Edition #44: What Is Your One Thing?

Plus, an intimate photo series, a novel that asks you to consider cannibalism, and a shot at captioning the infamous New Yorker cartoon

Oct 08, 2020

Seeking Human Kindness – Intentional Communication Consultants

A Note From the Editor

I used to say, with a level of pride I can no longer access or understand, that I was not an empathetic person. The sentiment was the result of a few variables: working a demanding job that made my world small and centered around money, limited interaction with people outside of my inconsequential orbit, and a faulty measure of comparison. I would watch in awe as my two older sisters, both empaths, reacted to events in and outside of their direct lives with deep feeling; tears for an estranged friend who lost a husband, nightmares after yet another shooting, loss of appetite when inevitable bad news flooded our social media feeds. I couldn’t understand it. Why did they allow themselves to be so deeply affected by these tragedies, which would only continue to happen again and again? Allowing yourself to have such a strong reaction to these inevitable horrors, I reasoned, wasn’t serving anyone. My lack of empathy made me feel strong, superior, and I wore it like a badge of honor. I leaned on its sturdy backbone, relied on its rigidity.

Then something shifted, and I began to notice things I hadn’t before. I used to walk the same ten-minute route through a drab, hectic slab of Port Authority to get from the subway to my old office, and one day I noticed a quiet homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. I’m not sure how many days I had passed him before I subconsciously chose to acknowledge him, but once I noticed him I couldn’t believe I ever hadn’t. There he was every single day, parked at the corner of 44th and 10th Avenue with his legs crisscrossed underneath him, his lips sealed, his eyes a bit dazed. The temperature began to drop and despite the change in weather, I would see him in his same spot without a hat or a coat, even in the snow. I imagined making him a care package that I would fill with simple things to keep him warm: a heavy coat, a blanket, clean socks, a scarf. When I went to bed on a particularly frigid winter night, wrapped in a fluffy duvet, curled up on my queen-sized mattress, I would think of this man. I wondered where he slept those nights, how he stayed warm, what he ate for dinner. I’m ashamed to say that in my entire year of walking past him, I never worked up the courage to act, just as I never saw a passerby look him in the eye. Not once.

After that, the floodgates of my empathy burst wide open. The steel dam I had carefully constructed to protect myself was lowered and painful feelings came rushing in with a force that I feared might knock me to the ground. I was suddenly allowing myself to look, really look, at the people I had heretofore treated like grass. I noticed their clothing, their makeshift sleeping arrangements, the words they used when asking for help. I noticed how other people ignored them, as I had, and wondered how it must feel to be passed over day after day, to not be treated as a human, but as an inanimate object. I wanted to help, but it didn’t feel safe to approach every homeless person I saw on the streets. What would I do, what would I say?

I decided to volunteer at a Sunday meal service for the homeless through New York Cares. I arrived at the cafeteria assuming I would be placed on an assembly line doling out soup or peeling potatoes. As it turns out, I had signed up to be a part of the small group of volunteers who were designed “ambassadors”. The head volunteer was surprised I had chosen this role as a first-timer, and I was confused by her reaction but nodded along with false confidence as she gave me instructions for the day.

“One of the biggest challenges the homeless population faces is loneliness,” she said, “so our job as ambassadors is to simply talk to them.”

I began to sweat. Soon, there would be hundreds of homeless people cycling through the cafeteria, and I had unknowingly signed up for the role that involved no serving or scooping, only conversating. I had never had a real conversation with a homeless person before and had no idea what I would say. The head volunteer gave me but one rule, avoid talking about homelessness. “Just talk to them like normal people,” she said.

And so it began. Homeless people of all ages and colors and genders filtered in, fetching their trays of food and cups of coffee and water as I began to tentatively circle the room, realizing that I was now the odd person out, the one who didn’t belong. One man, seeming to notice my discomfort, waved me over. He was playing chess with a friend and he asked me whether I knew how to play. “No,” I admitted, and he began to explain the rules of the game to me slowly, with a kind breed of patience. “If you practice,” he said, “maybe one week you’ll be able to come back and beat me.”

