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July 8, 1997 8:56AM EST I have a lot on my mind today. Partially because of recurring dreams I have been having, one in which I am a nurse in World War II helping to hide a resistance fighter from the Nazis. And because of some of the movies we have watched recently. My dream is strange, because although I know that I am the nurse, she is and is not me. I feel myself thinking and acting, but I also see it all like a movie. All of the people in the dream are people that I knew or know now, but are in roles that are not the ones they have in the present. The resistance fighter is a childhood friend of mine, the doctor that I work with in the dream, I recognize but haven't remembered enough to connect with someone. It's quite freaky in a disconnected sort of way. This weekend we watched Michael Collins and Get on the Bus. The first is about the beginnings of the Irish Republican Army, and the fight to free Ireland from Britain in the 'teens and twenties and Michael Collins' role in that conflict. This movie hit close to home because my great-grandfather was involved in some of the earlier parts of the movement, before the formation of the Sinn Fein and the IRA. The movie shows the violence which rocked the country, then, and which continues to plague Northern Ireland now. I kept finding myself being glad that my ancestor left Ireland before the conflict exploded. Though I still wonder what exactly it is that he did that forced him to flee Ireland in the 1880's. The tragedy of this part of Irish history struck me again and left me sitting in silence with an ineffable feeling of sadness about it all. Get on the Bus is about a group of men on their way to the Million Man March on Washington. It brings out all sorts of questions about racism and the position of black men in American society. This is the kind of film that winds up making me focus back on my own attitudes and makes me think again about how to counteract my own ingrained reactions and assumptions. I wasn't brought up as a racist, but our current society still allows certain assumptions to be made, which ought not to be. I can only try to modify my own behavior as best I can so that I can raise children who have even fewer assumptions than I do, and eventually help to wipe out the kind of subtle discrimination which still poisons modern America. The movie also brought home the fact that I know nothing and am completely clueless about the struggle of people who are not white/upper-middle class suburbanites. My own sheltered upper-middle class, white Anglo-Saxon upbringing has nothing in it to give me that kind of understanding. All I can do is read and watch and glimpse from afar and hope to treat everyone with the same standard of fairness. I have many friends of all colors and creeds. But sometimes I wonder if some of them see me as an outsider, someone they can't fully bond with because our backgrounds are so different. I was brought up in 3 different countries. My childhood was spread across two continents. This put me in a more flexible frame of mind as I had to adapt to making new friends in different places and getting along with people who did not share my background. An Indian friend of mine recently pointed out that all of her friends and most of mine, are people who are of more than one world. She was born in Britain, holds a British passport, but is also a citizen of India. She was partially educated in the United States. She has pieces of all these countries in her, and is constantly trying to reconcile them with the life-path she has chosen for herself. Because we are of more than one world, we are perhaps, more able to be tolerant of differences. I just can't help wondering how people who have not had this type of experience manage to open their minds to differences. I wonder how this country can heal its wounds without having that kind of open-mindedness. And I fear being held back by my own assumptions. |