Jed Pressgrove is a graduate student in sociology. He can be contacted at [email protected].This is my final article for the opinion section of this newspaper.
It was hard to write that sentence. I despise obligatory farewells. But sentimentality overrules my distaste for the clichéd. To write for others to read is a privilege, and leaving this behind is horribly difficult.
While it is quite easy to assume otherwise, this section is not about agreement and disagreement. True, readers may be looking for an argument when reading this section. And perhaps all writers are egotistical and ambitious, hoping to watch their viewpoints sprout and bloom among as many of us as possible. Beneath the arguments, however, are perspectives.
More than anything, you are reading how others perceive certain knowledge in this section. Indeed, we often know the same things. Yet our priorities and interpretations and experiences meld us into very different debaters, seemingly incompatible at times.
Regardless, we must share these differences. We should bathe in them. Understanding is dormant unless you sacrifice your perspectives, unless you bleed at the altar.
When you first understand where another human comes from, it can be frightening and unpleasant. Last year a group of students from Croatia visited Mississippi State University. I became friends with many from this group. On one occasion I ended up at China Garden with three of them. I began asking what their parents did. After hearing from one that his parents were lawyers, I asked the student beside me about her parents. She told me they were both soldiers.
I laughed. For two reasons. This woman had a consistent sarcastic delivery, and her answer struck me as outlandish. I stopped snickering as she smiled and reinforced her answer.
I was devastated and felt devastatingly stupid. I knew her country had experienced war in the 1990s, but I didn’t make the connection. My ignorance was only absent after I saw her excuse it. Notwithstanding that I never saw my parents march as soldiers during my childhood, I better understood war at home and what that really means for people who endure it.
We may casually dismiss or misinterpret information and ultimately not learn much about the human condition. That’s why this opinion section is important. If any viewpoint is misunderstood or simply unknown, the perspective can be conferred to all of us through these columns.
I encourage all readers to respond to the articles in this section. If you don’t, you may find a specific illness in The Reflector. The symptoms will be an out-of-touch staff and blithering experts.
And blithered I have in these pages. Though all I have offered is in some ways just for your consideration, as you continue to find out what all these other people are thinking.