I Know Myself Only in Comparison to You

I suppose the earliest and perhaps most detrimental example was the way the adults I was surrounded by perceived me in comparison with my childhood best friend, and perhaps even the wider community, harbouring their conformist small-town values. I wasn’t particularly eccentric, nor was I particularly airheaded. Though comments from parents, principals and my peers would all help to create the myth of the ‘creative, impractical, anxious’ one in comparison to the ‘logical, practical, confdent’ one. We were seen in polarity to each-other, how could two such different people be such good friends? These ideas I’m sure limited both of us as we began to come of age, in what we thought we were capable of and how we saw our futures. It’s what happens to most people in small towns, they get pigeon-holed. It always confused the two of us though, I knew that she was sensitive, and she knew that I was clever. Ultimately, we were both drawn to leadership and tended to have grounding energies. These were the important commonalities that everyone seemed to miss. Instead, one of us had to be a leader and one of us had to be a follower. “Of course the dog barks up its owner,” a boy in my class exclaimed after I defended my friend. I’ve gone on to pursue a range of leadership positions and anyone who knows me will tell you I am called to it. But there is no room for nuance in polarity, similar traits cannot coexist, there must be a hierarchy.

Now when I go home to my parent’s house and spend time with my 17 year old sister, I am surprised at how little she believes we have in common. “We have such different interests,” “You like to analyse things and I don’t.” It saddens me that she can’t see how alike we are, and even our grandparents and relatives feed into this narrative, “She’s always been the more [insert descriptor here] one.” I wonder if we focused more on our commonalities; the way we both love deeply, the enjoyment we derive from working a room, our leadership skills and love for expressing ourselves, would we have a better relationship? No! I am like Dad, and she is like Mum! I despise this way of thinking.

Case study 3, my co-editor. I believe the biggest farce surrounding the two of us is that the ‘Jess approach’ to things, and the ‘Tahlia approach’ to things make us so different. At the end of the day, whatever approach we take, we share the same end goal, and isn’t there something to be said about that? Principally we agree most of the time, and I am under the impression that it would be of beneft to some people around us if we get caught up in the idea that we are opposites. While we may disagree or have varying reactions at times, we both use our skills in diplomacy to fgure it out. Even in our disagreements, we can fnd similarities in our personalities. There is no logic vs emotion, there is no political vs creative, these things have to co-exist to make any decision, they have to co-exist to ignite any change or progression. I’d say that the two of us hold a good amount of both.

The ‘polarity-refex’ seeps into my relationship. ‘I have to do the organising because I’m the organised one.’ My partner is excited by the prospect of organising our dates, just as I, the ‘extraverted’ one can get excited to spend the night in. Many people would describe me as driven and because of this I fear that my partner’s passion for things is often overlooked because of the need to sort us into polar categories. But these assumptions will only get us further away from truly understanding eachother, and they leave no room for growth, which we know is invaluable to a lasting relationship.

As tacky as it sounds, maybe we should focus more on the things that make us alike rather than what makes us different. Imagine how fulflling our work and personal relationships would be, imagine the level of objectivity we could reach with our intrinsically biased minds. I will no longer allow myself to feel trapped inside the perceptions of others who can only see me in relation to themselves or the people I exist beside.