Tolerance is my belaboured point. If you’ve ever heard someone say of another in Trini parlance, “I cyah stand she, nuh. I does only tolerate she,” I wonder, what comes to mind? Or in fact have you ever used those or similar words to describe someone you know or have encountered?
Further, have you ever been guilty of hating someone you possibly never even met but have heard some story or scenario and carry the bad feelings as if it were one of personal injury?
Only recently I had to listen to someone with whom I was travelling espouse such ill feelings about what they “know” of the personal life and choice of a local personality. I took time to enquire if that was based on an encounter they had and was (unsurprisingly) told they had never even met the individual.
What exactly does the term “tolerate” mean or suggest in the former scenario?
Last week’s definition of tolerance read “to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them: to deal with something unpleasant or annoying, or to continue existing despite bad or difficult conditions (dictionary.cambridge.org).
To tolerate according to Miriam-Webster Dictionary “suggests overcoming or successfully controlling an impulse to resist, avoid, or resent something injurious or distasteful,” and stand, as a synonym of tolerate emphasises even more strongly “the ability to bear without discomposure or flinching.”
Generally, we say we cannot “stand” people who are different from us and with whom we have encountered an acute difference of opinion. Or sometimes, for no real reason—what Trinis call “just so”—your “blood does not take a person.” You strike some discordant note and either have not thought of it long enough to make a determination of the real emotions or, again in Trini behaviour, you choose to hide your true feelings behind a nebulous statement.
But what is it we are saying really, when we use some of those expressions to describe our feelings toward people we do not love or like? Is it that we hate them but find it more palatable to use our culturally imprecise language to express our hateful feelings about that person?
I have had those feelings and to a lesser extent they still enter my consciousness but because of my maturity and willingness to change and to embrace everyone as equal, I am more conscious of them and more tempered too, in my response to others. While I am sufficiently gregarious, I am unable to manage and accept every personality that I encounter, yet, I constantly guard my heart with respect to adverse feelings about and towards others.
I am blessed with an extremely forgiving heart and because I do not pretend, I am able to treat with a person or a situation frankly, openly, quickly and austerely and walk away with no lingering feelings of ill will. It is a behaviour I desired from my youth and learned eventually to embrace it as part of my personal ethos in treating with people.
I do not like the baggage of “bad blood.” I simply feel that life’s challenges are already so weighty for me to decide to tote intolerance and hatred towards others along my journey. But my manner of dealing with a situation quickly and moving on “normal, normal” confuses people.
That is especially so because we somehow have learned to hold on to anger, angst, vexation, hatred, and ill will long enough to justify our holding out on forgiveness, tolerance and love even, when we come into conflict with others.
I have already accepted that I would not be liked or loved by everyone. In that vein, I have already decided that I would not labour the point of hanging around hoping that the intolerance I see, know and experience in your conduct towards me would change.
The pretence thing does not work well with me either. I simply cannot do the “pure hate and acting normal.” I would not subject myself to spaces or conversations or communities that wish to exclude me, and especially since I am a vulnerable target for all kinds of prejudices having decided to walk/talk openly about my invisible disability.
My wish though, is still more tolerance from others. Each of us have issues that can cause others to hate us and just “tolerate” us rather than show true tolerance.
But for those who live with mental illnesses and disorders, whose battle with self is even more forceful than any with others, whose own mind rallies against the very peace that the heart creates, whose body resists the effort of our minds, tolerance—the tangible version—is the hope in which we live. We wish that more people would control the impulse to resist, avoid, or resent what they deem injurious or distasteful in us.
—Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications and media practitioner with over 30 years of proficiency. She holds an MA in Mass Communications and is pursuing the MSc in Public Health (MPH) from the UWI. Write to: mindful.tt@gmail.com
