Environment Shape Us
But We don’t have to stay at the Mercy of the Winds Forever!
Yesterday I went for a hike near the border of France and Spain with Jean-Jacques. Just after noon, we stopped for a picnic lunch. The sun blazed overhead in the crisp blue brilliance of the summer sky. The trees rustled in the wind. And my soul, at one with nature, melded with it.
In the distance, a pine tree rose, straight as a soldier at attention toward the sky for about 20 feet, then it bent abruptly, 90 degrees, veering south toward Spain. This abnormality, accentuated by the unceasing and robust wind, conveyed to my unfettered mind this idea: Like nature, humans are shaped by their environment.
In 1972, the story of Little Black Sambo shaped me. This racially controversial book, which my kindergarten teacher had read to the class one day, was like that wind impeding that beautiful pine’s upward trajectory. It had grown tall enough to feel the wind’s full brunt and forced it to change direction, to bend and conform.
At five years old, I had not grown tall, nor had I formed my own ideas or impressions of the world. To that point, my parents and my naiveté had protected me from the cruel winds of racism and discrimination. One opinion I had formed was that I enjoyed the story of Little Black Sambo. I had skipped home from school that day, excited to tell my mom. But when I asked her for a copy of my very own, she was not happy, and she had not consented to buy me the book. No, instead, she was livid.
I interpreted her rage at the situation as anger at me for liking and wanting something so dreadful. At five, all I wanted was to be loved and protected by my mom, but in asking for this symbol of racist imagery, I had upset the apple cart, and I thought if I didn’t do something to right it, Mommy would stop loving me, and maybe even stop caring for me. Unwittingly, to conserve my relationship with my mom and with my teacher and classmates, after my mom went to the school to voice her ire, I embarked on a campaign of conformity. I looked to my mother and father to understand what I should like or dislike, do or not do. And at school, I attempted to blend in and not bring attention to myself with teachers and classmates, though as the only minority child in my class, that wasn’t so easy. In this way, I gradually became someone other than the person I was destined to become, someone who hated her brown skin and kinky hair, and who secretly desired to be white.
This became my way of being for decades afterward. Sometimes, even now, I still find myself hesitant to speak up or ask for what I want.
Like nature, humans are shaped by their environment. But we can change.
When we become aware of the forces that have impeded us from living in the manner that feels right to us, and when we work to rewrite the stories that our environments, former or current, have planted in our minds, we can change. We can change the shape of our thoughts and how we experience life. We can change how we show up in the world and transform into the people we were created to become before the winds of conformity blew us over.
