So, there’s this thing, this inexplicable phenomenon in trees called ‘crown shyness.’ It’s where, for reasons of either reluctance to spread organisms or compete too much for light, trees grow up…and spread their canopy only so far, so that their leaves don’t overlap with the trees next door. Looking up at these canopies from below is striking; those trees really are like, nu-uh, no thank you, stay in your lane. The spaces between the leaves are small, but distinct, and the whole thing is a little mind-boggling.
This phenomenon put us in mind of a few things — mainly how weird it is sometimes when one’s cultures and communities overlap. Or don’t.
Over the past weeks, we’ve seen blogger friends grapple with many Big Questions on their blogging platforms. Some of the big questions have had to do with what they ate this week, or what to make for dinner; others have tackled current events.
There’s never any requirement, per se, from our blogging communities to Say Something About Things, but there’s a certain feeling of… expectation(?) that we will have an opinion, in other circles. That we are happy to speak, if asked. That we will Have Some Wisdom To Share. And then there are the friends who definitely, definitively do NOT want us to say anything. They arrive with a Statement: Everything is Awful Right Now, And We Hate It, and then, they hold their out a hand, a visual time-out; signaling Stop… as if they have the right to tone police, word police, corral or contravene what we might have had to say.
So, all that is… interesting.
There are deeply complex and complicated feelings surrounding one’s right or responsibility to speak or not speak. Especially right now, when we are a biracial couple with acquaintances of various races, eager for our countersignature on their opinions.
And yet, what is there to say? That everything is awful, and we hate it? Noted.
It’s easy to gasp and clutch pearls, but this is history on repeat… You’ll pardon us if we seem cynical about the reactions of the eternally surprised, who say “this is not us, our country isn’t like this!” It is easy to be impatient with the lachrymose, and allow ourselves and our feelings about things to be centered in a narrative that is not entirely about us, and yet, this is about us, about too many things, past, present, and ongoing, to disentangle. Where we are living, truly, where we always live is in history, though capital ‘h’ History is something we don’t always recognize. Yet, here it is: a messy and painful and real time… but for many people, there have been many, many times which are painful, messy, and real. As mentioned: history, on repeat.
Because of that, maybe this is a time for reading, thinking, and listening… and for thoughtful conversation. Perhaps this is not a time to command performance; not from your friends of color, especially. Perhaps the time is less for performative reaction or virtue signaling, and more for quiet decisions about how one will act when those Certain Topics come up, when Certain Situations are witnessed. Maybe now is the time to decide how you will move forward. How each person does this, what words and actions feel right is …as personal as speaking about religion and/or politics used to be.
Meanwhile, History is a daily event, as your conversations and communities intersect, or don’t. Looking up through the canopy of your friendships, you may see spaces between your communities and cultures. As the wind blows, however, those crown shy trees may end up touching anyway. How we deal with that feels like something it’s important to think about before it happens.
I misread the title as “Crowd Shyness”~which may be a good title as well.
Everything is painful, messy, and real. Maybe I’m naive, but I feel there is a smidgen of hope as more and more people are diving into the painful mess with conversations and ponderings about how to make things better.