Tolerance

We can be tolerant of those we see as other: those from a different family, a different culture, a different race, etc.

The exotic is comprehensible: we understand when we go to a country we've barely heard of that they will be very different. We may even be charmed by the difference. At the very least we will be relatively tolerant of it.

We reserve our greatest resentment for those who are somehow like us, or of us, but whose differences - maybe quite minimal differences - mark them out as deviant, deficient and undesirable.

Parents may say, "He's no son of mine!" Partners may say, "You're not the person I married!" Of those further from our hearts (or our egos) we may say, "She's not REALLY _____ (fill the blank)." Not really a local, not really a member, not really one of the 'in' crowd, not really in the know, not really a countryman, not really "one of us"

We tolerate an obvious foreigner, but don't extend the same tolerance to naturalised migrants. We endure the vagaries of our new work colleagues with polite complaisance, but those of our housemates through gritted teeth, with no attempt to hide the effort of keeping patience.

We have more tolerance for misbehaviour in people we don't know and don't care about, than in our own families and housemates.

Yet we hate it when our nearest and dearest are intolerant of us.

This is post 6 of 365 posts in 365 days.
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