Talk with Folks You Ordinarily Don't

Talk with Folks You Ordinarily Don't

This man’s eyes pierce me, because I know I’ve passed him on the street and not had the courage to look fully into them. I hazard to guess that most of us have done it: turned away. Sometimes the pain of others is too raw for us, and we turn away. And yet, sadly, this quickly becomes a habit. It’s because we draw the circle of US too tight around us. US and THEM have their reference point in defensive responses: in the sympathetic state, the threat responses, the partial purpose of which is to determine who is with us and who is against us. The rapid subconscious calculus of the threat response is in-group or out-group. These are my people, I take care of them. Those aren’t my people, let them go to the wolves. But brothers and sisters, we are all one another’s people. There is no Other. The Other is just the name we give to those people who stand in the parts of our Ourselves that we don’t have the courage to know fully.

I remember the first time I understood that I could be a murderer. I don’t mean that I understood it abstractly, as a human potential. I mean the first time I understood it viscerally, in my body. The first time I owned this possibility in myself–not simply as something abstract–but as something that could have been forced out of me into the realm of the actual by circumstances that were dire enough, threats that were extreme enough. It made it much harder for me to judge people who had taken a life. Prior to this awareness, I was like, That person is fundamentally different from me. And therefore dismissable. But if I too possess that latent potential, and they are not different from me, I can’t write them off so easily.

The human mind is a difference engine. I remember as a kid, growing up on the poorer side of middle class in St. Louis, Missouri, that I had created a hierarchy of automobile brands. Cars seemed to me the clearest evidence of class I could find, and because we were in the lower half of what I was observing around me, I created, mostly with no conscious effort, a complete hierarchy. At the top were the Mercedes-Benz and the BMW. The middle section was populated with Toyota Camrys and Ford Tauruses. At the bottom of the bottom, the lowly Yugo, followed by the Ford Escort. My disdain for the Escort was something I could taste. They made me wince. Perhaps this was because we drove a Toyota Tercel, a half-step up from it. I am talking about cars, but don’t you see that I could be talking about anything, or anyone? Look what we do to ourselves, and to one another. I wanted to be around the Mercedes-Benzes, the BMWs. Those were the cars I learned to draw and imagined myself riding around in. When our neighbors bought a BMW, this meant something to me: it signified status. No one taught me this. And though distressing, and of the same impulse, the hierarchizing of autos is nowhere near as damaging as the hierarchizing of humans.

To hierarchize humans is to dehumanize. It’s that simple. From the correct vantage point, which is that of the intelligence of the Sun looking down, we are all the same: tiny. The greatest one of us by any measure, in the cosmic scheme, is still tiny. Down here, we are all brothers and sisters in one human family, and our job is to lift up the whole family, and re-align with the laws of life.

So, stop turning away. Turn toward the uncomfortable in yourself and in others. You don’t need to fix it, or solve it, just be present with it. This need to fix, as our mentor master diversity trainer Lee Mun Wah reminds us, is a very Western thing. We don’t have to DO anything. All we need to do is be with someone. If we are with someone, present enough, compassionate enough, the doing will arise spontaneously. We’ll share our breakfast. We’ll share our coat. Because deep down, we are all decent enough to do that.

Many of us refrain from connecting with people outside of our social milieus because we are afraid of being uncomfortable. We are afraid that we won’t know the right thing to say, or that the conversation will be awkward, or that someone will want something from us. Yes, it’s possible that all of the above are true. And yet–despite this, and even because of it–go beyond your comfort zone.

Some of the most memorable conversations you will ever have will be in these moments when you connect with someone totally different, across an apparent chasm. Moments when you find yourself sitting in a bar in some tiny town eating nachos, and a stranger begins talking to you about the weather. Or riding on a bus in another country where you don’t speak the language. Or standing on the sidewalk. All we have to do is not turn away. There is an exhilaration to these conversations that arise unexpectedly, across the ordinary divisions of race and class and age. If you lean into the activation, the discomfort, you can forge a connection. That energy, that spark, that charge–is either fuel for leaning in, or becomes awkwardness when we pull away. To reach out is a risk. There is vulnerability in reaching toward someone, in stepping out of your private world. There is an art to conversation that young people today are losing because they have grown up behind their phones. We use our devices to shield ourselves from awkwardness. The phone has become a socially acceptable shield that we hide behind, as many people hide behind a uniform. It frees us from the living moment, gives us a place to stick our attention so that we don’t have to feel the moment in front of us. And for those of us who have the privilege of not having to be in difficult situations, it reinforces that we don’t have to. And so we turn away from suffering, as if it is someone else’s problem, as if it has nothing to do with us. But the turning away is killing us. Our inability to be with the difficult and uncomfortable emotions makes us psychologically fragile. What we call resilience comes from overcoming discomfort. Children these days are more prone to illness because they don’t eat enough dirt. What makes an immune system strong is contending with adversity (I say this to white folk, really. To folks of color, I say you’ve done that, and what I wish for you is safety and rest.) This is true of our emotional lives as well. Sheltered children become entitled adults. Children protected from difficulty can’t learn resilience, and then don’t know how take care of themselves, or anyone else. We end up with man-babies and women-babies, chronological adults who are emotionally diminished because they have not crossed the developmental milestones, not overcome the obstacles required for growth. There will be moments in life that break you. You don’t have to face them alone, but you have to face them. If you don’t, you don’t grow, and if you don’t grow, you won’t be happy. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking to you. The baby owl has to crash into buildings to learn to fly. It must. To become a good sailor, you have to navigate through storms. There is no other way. A certain amount of adversity is required to create character. So, center yourself, become stronger, and lean into discomfort. Strike up a conversation. Notice your pounding heart and open your mouth anyway. The life you save may just be your own.