Disrupting Narratives: We Are All Number One

I chatted with a friend a while ago who had recently moved abroad and was struggling to settle into her new surroundings. She talked about the disorientation she experienced - both in the physical environment, and a more interior confusion. She described in a rather amusing way her efforts to blend in with colleagues in her new workplace who came from different cultures and walks of life than she did (who loved eating fried chicken feet and talking about the birth weights of babies, both of which she was not familiar with!). She ended off saying with a sigh, "I'm not as good as I thought in communicating with different sorts of people."

I was actually quite amazed by her account - by her efforts to 'insert' herself into an entirely different social, economic and cultural environment - and told her that. Actually, I don't know too many people who would have such openness and courage to go outside their comfort zones like that.

On another level, her sharing touched me by reminding me of my own experiences of dislocation. After my first six months of living in the Philippines in 2014, I went back to Singapore for a visit and remember telling a friend how painful the process of settling in had been for me - and still was. She was obviously sympathetic, but also asked with a puzzled look, "But why do you think it was so hard?"

I didn't really have an answer then. Now, understanding the process a little more, I would say it is because really 'inserting' yourself in a new place involves disrupting your narratives about who you are, and what gives value to your life and that of other people. I didn't realise - before I lost them - how much my sense of self-worth depended on having a ‘respectable’ profession; being good at what I did and recognised for it; or having an interesting social life. Losing these 'anchors' by which I had grounded myself forced me further along the path of learning that I am valued now for what I do but for who I am.

Disrupting narratives about myself also made me question my hidden assumptions and prejudices about other people. If you had asked me before, I would have told you what I truly thought I believed: that everyone is equal in dignity and worthy of love. The unfortunate reality, I realised, is that growing up in any society where inequality is a fact of life gives one certain (often unacknowledged) assumptions about what activities and ways of life are more respectable than others, and therefore about which persons are more valued than others.

This prejudice can be quite insidious. Even where one is concerned about people "less privileged" than oneself and have the desire to "help" them, seeing "them" as objects of compassion from a position of superiority is a far cry from recognising that "they" are people like me with inner and outer realities as rich and complex as my own.

I still remember the first time my eyes were opened to this. It was my last year of university. I had just written a 14,000-word research paper on the situation of foreign domestic workers ("FDWs") in Singapore. Foreign domestic workers in Singapore are afforded fewer protections than many other classes of workers in Singapore, so I advocated legal and other strategies to realise their rights as workers. Then, one day, I found myself in a classroom at Aidha, an NGO dedicated to empowering lower-income women through entrepreneuship education. In this room with me were about 14 women – foreign domestic workers - from a variety of countries. They were talking about their hopes and dreams, families, why they had left their homes. Their sharing cut straight to my heart. Suddenly, I felt that I was really seeing them for the first time. That I was suddenly looking behind the label "FDW" and realising that there stood a person with hopes and dreams and loves and sufferings, just like me.

That experience was a turning point for me. Drawn by it, I ended up volunteering and then working at Aidha, in which time I was privileged to get to know and work with many foreign domestic workers, whom I now could see were so much more than that label. They had strengths and weaknesses, different personalities. Some I liked, some I didn't. They became for me colleagues, students, friends, teachers.

Now that I have lived in the Philippines and Indonesia - places where many workers in Singapore come from - I also have a much richer understanding of and respect for their lives, cultures and societies. I've played with and tutored their children, visited their families, worked and lived with those who have once been "FDWs", and talked to those I know as teachers and young professionals about their plans to work overseas.

All this makes me aware of the dangers of labeling, of seeing people in a one-dimensional way based on their status or occupation or need. That might be true about them at this particular moment in time -- but so is much more!

It is a constant challenge for me - and perhaps always will be - to be open to question the assumptions I have about myself and others, the narratives I have about what is of value in the world. It is a humbling experience to discover my own prejudices. Hopefully, though, each day will bring me closer to truly believing that we are all valued because of who we are: each carrying within us the divine spark. As this wonderful cartoon below shows so touchingly: that we are all number one in our dignity as human persons!

Source: Caritas Australia

Food for Thought:

How open am I to interacting with people who are outside my own immediate social circle; who are of a different gender, social class, ethnic group, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation…?

What are the “narratives” about value that my society assumes? How might they need to be “disrupted”? For readers in Singapore, This is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo Yeo Yenn is a thought-provoking read on this topic.