Reply to Rattled by a friend’s comment- what did she really mean?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m rattled by OP’s reaction to her friend’s comment.  She’s not entitled to her views? She cannot be upset about how far left the left has gone? I think it’s super weird that everyone is judging her for being sick of woke politics.  [/quote]

OP and it was just a weird out of the blue thing to say. We were talking about pretty much the furthest thing from that kind of stuff so it felt like something that had been on the tip of her tongue for a long time and she just had to get it out. But then it just kind of hung in the air. [/quote]

It wasn't out of the blue -- you asked about her moving experience and what she missed/what is different. This is what is different.

Multiple people on the thread have told you that you can be progressive and criticize "wokeness," because to many of us that word refers not to policy preferences but to a certain kind of narrow-mindedness, knee jerk "canceling" people without making any effort to understand where they are coming from for instance. Which is exactly what you are doing, despite a long history with this woman and what sounds like quite a bit in common. But you seem determined to interpret her vague and open-to-interpretation comment as evidence she's racist or MAGA. That's so limited and weird! Just have a conversation with your friend and talk it out.[/quote]

Fair enough. When I asked what she missed, I was expecting her to say something about the seasonal produce or where we used to go swimming together! That’s why it felt out of the blue. I think it has probably been weighing on her quite heavily while she lived here but she might not have realized it until she moved away, and it probably felt good to share it with someone. I just thought we were going to be talking about avocados.[/quote]

So you thought she'd say something light and she said something serious. And instead of digging in, you just let it sit there awkwardly, judged her without really knowing the context, and moved on.

Like one question I would have asked her is whether she was talking about the town community or the school. It is VERY easy for me to imagine someone frustrated with wokeness in a progressive school community even if they largely share the same politics, because schools can be insane about this kind of thing. Once I was chaperoning a field trip with our very progressive elementary school and told a kid who was looking for a recycling bin and couldn't find one that it was okay to put an aluminum can in the trash in that situation. Another mom overheard this and literally gossiped about it for weeks, she was so upset that I'd said it was okay to put a recyclable in a trash can on this one occasion. To this day, I think this woman thinks I hate the environment. I recycle! But I failed some litmus test of hers so now I'm a bad person.

That's what a lot of UMC, crunchy environments are like. It's psycho, and I can imagine living with that for years and then going somewhere where no one is going to indict you forever over a single aluminum can and it just being a massive relief.

Maybe if you asked a follow up, you might have learned something not only about your friend, but about how the communities you are a part of make some people feel. Could be a growth moment for you too.[/quote]

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