On Welcoming
We have been talking a lot, around my house, about welcoming, about conventions and communities and welcoming people into them. I keep saying a thing that sounds tautological and yet strikes me as important, which is: if you don’t welcome people, they will not feel welcome. Welcoming is a thing that someone has to do. It does not spring up of ( Read more... )
I also think that there is a certain "pull up your socks! it's all what you make it!" attitude among some circles of long-time con-goers that is not at all helpful. Particularly the ones who have idealized their first con experience and/or did not go alone.
This extends into other volunteer efforts around cons and in other places: "you get out what you put in" is just not true. It's just completely not true. It's very self-serving, and it's often used to squash people who want change. There are times when a person is willing to volunteer extensively and is not permitted to do so because it goes counter to what more established people want out of their situation. (Sometimes this is externally probably the right thing, too! But sometimes really not, and it doesn't change the fact that "volunteer and make it better" or "you get out what you put in" do not always work.) (It is true that sitting back and wishing for things to happen hardly ever works, either. But that doesn't mean that putting the work in will guarantee a positive result, and it doesn't mean that the other person actually has been sitting back and wishing.)
Just on a social effort level, I think many of us have been in situations (not necessarily at conventions although there too) where we were putting wayyyyyy more into the situation than we were getting out. No law of nature guarantees a just social return any more than anything else just is guaranteed in the universe. My first Minicon, I stood in the lobby stopping total strangers for quite some time (on the order of an hour) trying to find someone to have supper with, because I didn't feel comfortable wandering around an unfamiliar neighborhood in the dark by myself (it was downtown that year), and I knew literally three people. Finally one of them wandered past and had not had supper yet and introduced me to his friend, and I have been friends with that friend ever since (it was Ctein! yay happy ending!), but I was ready to sit down on the floor and cry at that point.
It's easy when you've found the right place to stand to tell people, "You have to put work into using your lever! You can't just stand there holding your lever and expect to move the world!" But if that person doesn't actually have a place to stand, that world isn't going anywhere, and it's very useful to remember that before the lecture comes out of one's mouth instead of after.
Reply
Leave a comment