O.K Then, Let’s Switch Seats, And See How You Like It!

“Until you can sit in my seat and see how uncomfortable I am you won’t know how impossible and difficult a request you’re making of me to adjust a little bit further”.

This principle I re-discovered and was reminded of while thinking. So I penned it on paper just yesterday as I sat in my car with 3 of my home boys in the park up Lemon Hill in Philadelphia. We were Chillin looking over the center of the city in my 4-door BMW 3 series X-Drive Turbo Sports Car. It’s really nice and fast! And provides tremendous comforts but not when you have 4 dudes all Chilln in da car simultaneously all in “heaven”. 

Now, one of my guys sitting behind me in the passenger seat kept complaining how I needed to adjust my seat forward because he’s uncomfortable. But I was equally experiencing discomfort, and the front seat had felt and seemed unusually tight. So I made a slight and marginal adjustment so as to get the seat further away from the dashboard and to make it less tight. 

He became respectfully irate and started to say that I had enough space, why would I need anymore and that he is a little taller and needed more space than he already has. Mark you, he’s not much taller at all not even 5 ft 11. Nevertheless I acquiesced and reverted the seat to its original position. 

But then I started thinking. You know I should switch seating positions with him and see how he likes it. So I suggested this to him, “let’s switch seats”? 

He gladly accepted thinking that he’d be much more comfortable; but I knew he would’ve been more uncomfortable than he was with the seat set at the same position or setting I had it.

So we exchanged seats. I came out and he followed getting into the front and I into the back. I was right. Wow! It was like sitting at the front of a plane in first class with the ability to slouch in the seat with room to spare. I liked it. He on the other hand was surprised at his finding and discovery that the front at its set position that I had it was not at all a day in the park or more perfect than his position at the back seat. It was as if he’d “jumped out of the frying pan and landed in fire”. 

In fact, By getting out of his seat to sit in my seat he came to the realization that he was wrong and that his demands were impossible. Moreover, he had much more luxury at the back I found as he only wanted me to adjust so that he could splurge and relax some more. In effect. he wanted me to give up some of my luxuries which he had perceived I had to gain more he’d perceived he didn’t have. 

While sitting at the back for sometime now, I eventually told him he could adjust his seat and bring it a bit further back. He was relieved. But you see how things go, but so goes life.

Some think and assume that the BLM protest for change are misplaced as their demands are unfair and critique misguided. Black lives are not that bad and black lives do matter like any other race they say. In fact they are asking for more and too much some argue. They had Barack Obama, Civil Rights and wealthy stars, what more do they want. In fact we have given up more than enough to their excesses. And now we must defund or reform the police so that we can allow civil unrest and so that they can be free to commit crime. 

In fact some reason that police violence is targeted on white people as much as blacks, and whites are just as uncomfortable with police brutality. 

Until you play black for one day... and then your white privileges go away and suddenly you find yourself at the back of the line; you find yourself “second class citizens” whose positions make you open to all sorts of “violence”. 

For Unless we get out from our comfort zones and put ourselves in their (Blackpeople) (perceived) “comfort zone” we will never understand how incredible and ridiculous our expectations of others are and how uncomfortable their zones really are. until you step into the realities of their lives you will want to be on the side putting down the other man’s discomfort and promoting more efforts to restrict and stifle their position. 

It is by getting up out of ones seat and preconceived notions and set positions and political lens and entering the position of the other with all deliberation of self and intensity of will with all  the suffering and pain that comes with being black in America and the circumstances of violence and deprivation that comes with it will make sense to the other. No matter how many few blacks glorified that you show to rebuff this reality, it is not enough or does not compare with the plethora of the opposite.