“Chinese people are like porcupines: they get close enough to huddle for warmth, but too close and they will prick each other.” – Song Xian Sheng, AKA Sam.
My good and faithful friend and advisor Sam and I were having a conversation about personal space while we were out one day. I explained to him that in America, the idea of personal space is that each person is entitled to approximately one square meter of space around him/her. Any crowding results in an invasion of personal space and constitutes a grave insult or an act of aggression. That is when Sam told me about the ‘Porcupine Theory’ above.
After years of living in America I understand, and have even come to accept the idea of personal space even though I think a whole square meter for each person is a little bit much. However, America is a big country…
Instinctively I expect to have less personal space, and thus all of the crowding and hand-holding and arm-holding that I’ve experienced here does not bother me. What I’m having a hard time dealing with is the ‘invasion’ of my psychical space.
I am a loner. Always have been, most likely always will be. I don’t want to be a loner, most of the time. I yearn to have company, I like being around people, I enjoy being social. But I don’t know how to be social. It just drains me to be around people all of the time.
I was not ‘socialized’ during that crucial window of growth in childhood. My mother had disdain for society in general and relationships in particular, and she raised us with that disdain. Cuddling? Not on your life! Playing games together? When the moon tumbles from the sky! Invite friends over? Are you insane? (Besides, did we really want to show potential friends what our home life was really like?) How does one even be a friend? As a result I do not know how to reach out to people or ask for (or accept) help, and I certainly do not know how to share or accept goodness, warmth, honesty and open friendship. At least not comfortably.
I moved here with the intent of learning how to do this. Note: This should not reflect badly on the good, dear friends I have made over the years who live in America. You understand me and allow me my quirks and my space… and maybe that is the problem. Too much space.
This society minimizes the space between people. Here there is not only but a blinking regard to the concept of personal space, but there is sometimes a downright invasion of space that forces one to accept said invasion, or deny the invader ‘face’ (respect).
When my students started inviting me out I was immediately tempted to duck and hide behind my position as teacher. ‘Why, we couldn’t possibly fraternize together: a teacher and some students? NEVER!’ But I came here to learn how to accept warmth and friendship and return it in kind – not just the appearance of it. So I accepted these invitations.
When one student or the other grabbed my hand to walk with me, as is the custom here, I allowed it even though it disturbed me profoundly. I don’t think it was because my personal space had been invaded, I think it was because they were freely, openly and publicly demonstrating warmth and affection for me, and it frightened me. So badly that I nearly withdrew my hand and reclaimed my space.
I am officially between a rock and a hard place: I will either learn to accept and return warmth and affection, or I will disrespect those that offer it to me. To learn this lesson means to unlearn 40+ years of conditioning in the art of being an island, to disrespect means to ignore the rules of this society and insult the very people I came here to learn from and teach. I deliberately set myself up to be in this position because I want to stop being alone, but I am finding that this education is much more difficult than I had anticipated.
Another very personal observation: These past 30 days I have caught myself perpetuating incredible acts of selfishness. Besides feeling the overwhelming need to withdraw my hand from being held: Sam and his wife had a baby recently and I have yet to buy them a gift, but I have indulged myself in all the junk food I wanted. My grandson just had his birthday but I’ve yet to find him a gift, let alone try to mail it to him. And its not like I haven’t had the money.
Sure, some of this can be blamed on my feelings of dislocation and my efforts to seek comfort, but still: I find my behavior to be very selfish, which begs the question: Am I selfish because I never learned to share or do I not share because I am selfish?
That is a question I came here to answer. Of all the people in the world that I know of, the Chinese are the least selfish. Not very long ago, their very survival was predicated on sharing: food, scarce material goods, shelter, warmth from the coal stoves in the winter. To this day a standard greeting here is ‘Have you eaten?’ If I can’t learn to share here, I may well have to declare myself hopeless in learning to share.
I do not want to be hopeless in the art of sharing because there are so many people whom I genuinely care about that have shared true and positive emotion with me over the years that I have been incapable of returning, even though I feel great affection and caring for them. I hope you know who you are.
In these past 30 days, I have learned the exact depth of my problem. I have done nothing to fix it yet. I have to learn how. That will be the focus of the next 30 days: forced sharing, until sharing comes as naturally as breathing.
Whew! These last two posts were incredibly difficult to write! I’m going back to light-hearted observations in the next one. It is more fun to write them, and more fun for you to read them.
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