To Messrs. (and Mmes.) Holland:

Has a song ever snuck up on you, seemingly out of nowhere, and tugged so hard on your heartstrings that it brought tears that you didn't really want to hold back?

I just had that experience. It was unexpected; the emotions --and I can't put a better word to them than "poignant"-- welled up from a place deep within me. It's been at hours later, and I still feel some of it. And I don't really want to push it away.

You see, the experience was serendipitously "teed up." I'd written an email to a very nice person: a well-educated, intelligent, compassionate, sensitive, and thoughtful English gentleman with whom I've been loosely professionally acquainted for about 17 years. We are both participating in a series of panel discussions on the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion. To illustrate a contrast in our viewpoints that came out in the panel, and at his invitation, I emailed him to highlight some uncomplimentary aspects of British society when it comes to race as an eventual entre to discussing my personal experiences.

Later in the day, my partner and I were discussing issues of race related to an article I'd written for the Association for the Association of Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) newsletter. In the article, I'd provided a link to a TEDx interview with Dr. Valerie Purdue Greenaway entitled The Anxiety that Comes from Being Treated like an Outsider The topic was about what happens to someone when this is a regular, lived experience resulting from being an easily recognized and categorized member of an underprivileged group. My partner --who happens to be white-- was looking for some concrete examples of this, so I shared experiences as a boy, a teenager, a young man, and more recently.

My personal examples ranged from blatant but infrequent to much more subtle but frequent and in some cases continual, with associated subtexts more apparent to me as the "outsider" than they were to others around me who were "insiders." Some from younger years; some more recent. It wasn't like this was the first time I'd recounted such experiences, so I didn't feel like it was very hard to talk about. But I could feel the residual of feelings I'd had and either felt and suppressed or unconsciously repressed. But just barely, so no big deal.

Fast forward a couple hours, and I'm listening to Gregory Porter, the Grammy-Award-winning, silky smooth-voiced and hip throwback jazz singer who always wears a hat with earflaps. Wonderful singer!

A song I'd never heard came the the Spotify queue called Mr. Holland. I'm listening to this song, and my eyes well up. I start smiling to hide the intensity of emotion I'm feeling, but eventually I start having to wipe tears away. The song was a personal recognition of being treated like a normal young man; being welcomed into a family home when there was a relationship (courtship? friendship? who knows and what does it matter) with a father's daughter. Lovely, right? So why the tears?

I've had this experience and its opposite. More than once. But it wasn't the bad experiences the song conjured up. It was the contrast I experienced as a boy and a young man, whenever I did. The open doors, open yards, open pools, open dinner invites, and open hearts meant the world to me. It was being embraced as just another neighborhood kid. Being liked by a white adult meant I was okay. Even getting told off along with my white friends and not separated out. It was like an inoculation against the other stuff. It helped me to believe at a deeper level that, when I did encounter racial slights, the problem was in them and in society, but not in me.

The poignance in remembering these oases overcame me for a few minutes. Having these adults and their children and homes in my life was precious to me because of the degree of hurt I was bearing. Having these people and places where I was completely accepted was treasure.

Gregory Porter says about the song “That suggests that maybe I liked a girl when I was 15 and I came to a door and somebody said, ‘Nigger, if you don’t get away from this house…’ That type of energy is being resurrected and made to feel okay these days. I think about things like that for my son.”

“Ultimately ‘Mister Holland’ is a song about equality,” continues Porter. “It’s about the desire for mutual respect and the desire for a young man to be treated like an average teenager. A song of thank you for being treated normal. The implied unspoken experience is the subtle protest of this song. Stevie and Marvin taught us how to groove with a social song, so, thank you Mister Holland.”

So, to all of my precious Messrs. and Mmes. Hollands from my tender childhood and teen years (and, more subtlely, to those who were their polar opposites), this is for you: https://youtu.be/1rC3JKlaer0