Having chosen a teaching job of sorts, one that capitalizes on language, and taking on freelance writing jobs here and there (positions which, on paper sound fantastic, but both of which I do not disdain), I know, now more than I ever did as a middle class daughter growing up, or as a college student struggling with theory, that nuance defines words with more strength, vigor, and vicissitude than any dictionary can.
My relationship with the word “privilege”, my understanding of it, the way it rolls around in my mind and my tongue everyday, encompasses anything I’d ever learned about what it means to be bound by socio-economic position. Searched anywhere on the Internet from Google to Tumblr to The New Yorker or The Huffington Post, “privilege” will bring you, I can guess, perhaps everything from social commentary to personal rants that shed light to where the deepest, and most accepted forms of racism, have become the norm–all because of “privilege”.
But it is a word that does not deserve quotation marks. Because, as with all else that I have had to digest recently, I learned that words don’t mean anything until you start to see how they apply to you, and as a twenty-something, slowly tittering-on-the-edge of middle class Filipina with five and a half days of work and not enough freelance stints, I can pretty much write, with as much confidence as I can muster, that more than the concept or reality of the word, identifying and living with certain privileges, consist of the following:
- The realization that ambitions are not a matter of simply go-getting then putting them up on your CV as fast as you can. But, more importantly, ambition and non-negotiables are entirely different. What we strive to achieve, how these goals are inherently related to what those closest to us expect of us, are not always necessary for survival. But what I need to keep breathing, after a grueling day at work, what I keep for myself, away from people’s eyes–and yes, to a great extent, the glare of the computer–is too private, too sensitive, to even keep in the same compartment as ambition.
- The bitter disappointment at the disparity between what you tell yourself are necessities (the once-in-a-while splurge, the occasional lipstick, that one special book), and their de facto relationship to the system of mass production, the pressure to take photos and upload them, which often we bring unto ourselves as often as we simply want to share our happiness, with no clear delineation between.
- The all too real question and subsequent, hard-hitting [self-]criticism that the abundance of sharing news and information on social networking sites too, is marred not just with the typical dangers of accessibility or audience gullibility, but also with the fact and stink of the bandwagon, of the startling but true need to prove oneself capable, sympathetic, involved.
And the question arises: when the need to prove yourself to an online audience tips the scale, where, then, do you find your Self?
- The confusing haze of the price of education–yours and those of others, and what it means when credentials require that very thing you cannot wash from yourself (I, having gone to particular schools, even with the struggle that most students of the same institution did or do not have to deal with–and to think! That there are those who did and do suffer much more), that privilege which paints you but which also reminds you:
These are the opportunities you have been born into, and they are windows of opportunities as well as a sealed room with no doors, shut-in windows, smooth ceilings, reminding you precisely of the privileges you are not allowed to enjoy.
- And that communication with people, too, is powered by privilege, not merely of having the economic means, but the ability to step out from that very privilege, and reach out to those who have been silent, because they long to be treasured, cared for, and told, that they are worth the identification and consequent stepping out from one’s own privilege so that the floodgates may open and the words that are found may say:
How are you?
Writing Like a Hell Kitten 