Progress Made

Let's start with a tale of personal progress: I've now reached the point where I'm waking up at 8:30am every day - no exceptions. Even if I don't get enough sleep the night before, I am grateful for the opportunity to start my day at this time. It maximises my exposure to the life-affirming hours of sunshine our sweet earth provides. 

If you work during the night (or spend winters in Nordic countries) you might not have access to much sunshine. I am aware how privileged I am to be able to organise my circadian rhythm to coincide with the brightest time of day, and I am seizing this opportunity. I hope this will be the beginning of a new lease on health.  

And, moving to some sort of bigger picture: I finished reading 'Notes from a Small Island' yesterday, a much-celebrated book from the 1990s, which is indeed witty, charming, entertaining and even inventive, but is scattered throughout with sexism that I remember as depressingly regular for that decade. The fact that Bill Bryson gives himself a license to be 'daringly sexist' (his words, not mine), shows how much verbal abuse towards women was normalised and anticipated at the time. 

To give you an idea of the kind of sexism in this book, Bryson seemingly has cutting insults for every single member of the royal family who is a woman (even Princess Diana, in a round-about, passive-aggressive kind of way), refers to women as 'crones', and frequently resorts to gendered stereotypes. Homophobia, that old friend of sexism, can also be found here. 

It can be a sad or even kind of maddening exercise for a modern feminist to make their way through this book, savouring certain turns of eloquence, but repelled by the aforementioned prejudice. The only good thing that can be said about the latter is that at least it's not nearly as popular anymore. 2021 brings a feminist (and racial) consciousness to its publishing projects, and when I read books written in the last ten years I can negotiate a greater level of comfort with them. 

When I first started my journey of tertiary education, and continued as an independent intellectual, I was overwhelmingly fixated on texts from the 1960s onwards, preferably as close to the present moment as possible. Some of my friends would attempt to interest me in older works, but I was stubborn in my thirst for narratives in which I could find the most hospitable attitudes towards GLBTI people, multiculturalism and women's rights. 

It's now from this base of understanding of postmodern realities that I look to past texts with a spirit of curiosity and enthusiasm. There is, indeed, much to be learnt from historical precedent. But I think it's important to note that people who weren't part of the same minorities as me (e.g. white, heterosexual men) would have had access to the emotional reality of the past - in which they were seen as the rightful heirs of logic, wisdom, authority and power - much more than I, and I approach this 'shared' history with a disadvantage. These traditional custodians of 'evolving wisdoms' move through 2021 with rather more ease as well, but I really feel the difference when I delve into a time before the coining of the terms 'compulsory heterosexuality' and 'people of colour'. 

Today I am happy to note the fictional trio of the film 'Futur Drei' (literal translation: We are the future), whose combination of PoC and queer identities make a welcome addition to the German filmic landscape. These youths of Iranian descent assert their right to feel at home in Europe, and assume their place in its communities - communities in which they find a deep and abiding sense of home. The future is indeed theirs/ours!

So then I might find Edward Said's 'Orientalism' relevant to my sense of multiculturalism, or I might read one of Zadie Smith's books for a queer black woman's perspective on being European. Alternatively, I might read something by Jacques Derrida, himself an Algerian immigrant to France, or 'The Second Sex' by Simone de Beauvoir (I'm still 18% through this one). Then there's Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day' snug in my virtual library, or... the list goes on. 

I look forward to integrating all kinds of texts into my reading practice in the future, as I enjoy learning about how historic texts have paved the way for modern innovation. Histories of innovation can sometimes emerge in my mind. And, of course, I look forward to expanding my mental parameters through pioneers who look and sound different to me, and who can offer the comfort of new ideas to approach 2021 with. 

Immigration, Tall Poppy Syndrome and Exceptionality

Once, when I was small, I looked for an opportunity to show off to my Australian friends. I imagined them co-conspiring with my narrative of success, so that, for a brief moment, I would have my time in the sun. I was accustomed to the elation of these socially sanctioned tributes to greatness amongst Bulgarian communities, and, despite what I knew about Tall Poppy Syndrome, thought I could magically evade its censure if I willed it so. 

You can guess what happened next: social disapproval and being 'taken down' - the opposite of the self esteem boost I had been after. I would go on to have a conflicted relationship with the philosophy of social levelling, until the moment when I secretly embraced it. Much later, I would probably over-empathise with my sense of mediocrity, because a psychologist tried to nudge me in the direction of acknowledging my greatness. 

Let's backtrack a bit... it was 2001 and I had just received my Universities Admission Index of 88.2. You would think that I would have been happy with a very high mark which allowed me to enter any university of my choosing. Instead I was relieved that I received notice of it in Vancouver, which meant that fewer people from high school would ask about it directly. If I am honest, I am still ashamed of not having broken through the 90 threshold, even as I remember the tedium of exam training and my psychological problems at the time. 

Perhaps now is the time to reframe my achievements: Being in a school of exceptional students made me no less exceptional. Again: I was exceptional. And: I am still exceptional. 

I can derive value from acknowledging my exceptionality, even though I wouldn't say I was exceptional out loud. For me, exceptional means: producing brilliance where none was expected or required. Exceptional means: Knowing my strengths, reinforcing that knowledge, and making that reinforcement habitual. Exceptional means: Trusting myself to have my own and other people's interests at heart. Exceptional means: Returning to my sense of resonance and lyricism. 

If you're reading this, I have a feeling you would do well to tell yourself you are exceptional too.