Any positive comments I receive about my columns are delivered deftly in private. It often feels like prostitution. And the vitriolic comments that do reach the editor are probably deemed unprintable for reasons more compelling than the lack of an attributed author.
So imagine my pleasure a month ago, upon learning of a refreshingly forthright student letter written to the editor about my favorite subject: me.
More specifically, a letter about how my views on race demonstrate that I embrace solipsism. I was ready to read and disagree with this reader's thesis: (excerpt: "I would say that the nature of memory and time-that the former is incomplete and that the latter forces the human to always be in the present-necessarily obfuscates reality, even of our own history.") But upon getting muddled halfway down the page (it seems my brain and my columns are more perplexing subjects than I gave either credit for, but are unable to process themselves), I settled for rejecting the first sentence:
"Jane Chong asserts that because people have their own experiences, we should tolerate their 'reality'-a reality based on group identity."
On second thought, I don't understand the connection between my original assertion and this interpretation. So I will settle on disputing a word.
Tolerate.
I'm not a big fan of tolerating anything, least of all anything important. But because you and I are reasonable sapiens, we will tolerate bad skin, bad service, bad breakups and unfortunate hair cuts. Minor bug infestations, moldy air vents, Room Pix and residential life post-Freshman Experience. We tolerate losing the bathroom key, replacing it for the price of an illegal kidney and finding the original nestled in the hedges just outside our roommate's window. We tolerate being featured in student affairs brochures, the ones with unsuspecting students lined up like exotic jellybeans: one white, one black, one red, one yellow. We tolerate being called yellow.
We tolerate, we tolerate, and a sense of humor cultivate.
Of course, as the writer of the letter suggests, we claim to tolerate a host of other things, important things. Like human differences, free speech, "obfuscated reality." And this is good, right? Like, isn't toleration a good thing, especially when pasted next to other Significant Words, like "racial" and "religious" and "Act of 1689"?
Indeed, the word "toleration" has a whole history and convoluted controversy behind it, but I'm not interested in exploring either. Really, language is a changing, living thing, which means I have no problem with a few deadweight words, no problem with toleration in its noun form, wholly unassociated with me.
But I won't go so far as to personally advise that you tolerate other people's realities. That would sound like everyone who is not you is in need of serious clinical care. And if I believed that, I would find a more creative way to say it.
Then again, the rather flat term in question takes pride of place in our politically correct word bank precisely because it seems so dully unobjectionable. And this is why I object. To its association. With me. The word "tolerate" is abysmally cautious, and what it loses in pure nerve, it makes up for in condescension. One imagines a villainous chick-lit type, circa 1850s, sticking her nose in the air and deigning to "tolerate" a filmy bit of skin on her chicken entree.
I don't want to tolerate other people's realities. I'd rather be part of them. Which is why I find it interesting that the headline for this particular letter (editor's choice, I understand) reads CHONG EMBRACES SOLIPSISM, while the complaint is that I nettle readers to TOLERATE OTHER PEOPLE'S REALITIES.
Well. Call me revisionist, but I like to think I TOLERATE SOLIPSISM and EMBRACE OTHER PEOPLE'S REALITIES. By embrace, I don't mean love them, live them or find anything redemptive about them. It's really nothing fancy; I mean "embrace" in the primal way: I like to get real close, put my arms around the thing and squeeze until I find myself making eye contact with the owner.
But if you disagree, write a letter to the editor. Send me another e-mail; Facebook poke me, with excessive force if you so wish. Question my solipsistic lapse into personal pronoun usage 36 times in this column. Pull me aside at the Beanery and share what gives you pause. I promise healthy debate over ice cream and a jumbo bag of malt balls.
Or open up to this page at the same time finals week and flick a lazy eye over all the ink. You don't feel inclined to do much else? Yeah, that's okay too.
Tolerate me.
It's just that I'd prefer the squeeze.
Jane Chong is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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