Underneath The Clover

Content Notes: This story is a parabola about discrimination concerning mainly LGBTQIA* topics but the approach is more general. There are hurtful responses concerning not belonging.

You all know that there are clover flowers (I call them flowers) with four leaves. They are rare and there are rumors that you are fortunate if you find one. There are stories about it, maybe, but this is not one of the fortune stories. The only thing I want you to keep in mind from our perspective is that they exist.

Now let us change the perspective underneath the clover. Imagine the clover flowers feel themselves. Imagine they can communicate in their system of roots. But we all know clover has no eyes. They can not see how they look.

A young four leaved clover flower might then tell the others:

“I have four leaves, by the way.”

What would you imagine the other clover flowers to answer? Maybe something like:

“You are making this up. I’ve never heard of such a thing. You just want to be special. You have to accept the fact, that we all just have three leaves. That is just nature.”

(Maybe you also have counted the number of ‘just’ used in this response?)

The young four leaved clover flower might be totally overwhelmed (in a negative way). But maybe it is brave enough to say something like this:

“I don’t even want to be special. I don’t even think I am special. I just have four leaves. I feel it and I feel uncomfortable if people talk about me in a way not representing my personality. It feels weird, really bad, every time someone says I had three leaves.”

This is actually a parabola about for example non-binaries or people who are asexual. So if you have your doubt when someone approaches you and says they were non-binary or asexual or something you might even never have heard of, don’t claim that it (just) doesn’t exist. You know nature does diversity all the time. You know about four leaved clover flowers. This is what nature actually is like. You know that you cannot see everything with your own eyes. So even though some feelings might be worth giving a second thought on, they are all valid, and lots of these feelings are just representing a truth you cannot see. You might even feel lucky getting to know a representative, like you might be finding a four leaved clover flower, but maybe they are not so special after all. They still are just one of us.

This story is of the 1st of November 2019. The Licence is Creative Commons cc-by-bc-nd 4.0