Been There,Done That

Okay, it was pretentious and condescending of me. She had been through the trauma of homelessness personally, and I tried to make it seem as though I knew what it was like. After all, I have a career full of work with that population, establishing shelters and drop-in centers, providing free counseling, leading a low-income advocacy group. No, I  have never been personally homeless, but...
She caught me up right away. If you have never been through something like that, don't think you know what it is like! Which is a more and more common point of view: don't assume you know what my life is like! Don't use your perspective as a lens to examine my experience!
And, as is usually true with absolutes, it's right, and it's wrong.
It is true that most realities are not transferable. A white person cannot really know (however well-meaning) what it is like to be a person of color. A straight person ends up projecting his or her own sexual anxieties and fantasies onto the LBGT community. And the American who has vacationed in another land can only have surface understanding of the ethnic, national and historical reality of that land.
But if we were to take this to the logical extreme, no one would have anything in common with anyone else. The doctor would be unable to diagnose or treat any medical problem not personally experienced. The actor would be unable to play any role but him or herself. Laws could not be passed, much less enforced, because the legislators cannot know our personal code of right and wrong.
At its most benign, this ends up being a form of tribalism, a drawing of boundaries to exclude all those we hate or fear. In Vermont, for example, the only residents considered "true" Vermonters not only had to have been born in Vermont; one's ancestors must have as well! In a more insidious example, Nazi Germany ruled that a Jew was anyone who had a drop of Jewish blood in his or her ancestry.
In a day when we strive for a balance between diversity and commonality, it is essential that we begin from a common place, a place where we all are of equal value, a place where difference does not mean division, a place where unity does mean uniformity. You may never really know my experience, nor I yours. But see that as an opportunity to share rather than an obstacle