Meeting the Other…

March 12, 2014 by Kim 5 Comments

‘Each of [the] people, whom we meet along the road and across the world, is in a way twofold; each one consists of two beings whom it is often difficult to separate, a fact that we do not always recognise. One of these beings is a person like the rest of us: he has his joys and sorrows, his good and bad days; he is glad of his successes, does not like to be hungry and does not like it when he is cold; he feels pain as suffering and misery, and good fortune as satisfying and fulfilling.

‘The other being, who overlaps and is interwoven with the first, is a person as bearer of racial features, and as bearer of culture, beliefs and convictions. Neither of these beings appears in a pure isolated state – they co-exist, having a reciprocal effect on each other.

‘However, the problem … is that this relationship existing within each of us, between the person as individual and personality and the person as bearer of culture and race, is not immobile, rigid or static, not fixed inside him for good. On the contrary, its typical features are dynamism, mobility, variability and differences in intensity, depending on the external context, the demands of the current moment, the expectations of the environment, and even one’s own mood and stage of life.

‘ As a result, we never know whom we are going to meet, even though by name and appearance it may be someone who is already familiar to us. And what about when we come into contact with a person we are seeing for the first time? So every encounter with the Other is an enigma, an unknown quantity – I would even say a mystery.’

~Ryszard Kapuściński, Polish reporter, journalist, traveller, photographer, poet and writer (1932-2007)

Lately, I have been doing a great deal of reflecting on Otherness, diversity, difference, and culture. When we discuss The Other, who or what is it that we are really talking about? And who is the Self we are comparing to the outside Other? Each of us meets Otherness in our everyday lives, even if we don’t travel to distant locations and exotic countries. Sometimes the Other is disguised as someone we think we know, our neighbour, someone we think is the same as us, but who ends up surprising us. Each encounter in our lives, even those that seem mundane and ordinary, can be an eye-opening meeting with mystery and newness.

I feel like this theme of Otherness has been appearing in so many things I’ve read and in so many of my personal experiences in recent times. I think it is both a fascinating and important topic to explore and try to understand, as we live in such an inter-connected global society, and are constantly interacting with people of such diverse beliefs and background, either face-to-face or through various forms of media. If we want to live in a peaceful world, we can’t ignore the topic of Otherness.

It’s obviously a big topic – far too big for one post! I look forward to exploring the topics of the Other, Otherness, diversity and culture in upcoming posts throughout the next weeks and months and I hope you’ll join me on the journey!

We never know where the journey will take us or who we’ll meet along the way.