweden decreed they should be put to death.  Hunts were conducted, in which the Roma were chased down as wild animals.  I suspect that part of the hatred stems from their indifference.  They are not interested in assimilating with the rest of society, and others are resentful of that.  They don’t have a homeland, and don’t really want one (not that anyone would consider their right to one).  They have the desire and ability to be completely self-sufficient among themselves, except for some economic dealings with the outside world.  Ultimately, the Roma just want to be left alone.  Yet they have been persecuted, murdered, and discriminated against again and again.  It is as if the world has chosen them as a scapegoat, so they might not feel so badly about themselves.

Have you ever been that hated?  Maybe, but I suspect not.  Can you imagine your whole neighborhood under attack, homes burned out and people chased away, based on the unfortunate actions of one or two people?  There will always be individuals that commit crimes, but the idea that an entire community should be attacked because of one person’s poor judgment, is unfathomable.  In Romania, as late as the 1990’s, angry villagers attacked Roma settlements just because one or two Roma men committed a crime.  The government did nothing to prevent the attacks, and church leaders were responsible for organizing them.  It makes no sense, but it happens.  We are so fortunate here in America.  Even when things seem their worst, chances are incidents as extreme as those that occur in Eastern Europe won’t happen. 

The vast difference between people’s life experience becomes very clear when we compare two cultures that are so unlike each other.  But does it really take an extreme example to point out that every human on earth has a unique, but valuable experience?  It shouldn’t.  You might recall the game where several people watch an enactment of a crime or accident.  Afterwards, they are asked to describe the scene.  Even though they’ve seen the exact same thing, they don’t see the same thing.  Each person may focus on a particular detail – the victim may remind them of somebody they like or dislike, or perhaps they themselves were involved in a similar event and have strong emotions tied to their own experience.  The important thing to understand is that each person brings the history of their own life to each new experience, and we can’t really know what it is like for them.  The danger is we try to judge people and their reaction to events based on our own experiences, and forget that they are not like us.

We have a tendency to romanticize cultures or ethnic groups other than our own.  Gypsies, Native Americans, the Irish (everybody wants to be Irish, especially on St. Patrick’s Day), and many others become the target of our wishful thinking.  Heck, we even look wistfully back on earlier eras of American history and think that somehow, things were better then than they are now.  I’m guilty of it, I won’t deny it.  Ever since I was young I have wished fervently that I had been a pioneer on the Oregon Trail.  I know in my heart that it was a difficult life and the chances of survival were much less than today, yet I believe that it would have been simpler, and some ways easier than much of the life we lead today.  I believe though, that as we idealize the “other” we tend to forget that every individual in those cultures faces or faced a daily struggle of experience and survival outside of our warm comfortable ability to comprehend.

As humans, we become acquainted with or close to many people during our lifespan, but can we ever really know what it is like to be somebody else?  Ultimately, at the deepest levels, I don’t believe we can.  But we can have compassion and understanding for people, because they undoubtedly feel and experience similar things to ourselves.  We all feel love, joy, anger, jealousy, and pain – thus we can empathize with others who go through good and bad times.  It isn’t necessary to know the details, it is enough to know that all of us share a range of emotions brought on by the experiences in our lives.

This brings me to a second thought – despite the difference in experience, and because we share the same emotions, we must value each person equally.  This is a very difficult thing for many people to swallow, as is so painfully clear throughout history and in today’s world.  It doesn’t mean we have to like everybody – far from it.  It does mean we must acknowledge that we humans don’t all think alike or act alike, and that’s okay.  Some people might call it tolerance, but I think a better term is respect. 

There is a website, and now a book, called PostSecret.  You may or may not be familiar with it, but I would encourage you to visit the site or read the book.  People send anonymous postcards with their deepest secrets to Frank Warren, the curator of the project, and he posts a new selection to the site each Sunday.  The cards show people at their most vulnerable, yet safe in anonymity.  I suspect that you may find some of your own emotions or secrets there – which just proves the point that despite our differences, we are all still very much the same.  We can know others just enough – even strangers – to find compassion and empathy in our hearts.  And, if we can each do this every day, perhaps we might be able reverse the trend of hatred and hostility so prevalent in our world today.