I’m pleased to present this beautiful and moving post, written by my friend, Carlene Larsson, about how we can over-value My Diversity and under-value others’. After reading How a Feminist Fell in Love with the Old Boys Club, Carlene was inspired to write her own story about falling in love with that same old boys club.
It is love that enables us to grow through, and from, our differences.
My Diversity…or Theirs
I started by loving my difference, my diversity. “They” were into sports, played college football and were now “jocks at heart” who told stories, laughed a lot, drank a lot, and loved insulting each other. I was more sober (in all of its meaning), loved ideas and theater, and believed in deep conversations about “things that matter.” Sports didn’t matter. Revelry and ribaldry did not a relationship make.
My Diversity…and Theirs
And then, the further we all got from their days on the gridiron, I began loving them…individually. This one for his thoughtfulness and love of the woods, that one for his still water that ran deep, the other for his infectious joyful nature. And so it went, one by one.
And then I married one of “them”. And had a son who became “an athlete” and adopted another son who was already “an athlete”. And I began to appreciate what they experienced by playing on a team—the loyalty, the resilience, the perseverance, the support offered and taken—the simplicity and the complexity of the life lessons they learned through their togetherness in pursuit of a yard, a touchdown, a win. I never grew to appreciate the sport itself, but became open to the beauty of its underlying values.
My Diversity…with Theirs
And then, much later, I began to see the whole. To see the stories and the laughter as a tender intimacy. To understand that these men loved each other to a depth and a breadth that I recognized as familiar. To regard their experience as teammates as having a, dare I say, spiritual dimension. And then I went to the luncheon where they spoke about their honored teammate…and to a one, they choked up with emotion. Openly. Unabashedly. And I knew I was witness to something ineffably special. Love.
And when my husband got sick with cancer, I was no longer outside looking in, I was surrounded. They visited, they called…not occasionally, but all the time. I emailed, they responded. Not just a few stalwarts, but scores of them. I leaned on them and they held me up. They made him laugh and that laughter healed us both.
Now that he has died, they check in…gently, with true concern. And I know they miss him badly, too. I trust they knew him deeply and loved him deeply. And now it turns out that they are one of my strongest connections to him—they truly get what I have lost.
And so, now I fear my difference. I know I am not part of their team. Their stories are not my stories. I do not share their easy laughter, their loving insults. But for over 40 years I have known them through him and I have come to love them and love being surrounded by this thing that they share. And I am afraid of losing that connection to something that I now know is rare and pure…men who love each other fully and openly in the true meaning of heartfelt.
I must trust them, like he did. He was our bond and my guide. Now I may need to return to loving them individually, while remembering the whole that I was blessed to see through his eyes.
I started by loving my difference. They showed me how to love theirs, too.