hey Frances – I definitely feel it’s important to embrace others’ marginality (I actually think I meant that I embrace mine as a way to remain cognizant of others’ marginality, even while recognizing that each of us is marginalized in a different way). For me, it’s essential to go beyond “tolerating presence” as you said. And this is hard, because the more different a person is from each of us, the more different their language, culture, behavior, the more difficult it is to listen with an open heart and understand them on their OWN terms rather than ours… it takes patience and self-questioning and I don’t even think I’m good at it. But I try. I just see people who are most privileged need to try harder. They often read a post like this one and not realize it is about THEM. They think it is about someone ELSE (I’m not talking about you, Frances).

btw – I don’t understand the spoon/treacle metaphor as I don’t know what treacle is. I looked it up. Is it a very viscous liquid and thus you mean it would face resistance?