Helping others understand..

[auburnAubrey]

I just shared this with someone, and I'll share it here as well.  As we know, one of the problems with humans "accepting" something is their all encompassing need to "understand" it.  And most people do not / cannot / will not understand.  I would imagine that if roles were reversed, I would accept, but may not understand.  So I've been using a little story that seems to have people awaken a little bit, and have that light bulb go off in their heads.  If you like it, feel free to use it!  Here it is:

Let's say that you wake up tomorrow, and you are a rat.  You see yourself in the mirror, and you see that you are indeed a rat, yet you are totally aware that yesterday you were human.  You are totally aware of your past, and you have all your memories of being human in tact.  How would you feel?  Can you imagine the anxiety of being something you know you're not?  What would you do to become "human"?  And if you couldn't become "human", how do you think it would affect you, knowing that you are not what you know you are?  Could you just "be" a rat?  Or would you always long to be human again?  Of course, you cannot speak, so you can't even tell anyone that you are a "human trapped in a rat's body".  How do you think this would affect you?

It's a simple analogy, but it takes people out of the idea of "gender", and puts the idea on not being what you know you are.  Out of the many ways I have tried to help people understand, this little story seems to be the most effective.  even if they don't really "understand", they always seem to tell me that they "get it".

Does anyone else have a little story that helps people understand a little better?

[lecoeurdegrey]

I use a similar analogy but with my friends it just comes down to does this make me happy? And of course I answer yes and my friends just accept it and move on.

[Sephirah]

I tend not to do that at all, to be honest. One thing I've learned is that, as the saying goes, you can explain something to someone but you can't understand it for them.

I'm open to questions, which I try to answer as truthfully as I can. The rest is up to them. All the analogies in the world don't substitute for the reality of the situation and that is something which can't really be explained in great enough detail, or with the clumsiness of language and words, to allow someone else to experience it too. You can ask someone to place themselves in a hypothetical situation and ask what they'd do if this or that happened to them. But I've found that often that leads to questions that bog you down in details and totally miss the point.

"What kind of rat?"

"Am I in a maze?"

"It would be cool to be a rat. I'd go give someone the plague!"

"Hey, do rats like cheese or is that only mice?"

And so on.

If people say to me that they don't understand, I usually just tell them that I don't expect them to understand, without being in the same situation themselves, all I hope for is that they can accept I do understand.