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architects, architecture, blog, food, language, philosophy, speach, travel, traveling, travels, writers, writing
My husband and I were driving back from Flagstaff Arizona yesterday where I attended a four day writing conference. In Yuma we stopped at a Love’s gas station. A young man with a yellow shirt, braces, glasses, and a big smile held the door open for us. Both my husband and I thanked him, and asked him how he was doing. “Great! It is a nice day today.”
My husband and I headed off to the restroom, and then met up at the coffee station. They didn’t have any liquid creamer that wasn’t flavored so I chose Almond Joy for my coffee. I don’t normally like flavored coffee, but we were on the road and being on the road requires many things outside of my norm or routine.
When we went to the cash register to pay, the young man that held the door for us started to ring us up. “Are you having a nice day? He asked.
“We have been driving all day.” I said.
“Where did you come from?” He asked.
“We came from Sedona and Flagstaff.” I said.
“I want to go to Sedona. That is on my list.”
“It is so beautiful with the red rocks all jetting up to the sky. There is a church there, called Church of the Holy Cross that you have to visit if you go.” I said.
“Is the church in the rocks?” He asked.
“Yes, it is. You can see the whole canyon from the altar. Behind the altar is one big window looking out. The architect was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright’s.” I said.
“I can’t wait to go.” He said.
We said our good-byes and as we were walking to the car my husband said, “He may not know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. Not everyone knows or cares about the history of architecture.” My husband said.
I immediately regretted the reference to Wright. While trying to build a connection with that young man I had severed the tie by parading my knowledge of architecture. If he didn’t know who Wright was I had built a wall instead of a bridge. I had put myself above him. I had shown my education and experience. In essence I had waved a card of privilege – a privilege to care about art and architecture, traveling, etc. Sedona is only a few hours from where he works and he has never been there.
I should have known better. The same thing happens to me when I am reading many writers, and they will make a reference to a Greek God, a philosopher, or a long dead writer and I will be lost by the reference. The writer will have put distance between themselves and me – they will have upped me in education and their knowledge of culture or history. I know with Google I can easily look any reference up, but the negative feeling it generates, the space it creates between me and the piece of writing, I often don’t care to look it up. I often give up on the piece and say, “This is over my head. This is too academic. This wasn’t written for me.”
I know how it feels to have someone else’s privilege (college, graduate school, possibly a PhD), or even world travels – references to places, or food, or art, or architecture – all of these things made reference to without an explanation making it seem like, “Of course, everyone knows this!”
I don’t want to push people away I want to find ways to bring them closer. I want to hear their stories and to possibly tell mine. I want to hear their hopes and dreams or be a witness to their heartbreak and pain. I want to speak simply, not because people can’t understand, but because many people haven’t had the opportunities that some of us have been lucky enough to have. That doesn’t make a person dumb, or uneducated. It may mean they have had to focus on a going to work from a very young age, or taking care of a sick parent, or maybe they know all the words to every Star Wars movie.
Who is to say what knowledge is anyway?
If we really want to reach people we have to think about our audience. Maybe some of the writers I read aren’t writing for me, maybe they are writing for people just like them, but that isn’t true of me. I want to be accessible to everyone. It’s more important to me to build a connection than to show you where I’ve been, what I have studied, the culture and history that I know.
Let’s get down to the real stuff that makes up life – let’s build a bond so I can find out what makes you cry or what makes your heart beat faster. That’s where living is, not in a reference to a dead architect.
WOW! Thank you!! I thought it was only me. There is someone in my world who chisels away at that bond. They use a prefix: “As you know I read a … ” followed by books, authors, etc,
Always I “withdraw”:
a) I don’t know you read a ….
b) Don’t assume your personal habits are that important to me.
c) Why don’t you even realise that you have just pushed me away. Again.
What a fab post (because I know I do that in a different form myself!). Will now spend the next few days tracking down my habits! 🙂
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I am glad you could relate to this piece!
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What a great post! A reminder for all of us. Wonderful!
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Thank you!!! 🙂
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I disagree. I don’t think you said anything over the young man’s head or flaunted your education. You engaged in a conversation (how many of us really talk to a gas station attendant) and you shared about a place that you love and is beautiful that he was already interested in. You gave him a fact about the place that probably stirred his curiosity more. And besides that is how we learn new things.
Something tells me you were just being friendly. You can’t correct every word to say just the right thing at the right time.
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I agree, it wasn’t the worst thing to do, but I am often in situations where people write or talk to me in a manner that makes me feel a barrier go up instead of a passage way. I want to make sure that I am responsible for creating as many passage ways as possible – I desire to draw people in, not push them away. I think language is a tool to build relationships if we want to use it that way, but we have to be aware of what we say. That’s all I’m really saying is to be aware of how our messages may be heard. There are some people who only want to write for other people with doctorate degrees, and that is fine, but they need to know that they are excluding others at the same time. I was struggling with learning to be aware of my words. 🙂
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Gotcha! Just giving you a different angle of you situation. 🙂
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Oh I love comments even if the person disagrees with me. I welcome all perspectives on my blog 🙂 Thanks for making me think!
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I don’t think you were necessarily flaunting your knowledge. I hope you inspired him to look up Wright and expand his own horizons. Glad you were able to enjoy parts of the conference and Northern Arizona one of my favorite places on earth.
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Reblogged this on Dream Big, Dream Often and commented:
Meet A Journey With You!!
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that was nice… as soon as we think about others , we immediately creates a bond with them..reading at your post i can say that if there are barrier placing people then there are passage creating people like you too….
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Thank you. 🙂
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Found you via http://dreambigdreamoften.co…Great post. How would you do it differently while still being able to mention Frank?
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Interesting question. I could have asked him if he was interested in architecture, and then if he said that he was, I could have said, “You really need to visit this church. The architect who designed it was a student of one of America’s most famous architects, Frank Lloyd Wright.” I think that would have been a little less like name dropping and a little more educational in case he had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. Do you agree, or not?
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Did you go to Frank Lloyd Wright’s house in Arizona? My boyfriend studied architecture so that’s how I heard about him. I didn’t know much about him before.
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We went to his studio and where he taught his students. His work is amazing. Both my husband and I love it.
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We went to his house in Scottsdale. We took a tour of it. It was interesting to say the least 🙂 We stopped on our way back from the Grand Canyon. I did a post about it a few months ago.
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I’ve been there too! I love it. He had a studio in Wisconsin too and we have visited there – he spent winters in one place and summers in the other. I would like to read your post about it.
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It’s mostly just photos but here it is 🙂 Thank you! http://lifeofanelpasowoman.com/2015/08/17/arizona-new-mexico-part-2/
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Very cool! Thanks for sharing the link – it looks like that was a fun trip.
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It was! It was very hot but fun! 🙂
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Yeah correct..most times we do it unconsciously, understanding the need to build bridges makes us better. That’s not to say we won’t err sometimes, we would. But we must always be aware that, no one knows all. I wrote something similar about the power of prejudice a while back..here’s the link -https://mariajob.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/guilty-of-prejudice/
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Thanks for sharing your link! 🙂
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