frame of reference

                Chico is having the best weather I can remember since I moved here. But what if? What if I was not in Chico? What if I was not male? What if my whole “frame of reference” was something else then what it is? More important, what if I was “frameless”? It is hard to imagine what our lives would be like without first looking at our background. When I am born, I was born with a set of frames which will accompany me throughout my life. My frames will affect my every day decisions. Goffman explains, “we are predisposed towards a certain frames depending on the circumstance of our birth and upbringing” (Burton 62).  Goffman understand that the actions we take are inevitable, and those actions will act as a ripple effect, which will affect future actions. I called this experience. But there are special cases where one will never know their “frame” and/or is reject by their “frame”.

                Lakoff explains that “frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act” (Lakoff 61). Frames include; nationality, race, gender, class ethnicity and religion. Each of these attributes will be the frame we see through that affects our everyday decisions and actions. It acts as a barrier. A barrier that will restrict and limit the boundary of our actions. Burton point out that because the frame is set at birth, I cannot escape the fact that I was born in Thailand and I was raised there for seven years. But what if I was abandon at birth, with no rights to my nationality, race or religion. I would be frameless just like Bessie Head, author of “A Question of Power”.

                When she was born, “she was not recognized as an enfranchised individual by the South African State she was born into” (Burton 63). Bessie was frameless right from her birth. No one accepted her. She had no information of her nationality or race. Bessie has not felt the feeling of belonging or of being wanted. She did not have parents, no sense of a country she could say she belonged to and no religion to believe in. She would often be “return” from her foster care because she was different; she was neither black nor white.

With nothing at all, she ended up in a mission school. Bessie had no frame to guide her decisions and actions. She has no barrier or restriction this may have driven her into insanity. At the age of thirteen, the secret about her background was revealed to her but it was too late. The information no longer had an impact on her frame of reference as it would have if the information was available to her at younger age. She was determined and declared herself “nothing I am, of no tribe or race” (Burton 64). Without belonging to anyone, “she secretly relieve to be take away and sent to a mission school, as hours and hours of her childhood” (Head 15). Bessie accepted the facts that she does not belong to any nationality or race. This made her felt a sense of happiness and relief when she was taken away to a missionary school.

                Can I truly say that I understand what it feels like to be frameless? Can I put myself in her shoe and imagine every hard obstacle she faced? I was born with a sense of belonging. I have a real mother and father to take care of me. They provided my race, nationality, gender and class which I am to mature with. I can never say I know what Bessie feels like. The only connection that Bessie and I share is the struggle we both endure to discover our self through our experience. Similar to Bessie, I am growing and maturing from my birth’s frames to find myself in the world. Both, Bessie and I, can evolve but never change our frame of reference.