Why I Think We’re All Snowflakes (Some of us just don’t realize it.)
My husband’s taking a couple online classes. So, people pretty much gather twice a week in our living room on his computer screen. Because I can’t help it (not because I’m a nerd), I “overhear” things sometimes. The other night, the conversation got a little controversial resulting in a white student using the term “snowflake.” Ironically, when people didn’t agree with her, she got more than a little upset and excused herself from class. I rolled my eyes—out of sight, of course. I think she eventually came back, but she definitely melted for a while.
A few days later, I was reading a book and ran across a passage about Wilson Bentley—the actual guy who, in 1885, discovered that “no two snowflakes are alike.” Without any modern equipment, he painstakingly photographed more than 5000 crystals of snow and published lots of them in scientific journals. But this is the part that stood out to me….
“What amazed Bentley was the realization that each snowflake bore the scars of its journey. He discovered that each crystal is affected by the temperature of the sky, the altitude of the cloud from which it fell, the trajectory the wind took it as it fell to earth, and a thousand other factors.” (A Thousand Miles in a Million Years, Donald Miller)
Each snowflake “bore the scars of its journey.” Wait a minute. That sounds like us. We are all shaped by our unique conditions and experiences—by the foods we ate or didn’t, the stories we grew up hearing, the love we knew or lacked, the privileges we inherited or not, and a thousand other factors. We bear the scars of our journey.
The thing is, some of us are born into environments highly conducive to snow, in places where we aren’t likely to melt, places where it’s pretty easy to hold it together, places where we are in the majority. And we tend to look out from those comfortable, easy places and wonder (make assumptions about?) why those “other” snowflakes seem so fragile and sensitive. Why can’t they just “chill?”
Truth is, we all have a melting point. And sadly, I think for those of us who happened to be born into the majority, it seems we start thawing at much lower than 32 degrees. Let’s face it. Historically, we’ve had it pretty easy, and I believe that lingers in our makeup. I read once that, “a way of knowing becomes more complex when it is able to look at what before it could only look through.” I think we become conditioned to seeing the world through our own experiences. Some snowflakes I know have withstood much harsher and hotter conditions than I ever have or most likely even could. Some snowflakes have truly been oppressed.
I think those of us who are used to being securely inside a big snow drift, where most other snowflakes see from our vantage point, begin to feel a little heated simply by being disagreed with. We’re not used to it. We feel kind of threatened. We relate disagreement to oppression because that’s the most uncomfortable (collectively) we’ve ever had to feel.
I’m not saying any of us should be sorry for who we are. We each possess a perspective that enables us to offer a unique contribution to something much bigger than ourselves. But we must remember that there is something much bigger than ourselves in the first place. We must respect each other’s scars. It’s true what Plato said, “Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.”
I’m a snowflake. (You are too.)
Out of Our Minds 