Marriage, Family, and Mushrooms

Cubby-hole away, if that's what you like to do. I am not aware of my alignment with any social entity in American culture. I am still cubby-holed by people who only see the externals of my existential self. One woman gave me a Hanukkah card every year for a decade, simply because my last name sounds Jewish (it could as well be Islamic). I realize that if it 'walks like a duck, and talks like a duck,' but I don't sound culturally Jewish, nor do I take off from work on High Holy Days. Not strongly identified culturally there. The culture may identify with deeper values like ethics or education, but these are not Jewish qualities, they are deeper.

We all are born into a mother-culture, and many people who do not wave stars and stripes at every opportunity, or claim to be true Americans by virtue of their family history, Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, do identify strongly with their ethnicity. It is Very evident in Miami-Dade County where Hispanics outnumber everyone (especially Cubans), followed by Caribbean peoples (mostly Haitians), and White Americans at 11%. Within the 11% are Eastern European Jews, some aging WASPs, a few Italians, Polish, etc.. Most people identify with their cultural-ethnic-religious makeup. They often believe that the foods they prefer, the church they attend, the politics they support, are core values. I disagree with them. I don't think most people have any idea what lies deeper and deeper - below their ego-defenses, below their psychodynamics (most of which are still unconscious, unresolved childhood traumas), way below their conscious attitudes imposed by their parents, ethnicity, cultural programming.

Now, as I said, and as you generalize - other people want to cubby-hole me in categories of their own design, but my social isolation is evident that I neither align myself locally with others, nor they with me, because there are insufficient points of overlap to form the social entity called friendship between us. It is insufficient to create social bonds with others based on negatives, like I'm not violent, malicious, insulting, or dishonest. I might therefore be perceived as safe, and maybe a nice guy. OK, I'm a nice guy. So what? What do you want to talk about? What do you want to do together? Right now, I'm into communicating. It's a 5th chakra quality. I like to come from my 5th chakra - meaningful communication, not cell-phone chatter. This is one of my defining characteristics, so technically, I am aligned with others who like to do the same. Do we not say we like someone when we realize that we are like someone?

BTW, you have only mentioned negatives in your self-definition - what you withdraw from behaviorally. You have not mentioned a single thing that you stand for, that represents the constellation of related values that defines your core as an individual. As the caterpillar asked Alice, "Who are you?" Rhetorical question here. I'm more interested in people asking the question, and responding with their character, than reading/hearing anyone's answer.

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