To Be Seen As I See Myself

Last autumn, in a time before Covid, I was strolling the streets of Italy. It was my first time traveling outside of the United States. I was all by myself, with only a handful of memorized Italian phrases to aid me. And it was spectacular. 

There were so many reasons to be happy, including long evening walks down centuries-old cobblestone avenues, brief but memorable encounters with fellow travelers and many incredibly gracious Italians, and enough gelato to satisfy even my ravenous appetite. Another powerful factor was that, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was being perceived by others as I perceived myself. Whether I was ordering enough pasta to feed a small village, or checking into a succession of charmingly shabby hostels, each person I met saw me first and foremost as a traveler. I think it was the dazed and confused look that gave me away. Or maybe it was the small suitcase that was practically attached to my arm. No matter. The point is that they thought I was a traveler, and so did I. We were in perfect agreement.

This is not an experience I am used to. When you aren’t an obvious fish out of water, people tend to judge you by mundane and limiting labels, like race and gender. As a cisgender woman, I am privileged to not have gender dysmorphic events regularly inflicted upon me. When it comes to race though, it’s a little trickier.

I am multiracial and look, for lack of a better term, ethnically ambiguous. People like to play a guessing game with my race, which is a bit rude. Even if they don’t ask me directly, I can see it in their eyes. They’re scrolling through options in their head, almost always settling on an inaccurate one. It’s hard to blame them. After all, half Japanese and half white isn’t one of the usual “pick a race” checkboxes. Still, it is frustrating to be constantly perceived falsely. There’s little I can do about it, too. If I shout my ethnic heritage at every new person I meet, well then I’d be the rude one. 

As irritating as these incidents are, I can accept them. Strangers are strangers for a reason. Their misconceptions might sting, but they can usually be swatted away like pesky flies. What cuts deeper is that some people who know my racial makeup, and who supposedly know me, still fail to see me as I am.

A friend of mine once casually remarked “I forgot that you were Japanese.” I wanted to ask them if they had forgotten that I existed as well. As the sum of my parts, I am incomplete if I am missing even one. So to forget a part of me is to forget all of me.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? If a person exists as a multi-faceted blend of identities and no one sees it, does that person really exist? These are the questions that haunt me when I’m feeling philosophical. Then I get angry and I ask, what on earth is wrong with people? Why is it so hard for even those closest to me to accept my complexity, to cast aside the urge to provide basic answers to intricate questions? 

I think it’s because we live in a world that adores simplicity. It teaches us to make generalizations, to categorize and label and sort people into this box or that one. It teaches us to look away when something challenges our neat and tidy assumptions. It teaches us that if we encounter a person who stubbornly refuses to fit into a box, we should squish them until they do. 

Well, I don’t want to be squished. As hopelessly naive as this may be, I hope to one day live in a world where no matter the context, I am seen as I see myself. Which is to say, a world that embraces the complexity that is me and the complexity that is you. After all, I am far from the only multi-layered person. My complexity might be literally manifested in blood and bone, but we are all full of glorious contradictions, the products of miraculous marriages of seemingly incompatible elements. We do ourselves a terrible disservice by tolerating a society that forces us to twist ourselves into knots to fit inside cages of easy understanding. Each of us deserves to sprawl free, in all our paradoxical glory. 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? Maybe, but wouldn’t it be nice for the tree if someone listened? So, let’s listen when people tell us their stories, and let’s look when people show us who they are. I think we’ll find that when we start to see others as they see themselves, instead of how we might perceive them within the limitations of our inevitably biased perspectives, our world will become a much more honest, vibrant, and compassionate place.