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Mistaken Identity – No, I’m not Monica Lewinsky
It is interesting (and somewhat disturbing) to think back at the times in your life when someone mistakes you for something that you are not — (in a Daughters of Saint Paul book store) “Are you a Catholic sister?” — (out with a friend) “So how long have you two been together?” (in a store while shopping) “Can you tell me where the drapes are?” — (yesterday at the gym) “We have daycare for your children” — (on a street corner in Washington, DC) “Monica Lewinsky!?”
What’s interesting is not so much that they asked the question, but how we respond. Do we recoil in horror? play along? wish that it were true?
Moments like this are highly instructive to us because we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of strangers. When we have a strong reaction, it’s important to ask ourselves why. Our reactions often point to some truth or facet of ourselves that we are wrestling with, but like the layers of an onion, we have to pull back the layers to see what’s inside … and we may tear up as we do so! Sometimes the results are just funny (“no, no I am not Monica Lewinsky”) and other times they stay with us like a friend, nudging us toward clarity and insight.
Here’s a few things to do when disturbed or delighted by a mistaken identity:
- Run away in horror.
- Resignedly disregard #1.
- Replay the scene in your mind and see what part stands out the most. Pay attention to how you felt at that moment.
- Ask yourself why you reacted the way you did. Are there any attitudes underlying my reaction that are discriminatory or untrue?
- Is there any truth in what was said? If it was a partial truth, then sift through what fits and what doesn’t.
- Bury that insight until years later when you have to go to therapy.
- Resignedly disregard #6.
- Thank God for using any moment, even an awkward or uncomfortable one, to help you get to better know yourself and how God is moving in your life.
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{ 9 comments }
Hsterical post! Thanks for the Monday morning belly laugh.
Thanks for the Monday-morning chuckle! Now I have to clean the coffee out of my sinuses and the keyboard.
Good Monday post! Several of my colleagues came to investigate why I was laughing. Each one had the same comment “Monica Lewinski!!!” . Although the finer points went missed by these “over the shoulder readers”, my favorite of your suggestions is #8.
It’s all true, folks. It was a dark, misty morning at the intersection of Eastern and Laurel, with me in my black trench coat and a steaming cup of coffee in hand.
Yee-ikes, or how about the times when someone either a) mistakes you for someone older than you are, or b) mistakes you for someone your actual age, shattering your delusion that you look so much younger than you are? This happened to me at the gym, where a twenty-something guy said, “Hey, are you Eileen’s mother?” I could barely restrain my self from shrieking, No, I am not your friend’s mother thank you very much! Definitely nudges one to re-examine that self image and how much we’re attached to it.
Or when you are mistaken for a man. I had just gotten a very short haircut–I used to love that–and I went to a music festival where TWO people called me “sir.” This despite the fact that from the head down I didn’t come close to resembling a man……
Apparently, several people look a lot like me (or vice versa, if you prefer). When asked if I’m so-and-so, or “Gee, you look just like…” I usually say with a laugh, “Hey, it just means that there are lots of good-looking women in this world!” and let it go at that. But one time, I actually met one of these look-alikes, and there was a pretty close resemblance. Worse yet, she had previously had an intimate relationship with a good friend of mine. That really made me step back and go, “Hmmmmmm!” But usually, I just laugh it off. Sr. Julie’s questions might make me think a little deeper next time it happens.
My first response was to chuckle, laugh, too, and then remember. I recalled a time, 8.5 years in the then so-called “Bible Belt” of the Deep South, when I was one of three RC’s in a high school of 400+ students, mostly Protestant, with one Jewish girl, Shirley. She and I were out together once at an inter-school gathering when a girl came up to us and said to me “Hi! You’re Catholic, aren’t you? I want to ask you some questions.” Puzzled, I asked her if she was Catholic, too, and how she knew I was. She said, “Oh no, I’m Baptist, but my cousin who lives in New Orleans is engaged to a Catholic and you look just like her.”
This was the first time something like that had happened in my experience but Shirley said “quite often, for me,” and we wondered together what in our appearances “clued people in.” It made me think and I realized that Joan,the only other Catholic girl in my high school, and I did have some similar physical characteristics. I wonder how much that encounter influenced my decision to go to a Catholic college and learn more about Catholicism with other Catholics.
There is truth in perceptions, both about oneself and re the person or source of the perception. Several years ago, I read a paper in a psychology journal with the title “It Takes Two To Know One,” introducing the theme of more realistic self-perception being dependent upon a close relationship and feedback (solicited or not) from another. Being involved in learning about group dynamics and facilitating growth, learning and therapy in groups, I wrote an extension of his article “It Takes Two–and More–To Know One.” I explored using the JoHari Window, which I had learned about (a four quadrant model of information sources in communication], to assess openness to receiving feedback from self and from others.
Many years later, still learning and teaching these skills, now Influenced strongly by Neo-Jungian writers, especially Jean Shinoda Bolen, I think that incidents such as these encounters are illustrative of Synchronicity, the idea that “nothing happens by chance.” In my perception, that concept dovetails with the spiritual belief in guidance by The Divine. Has anyone else in this discussion yet read a recently-published book, SIN BOLDLY, that takes it a step further and describes significant encounters as being illustrations of what we have named “Grace” and our reception or not thereof? What do you think?
i love this story!
i love jean shinoda-bolen, too. have you ever listened to Giving Birth, Finding Form: Three Writers Explore Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Art? it is wonderful and one of my all-time favorites.