When I was 18-19 and working on the sawmill logend a new guy got a job with us. He was tall, big build, black and walked around looking mean and arrogant. I didn’t like what I saw and I didn’t like the idea of working with him. He looked like nothing but trouble.
I tried to avoid him as the weeks went by. Foolishly I had made my own view of his character. Previously I had many Maori and Islander friends, I just didn’t like the way that this guy looked and acted.
One day I walked into one of our huts and Torrance was sitting there having a smoke, he looked at me and gave me the tough nod to acknowledge I was there. There was no way I could get out of the hut without looking foolish. And for some crazy reason my first words to him were, “Why do you act so tough?”
He looked at me for a few seconds and then bursts into laughter, and he laughed and laughed. I stood there dumbfounded, not sure what to say cause he wasn’t acting mean and tough, he was laughing wholeheartedly. This was the opposite of the image of the character I thought he had.
He said in reply, “Because that is what is expected of me because of my race.” I sat down and lit a smoke and he went on to explain that it was what “they did” and he also said that he didn’t like it, but he did it because “all the bros did it”, and that it was expected of him.
We became good friends. I was this short white guy with glasses and Torrance was this tall black hood looking type. But in reality he was a really nice guy, he was just putting on a show that was expected of him by society.
We spent many years talking about our lives, many heart to heart conversations, growing up, peer pressure, the hard times, and what we had personally experienced. He taught me a lot. But I learned a lot about myself from knowing him too. I also learned a lot about upbringing in modern times from the point of view of another race/family, and pressure from the bros etc to perform and be tough.
The thing is that in life we get pressured by others to be something that we really don’t want to be. We act how we don’t want to act. People assume that we are something that we are not by our clothing, how we carry ourselves, education, culture etc.
It truly takes courage to stand alone and be who you want to be. But it is really worth it. It is good for the soul and by being real we can make life choices that suit our true character and not the image that others want us to show the world.
We cannot be really soulfully happy by living life as people pressure tries to make us live. We have got to be ourselves, it’s the only way.
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All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
Monday, 23 May 2016, 10:35:57 AM.