Sunday, December 9, 2007

Self Image

I studied Taiji for several years with a couple of black teachers. The other students were almost entirely dark skinned: mostly African-American, with some Africans, Filipinos, and Indians thrown in. I'm Caucasian, and paler than the average Caucasian.

I came home from a Taiji class one night, looked in the mirror, and was struck by how sick I looked. I immediately started checking different parts of my body for signs of illness. Stomach? No nausea. Joints? No aches. Head? No headache or dizziness. After a couple of minutes I realized that I was fine and the image in the mirror was my normal pale self. I had gotten so used to brown faces that my own face seemed ghastly.

It only took two hours of being different for me to start reacting to myself in negative ways.

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