What is personal space?
How do you define personal space to someone who is culturally unfamiliar with the concept? How do you demand that your personal boundaries be respected?
Two days after our wedding, FIL questioned my beliefs on feet-touching. They practice it, of course, and with great gusto. I have grown up believing that it is an antiquated custom. A remnant of a time when overt acts of subjugation were necessary to show respect, it has outlived its usefullness as we have evolved as human beings. Touching feet therefore is somehow less evolved, and at the least, unessecary. Far be it from me to explain my well considered condescension to FIL. Instead I simply stuck with ‘I don’t believe in it. I would not like to participate in it’.
Far be it from them to accept my disparate beliefs. I was made to touch feet. I have lost count how many feet I have touched. Particularly, I touched the feet of all the invitees to a dinner party4 years later. That I do remember. I was not given the option to refuse, I was not given a warning to compose myself. I was really blindsided. In a moment of great clarity I learned that you can grow up touching feet for all the world to see and still have not a shred of respect for the wishes of others.
