What Being an Other Teaches Us
January 23, 2026
By Dr. Mya Fisher
It took me years to notice this.
Now, when I move between cultures or contexts, one of the first things I pay attention to is how my body takes up space. I didn’t always have language for this, and I certainly didn’t always notice it in real time. It’s something I learned slowly, through repetition and reflection, across different places and contexts.
In some settings, I find myself instinctively shrinking—drawing my arms in, minimizing my physical presence, reducing my “wingspan” without consciously deciding to do so. In others, the expectation is the opposite: to expand, to occupy space more fully, to move with a confidence that would feel out of place elsewhere. These adjustments happen before words, before explanation, before intention. They are lessons learned in the body.
Over time, I’ve come to understand these moments as part of what it means to be “an other.” Not simply being different, but being required to orient yourself—to read the room, to adapt, to notice patterns that those at the center rarely have to think about at all. The body becomes an early teacher, revealing norms and expectations long before we are able to name them.
I’ve often found myself standing just a few steps outside the center of belonging—as a Black woman in the United States, as a non-white, American moving through other countries, and as a traveler in spaces where my physical presence visually signaled difference before I ever spoke a word. Those experiences have shaped me more deeply than almost any classroom or credential. They’ve taught me something essential about what it means to be “an other”—and about how transformative that position can be when we allow it to teach us, rather than just endure it.
The View from the Margins
When you live outside the center of belonging, you learn to notice what those at the center often miss.
You listen differently.
You adapt more quickly.
You learn the rules that aren’t written down—because they are the ones most likely to remind you that you are not from here.
But more than that, life at the margins sharpens perception in ways that are both cognitive and emotional. You begin to see how culture shapes logic, how history shapes possibility, and how power shapes whose experience is treated as neutral or universal. You also learn what it feels like to move through the world with heightened awareness—monitoring tone, reading context, adjusting behavior—not as strategy, but as survival.
From this vantage point, systems no longer appear inevitable or objective; they appear designed, partial, and contingent. And empathy becomes less about sentiment and more about recognition: the ability to see how easily comfort, clarity, and belonging can be distributed unevenly.
This is not merely an experience of exclusion. It is a form of education.
What is Missed When We Never Feel “Other”
Many people move through the world without ever having their difference reflected back to them. They travel. They work abroad. They engage across cultures. But they are rarely othered in ways that unsettle their sense of belonging or authority. They’ve never been mistaken for a threat, or a curiosity, an exception that needs explaining
That is not an indictment—it is an observation.
The danger of never feeling “other” is not cruelty; it is incompleteness. Without that disorienting experience, it is easy to mistake one’s own perspective for neutrality, or one’s own norms for universality. The world appears more coherent than it is, and power more invisible than it should be.
This is why the experience of being “an other” holds value not only for those who live it daily, but for anyone willing to learn from it. Feeling unseen or out of place can open a pathway to humility, empathy, and a deeper awareness of how social worlds actually function —not because it makes us better people, but because it reveals how fragile belonging can be.
What Being an Other Can Teach
Lived experience as “an other,” no matter how brief, sharpens perception because familiarity can no longer be taken for granted. Even short encounters with difference can be disorienting in ways that register physically—tightening posture, altered movement, heightened alertness. The body reacts before the mind interprets.
In these moments, you become attentive to tone, gesture, silence, and context—the subtle threads that hold human interaction together beneath language. These are the often-unseen components of connection, and once noticed, they are difficult to unsee.
It also cultivates empathy. When you know what it is to be the only one in a room, you begin to look for who else might feel invisible. Discomfort, when met with curiosity rather than defensiveness, expands moral imagination. When you know what it is to be the only one in a room, you begin to look for who else might feel invisible. You pause more often. You ask different questions—about who feels at ease, who is adjusting, and whose comfort is being quietly prioritized.
And perhaps most importantly, being “an other” can reshape identity. It does not erase who you are; it refines how you carry it. Identity becomes less about armor and more about orientation—the north star of a life’s compass, guiding how one moves through the world with awareness, responsibility, and care.
This is not an inevitable outcome. Encounters with otherness can just as easily harden as they can deepen. That is why what comes next—reflection, interpretation, and choice—matters so much.
From Being “Other” to Seeing Others
What we do with the experience of being “an other” matters. It can harden us, or it can deepen us. It can make us guarded, or it can make us more generous in our seeing.
The goal is not to multiply categories of “others,” nor to normalize exclusion. It is, in fact, the opposite. We want fewer people permanently labeled as outside the center of belonging. One way of moving toward that world is by more people having meaningful encounters with otherness—learning what it feels like, learning the human, relational lessons such experiences can offer, and carrying that understanding forward into how they lead, teach, and build.
When the experience of being “an other” is met with reflection rather than defensiveness, it expands moral imagination. It teaches us to notice whose comfort is assumed, whose presence is questioned, and whose humanity is quietly negotiated. Over time, this kind of learning can shift not only individual perspective, but collective practice.
The work, then, is not to erase difference or to romanticize marginality. It is to recognize difference honestly, to honor it without fear, and to allow it to teach us how to see more fully. A world shaped by that kind of seeing is better equipped to welcome, to govern, and to build across lines of difference.