Twas Brillig

Hej, I’m JM!  I blog sporatically over at Jan vs. Wild (janvswild.blogspot.com).  I’m a 25-year old astronomer, originally from the US, but currently living in Denmark where “Jan” is exclusively a boy’s name.  But, I am in fact a girl.  There is no end to the fun my name has caused.  I have been reading Brillig’s blog forever, but being a lazy lurker, I never actually made contact with her to tell her how cool I think she is.  So this guest post can be my way of fixing that.  Brillig is awesome!  There, I finally said it.  Now, down to brass tacks…

I had this super-awesome idea for a post for Brillig’s blog, but then I got bogged down writing a HUGE astronomy paper which is due shortly, and I didn’t have time to write the amazing post I had imagined.  So, instead I decided to just edit a recent email into a less-than-brilliant, but hopefully somewhat passable post instead.  Here goes:

Today I was looking for a good recipe for yeast rolls, and I was getting so frustrated with all the recipes that say “one stick butter.”  Me being me, I blamed all Americans and ranted to my brother “I hate how Americans think that everyone in the world is just like them!  Does it not occur to anyone that maybe butter isn’t sold in the same sized “sticks” everywhere in the world?!  Couldn’t they put a real measurement like “1/4 cup” or something?”  (I realize that would still be ambiguous to those people here in Europe that measure in grams and such.)  Then we started talking about how so many recipes call for “one package yeast” and how we have only ever bought yeast in packages weighing a pound or more, so making the conversion to tablespoons or something was also frustrating.  Honestly, I STILL have no idea exactly how much a “package” of yeast is….

Eventually these somewhat trivial topics led to a discussion about how so many people don’t even realize that maybe other peoples’ lives are different than theirs.  It doesn’t even occur to them, so they don’t think about it.  My brother works in accessibility and he said “that’s the biggest challenge with accessibility and the whole disability thing, is just getting people to recognize that not everybody in the world is exactly like them.”  They always say not to judge someone until you have “walked a mile in their shoes,” and I totally believe that.  I think if everyone made an effort to think about other people’s situations, and wonder if maybe they were fundamentally different in some way, there would be fewer arguments, fights, misunderstandings, wars, etc.  One of my favorite songs has a verse that says, “In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can’t see.”  I just love this.  I think if we could all see the sorrows that were hidden in others’ hearts, we would interact with them so differently.  Maybe we wouldn’t get quite so annoyed with the bank teller than was short with us, or get mad when the guy ahead of us on the road cut us off, or whatever.

My brother and I concluded that one of the biggest problems in the world is that so many people assume everyone uses “sticks of butter” and “packages of yeast” and so even though they aren’t necessarily “bad” people, they just don’t understand when something is different than the way they think it is, or the way they have always known.  So they react in perhaps a negative way.  I always thought the word “awareness” was mostly just a buzzword, and most people who used it didn’t even really know what they were talking about, but I think now I understand what it means, or should mean.

So, I shall end this post with a challenge for everyone to try to increase their “awareness.”  Be it awareness of a disability, of a struggle someone else is going through, of a difference in measurement systems between countries, or something else entirely.  I promise it will change the way you interact with people.  At least, it did for me.

Let me apologize if this post seems a little incoherant or choppy.  I hope it makes sense.  I am in the middle of writing a paper (whoo-hoo) and just took a break to finish this before I forgot about it.  Thanks for reading!!!