The idea of borders, like race and ethnicity, is merely a human construction that concocts the illusion of safety, a territorial expression, the demarcation of boundaries to distinguish between insiders and outsiders. - M. Thomashow
Every single time I hear any being confined into a narrow category of convenience, I go back 35 years in time.
I go back to my childhood.
I go back to my personal story divided between being Italian and being Iranian. As if that was all there was. As if that was the convenient definition of me.
I go back to the time when my grandmother a woman who adored me endlessly and unconsciously separated good from bad, us from them.
I go back to the time when other kids asked if I felt more Iranian or Italian.
I go back to people’s reaction when they see me and when they hear my name.
I go back to the first time I had to tick the box "other" in an official document.
I go back to every single time I am asked where I am from and I do not want to answer because I do not have an answer and because I already know what I am going to be asked next...
I go back to million of triggers that demanded my commitment to never label anyone... that demanded me to name myself for myself and create a language to do that in the process.
Otherness is the indelible remainder of my own existence and, the endless list of requests to choose a side and never being able to pick anything else than Other.
How could I choose the right side if all were WRONG?
How could I choose one side without making wrong another side of me?
How could I…
Asked to conform to a narrative I have not written.
Asked to comply to a grammar that does not make sense to how I sense other.
Asked to use a label I do not belong to.
The only escape from the convenience of labels was becoming invisible.
I vanished, the labels remained.
But anger came, rebellion asked, heART created a life to peel every label off. A life committed to never (ever) label anyone just because it was convenient to me. A life committed to un-label myself and apprehend a new language, a new grammar that could free me, and others too. A life committed to the inconvenience of Other.
These borders, maps of countries, concept of race and ethnicity, are convenient to us. As I said when I was 9 years old to a group of kids pushing me to choose between nationalities: "I don't believe neither defines me. I do not believe in borders. I do not believe in logistics for souls. Those are tricks to distribute power and goods."
I do not feel any sense of patriotism and I think that's what reinforces exclusion and forms of discrimination (just to name the least). Patriot is late 16th century: from French patriote, from late Latin patriota ‘fellow countryman’, from Greek patriōtēs, from patrios ‘of one's fathers’, from patris ‘fatherland’. I do not believe in a patriarchal fatherland. I want to be part and belong to a motherland. Our planet. Our humanity. Our beings.
We have become a society that labels people in greater and greater details. We know each other's personality types, leadership styles, syndromes...We are quick to assign people to a box and then dismiss them as a category, no longer humans. We do it to ourselves too.
My personal motto is: "there is no way to inclusion, inclusion is the way". A path of becoming whole and creating the conditions that my privilege brings for others too.
We, all of us, may have different answers to what this means and what it requires. However, when we refuse to engage with the questions, we are culpable not only of cowardice but of complicity.
Now my question to all of you and especially to those working in the field of Policy Making and Diversity&Inclusion:
How can we dismantle that complicity and transmute it into courage?
How can we listen to the voices of those who have been silenced without categorising them?
How can we see each other as a continuum of all our stories weaved together?
How can we use our privilege to undo privilege?
We profess freedom, independence, liberation and actually imprison ourselves in fragmented categories.
Fill in the gaps of diversity.
Find one world, one humanity, that needs to be rescued from separation and ideology.
It is a quest into the unknown and for the unknowing of labels.
My invitation to you today is to take the simplest of actions you can to peel off one of the labels of convenience.
I leave you with a poetic inspiration from The Whisper poem Un-Labelling
First we receive labels
Then we spend life trying to peel them off
Labels so thick they become the dress we sport
Labels blinding the scene
For fear of seeing and being seen
Not perfect and enough
Labels with a bloody barcode
To go through our own scanner
Vampirizing the passion
Vampirizing life
The heart seeking to be loved
In the silence of solitude
The eloquence of the Whisper creating a mantra
Creating a sound
Let go of the armor of control
If you’re interested in learning more about RNEWB services and would like to discuss any consultancy, workshops, and talks, drop us a line at fateme@rnewb.com.
Consider also subscribing to the newsletter to stay updated and receive weekly inspiration on more heART for a more Human Business.