Imagining the Other

In all obvious ways, I am not an outsider. I am not isolated from the majority by dint of my sexual orientation, skin color, class, religion, disability, or appearance — all the notable and painful ways one can become marginalized.

Yet, when thought about more broadly, we are all covered in a sheath of difference that is sometimes visible, sometimes not. Even in a world where one feels mostly accepted, we can at times feel alone and excluded, removed from others whose lives we perceive as more whole, more fulfilling, better. When viewed through such a prism, outsiderness is an inevitable condition of being human and is intrinsic to us all.

More difficult to accept are the ways we do the excluding, the way the other becomes stained with our unwanted parts.

I remember vividly one such moment: I had just given birth to our second daughter. My husband and I were watching the news, and there was a report on a nearby tragedy: a couple, both doctors, had lost their two young children when the ice broke while they were skating. Hearing this story, I gasped, gripped by the horror of losing both children. This could be us, I thought. In that moment, the unimaginable was imagined. Then, a photo, taken months earlier, of that beautiful, intact family appeared on the screen, and I was relieved. Their skin was darker than mine. We were safe: This could not happen to us.

By erecting a barrier (us — them), I had magically separated myself from the possibility of this tragedy. They were different than me — we were safe. Freud referred to this maneuver as the “narcissism of minor differences.” While Freud understood it as a need to project one's aggressive impulses onto an enemy (them), I saw my reaction as self-preserving, which allowed me to feel detached and, therefore, protected. Or possibly, it was driven by an even more fundamental, urgent need — an instinctive imperative for survival.

This leaves me thinking about the so