Space ... what is it to you?

Blog94:

     What is a cultural mindset that you protect? 

     In my growing up years in the Philippines I could not remember what I might have protected, but having spent half of my older growing years in the Carolinas, I have become aware that space … personal space, that is, is what I dearly guard.   I cringe when someone imposes her or his presence within two feet next or close to me.  My mind panics especially, when a stranger or a familiar person, whose presence I can’t tolerate, intrudes my space bubble. 

     What makes a person behave this way?

     I don’t know exactly, but in my experiences, two life incidents and a theory come to mind. One or all three might have brought such reaction. 

     I remember being vividly hugged by new relatives, then total strangers to me, when I arrived in the USA via the Roanoke Regional Airport in 1982.  I was met by hugs … very tight ones, by people whom I yet did not know.  My mind and body shrieked, “Who are you, and what are you folks doing to me?  Let me breathe,” I uttered bitterly in silence.  I recall the feeling of being suffocated even though I observed that this “hugging customary practice” is nothing more than an endearment.  The repulsion I felt might have been the result also of not having that experience in my youth.  Filipinos greeted with smiles of excitement, followed by a hand reach brought to another person’s forehead when meeting an adult, and a simple universal handshake or a head nod when greeting peers. Bringing bodies close to one another so that smells get mixed up in the emotions of the moment was not popularly entered upon in Filipino culture unless people were intimately close.  The body hug was totally foreign an experience.  It was my first ‘cultural shock’ of sort!

     Violating personal space, getting so very close to someone’s face, seems to me to be an insolent, offensive, and discourteous approach.  It is a threatening demeanor.  It is antagonistic and terrorizing.  A girl in my third grade class of the past came surging one afternoon at the playground.  She called me unkind names and began criticizing my hair and my dress.  I could see her menacing face, and hear her very unkind words until now.  I remember feeling so very hurt and self-conscious for quite a time after that.  What I regret about it was not having stood up to her.  I was sure then, as I am now, that she thought she had the upper hand, some kind of clout, being the daughter of one of the teachers at the school we attended.  Perhaps, that incident impacted keenly my young impressionable mind.  It made me become aware for the first time that there are, in our personal and wider worlds, people young and old, who find bullying gratifying.  Since then, I never ever gave anyone permission to get close to my personal space unless I was sure I will not get hurt.

     To many North Americans, personal space is holy.  S/He is usually discomforted, angered and made to feel anxious when it is penetrated.  Wikipedia references personal space as somebody's realm which is psychologically his or hers.  It is thus, private.  Permission to enter it by virtue of familiarity and intimacy could only be given.  Wikipedia informs further, “The notion of personal space was introduced by Edward T. Hall, who created the concept of proxemics.  In his book, The Hidden Dimension (1966), he describes the subjective dimensions that surround each person and the physical distances they try to keep from other people, according to subtle cultural rules.”

      For all it is worth our while to think through the concept of space, it is a reminder that our personal and universal connections with one another warrants respect.  Impinging on another’s sensibilities is just downright unforgiveable.  Regard for the privacy of our thought and our physicality is an inescapable ideal we should all value.