Cultural translation, part 375

[mrissa]

This is in response to a locked post a friend made about how hard it can be to talk about things when you’re doing badly, without minimizing or feeling like you’re whining. I wrote most of the post and then realized that people might think I was being subtle about myself instead of reacting to a friend. But: locked post, cannot link. Sorry.

Some years ago, a friend of mine lost her partner (also a friend of mine). In addition to his death–as if that wouldn’t have been enough–my friend also lost her voice for quite some time, and there was an incident with a falling piano, and…yeah. It was not a good scene for my friend. Everyone who knew her knew of the string of bad things, but those of us in town had more opportunity to actually spend time with her.

Then I went to World Fantasy, and I ran into some people I know by name but do not know well. They were friends with my friend. And when I mentioned her name, they immediately said, “Oh yes, how is [friend]?” And I said, very firmly, “She’s doing just great.” They reared back and stared at me as though I had grown a second head. Doing great?, they asked incredulously. I, in turn, stared at them as though they had grown additional heads and said, “I don’t know how much better anyone could expect her to do under the circumstances!” Well, no, they agreed. Under the circumstances. Really one could not. But we sort of looked at each other funny for the rest of the conversation.

And it is hard to find the balance between informing people of bad stuff that’s going on and feeling like you’re whining. It really is. But this is also complicated by the fact that friends and other people of goodwill can’t rely on coming from the same cultural perspective on this. Even when one is speaking on behalf of someone else and not worrying about whining–and Lord knows if anyone had earned a whine that fall it would have been my friend–what message is conveyed by what level of response is highly, highly culturally determined. I would have felt disloyal if I’d said something that, in retrospect, was more like they seemed to expect, more along the lines of, “Poor dear, with all she’s been through it’s a wonder she can put one foot in front of the other to get from bed to bathroom.” It was a wonder. But she was doing it, and I didn’t want to give the impression that she was not. They already knew the practical details–I knew this was not a situation where I was going to be called upon to say, “Oh, had you not heard the terrible news?”

And I think one of the major cultural obstacles to overcome in achieving actual communication is how much people are expected to state the emotionally obvious. Sometimes it’s a relief to turn to someone and say, “I’m really sad right now,” or, “This has been very stressful for me.” But sometimes it’s also a great relief not to have to. Sometimes it’s a very great relief for the person or people you’re with to think, “Hmm, gee, Friend’s partner died, maybe Friend is REALLY SAD, I’ll do something nice,” without having to spell out every moment: “Still sad. Yep, still devastated. Life still in chaos due to very sad thing, yep yep.”

Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes that’s just how it works out. But wow, is it another layer of difficult just when people don’t need more difficult. And it’s a thing to keep an eye out for a) when writing people from different cultures and b) in trying to be compassionate in, y’know, real life.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[genarti]

There's also the matter of ingrained social scripts. Especially because I work a job that involves a certain amount of cheerful customer service mode, there've been times (especially at work) where I might genuinely be fine with a little more emotional openness of the "Well, it's been a hard week, but I'm generally doing okay" sort... but a cheery "Just fine, thanks, how about you?" with a bright smile has slipped its way out on autopilot before other answers have a chance to put their boots on. More for oneself than for discussing other people, I think.

But yes, absolutely, about cultural context. For me in the situation you mention I think my answer would be something like "She's doing all right," with a little grimace of poor thing, she's coping fantastically but it sucks so much that she's had to, but it'd depend a lot on my perception of the other person's pride and/or privacy vs desire to have other people spread updates so they didn't have to, etc. Which is often a certain amount of guesswork, both for personality and for cultural assumptions, unless the person has done the up-front work of thinking through and spelling out exactly how they would prefer friends to handle inquiries. (Which is absolutely work, and often at a time when someone doesn't have the spare emotional energy for it.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I totally agree about the ingrained social scripts. Sometimes my mouth treats "finehowareyou" as all one word while my brain is still processing, no, wait, this was not the social noise, this was the actual question.