When I was a kid, my parents used to make me drink a glass of milk every night with dinner. Sure, I’d rather have a chocolate milkshake or a soda, but the milk wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I didn’t particularly like it, but I didn’t hate it either. “You need to drink it to grow big and strong,” they’d say. I didn’t really understand or pay attention to why I was drinking it, but I did it because they were my parents and they told me to. Sometimes when I’d complain, they’d say, “Just drink it.” So I just sucked it up and tolerated it.
Tolerance has become a word that shows up in nearly every textbook, history lecture, and political conversation in the United States. The first movements toward tolerance in British America were, for the time, progressive, monumental, and a sign that the country was moving in the proper direction. But, times have changed, and the term now, when referring to people, has become obsolete and, quite frankly, extremely offensive.
If you look up the word “tolerance” in the Oxford English Dictionary, this is what you will find:
1. a. The action or practice of enduring or sustaining pain or hardship; the power or capacity of enduring; endurance.
How do we simply tolerate people?
The word tolerance drags with it a connotation of hardship, a connotation that it is a burden to those involved. A synonym given for the word by the Oxford English Dictionary is “endurance.” I build my endurance when I run. By the end of the run, I am exhausted, often pained, and sometimes uncomfortable. Why is it then, that this equates with how we interact with people?
People should be celebrated. We should learn from people. Love other people. Share experiences with other people. Have we really become so apathetic that we must simply “endure” all of the great things people have to offer?
Tolerate it when your roommate wakes you up in the middle of the night, when the girl next to you won’t stop chewing so loudly, when the power goes out and when, even if you’re in college, your parents make you drink a glass of milk. Tolerate the annoyances, the mishaps, and the rotten luck.
Make connections with people. Marvel in the stories that they have to offer. Learn, grow, and give something back. If you’re already doing these things, you are not simply tolerant. You are open, welcoming, and gracious, and you are the type of person our society needs.