I learned a lot in those few short hours; how solar panels work on commercial buildings from a young, nervous man with cherry colored freckles, how to deliver a perfectly timed punchline from a rambunctious couple whose jovial laughter sounded like a melody, that hot chocolate packets are a good source of calcium from a man wearing an eye patch. I learned that the people I had been passing, and fastidiously avoiding, every day on the street were just that: people. I learned that there is no one size fits all for homelessness, that we are all one wrung away from falling on hard times. I learned that our safety nets aren’t as sturdy as we like to think they are. Most importantly, I learned that I deeply cared about these often overlooked, endlessly interesting human beings.

There are two things that I have found to be irrevocably true. One, that humans are self-centered, borderline narcissistic creatures by nature. We are the stars of the show that is our lives; we like to talk about ourselves (see: this entire essay), we think mostly about ourselves, we process things in relation to ourselves. This is not inherently bad, but we do have a choice in the matter. We can choose to do the work, to rewire our brains to develop genuine care for other people, to literally put ourselves in other people’s shoes in order to, just for a moment, step back and take a supporting role in our show. The second thing is that we are easily paralyzed by decision fatigue. Making decisions is hard and overwhelming and we have to do it so often in our daily lives — what job we should do, who we should spend time with, what we should eat for dinner — that when it comes to making a decision about how and when to help others, we often cannot. Because so many things are broken, we think, and we are small. We are only one person and we have ourselves and our families to worry about, and where would we even start? It’s an overwhelming thought loop, one I’ve parsed many times before.

So here is my challenge to you: choose your One Thing, a cause that you care deeply about. It will not be difficult to uncover because it is the first thing that came to your mind when you read the aforementioned prompt. Once you know what your One Thing is you’ll have a North Star, and making decisions about how to help will feel more manageable. Find volunteer projects that support your One Thing, donate money to causes that lift up those individuals affected by it, do research, educate yourself, and have conversations with others about it. My thing, to my surprise, is homelessness. Yours might be women’s rights, racial equality, climate change, food security, criminal justice reform, immigrant protections. It works because we aren’t all focused on the same issue. Instead, we are like ants building an anthill, dividing the labor based on personal preference and capability in order to build a bigger, better, more complete structure (or in our case, world).

Cheers, my dears. I’d love to know: what is your One Thing?

Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming

A Mothers Portraits of Her Daughter’s Life with Down Syndrome. In this powerful collection of photos, a French photographer captures shots of life with her teenage daughter and muse, Lulu. My younger sister has Down syndrome so I am immediately drawn to any content on the subject, but what I love most about this piece is its intent. The images are shot in such a way that positions the viewer as the ever-curious, often intrusive onlooker that people who have a loved one with Downs are all too familiar with, and the photographs are meant to challenge the stereotypical, angelic Down syndrome archetype. Instead, the photographer aims to show Lulu as she is, simply a teenager, and the results are raw, intimate, and enchanting.
“When we’re out,” Grevenitis said, “she either says, ‘Everybody loves me. Everybody’s looking at me,’ or ‘Everybody hates me. Everybody’s looking at me.’ ”
2020 Is Not The Problem. Remember how terrible we thought 2016 was? How much we complained about it, how we mockingly referred to it as the “worst year ever,” implying that it was fine because we still had 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020? Yet here we are four years later, living in a time that makes 2016 look like a day at the carnival. There is a danger in simplifying the complex, painful truths we are living through into a 365 day period of doom, to be sealed and sent away on December 31st, traded in for a more hopeful start. It discounts the events that had led us here, the issues we haven’t yet resolved. It's easier to blame one year, one president, one virus. It feels more manageable that way, but as this essay suggests, we make no real progress when we succumb to this line of thinking.
Consider the Question: Would You Eat a Person? I'll start off by saying that I typically detest interview-style articles, but this one, with the Argentinian author of a new novel, Tender is the Flesh, left me with much to think about. In a dystopian future, a virus breaks out that makes meat from other animals inedible, causing humans to begin eating human meat instead. The author poses several thought-provoking points: how, and why, do humans have such an easy time eating the flesh of another being? Why is it so easy for us to dehumanize certain creatures? If cultural norms decide what creatures are socially acceptable to eat, who’s to say cannibalism will always be counted out? If you know anything about Argentinian Asado culture, you’ll understand why a novel like this has caused massive waves in the country (and beyond).

Perhaps You Should…
Take a Stab at Captioning The New Yorker Cartoon

I had no idea that there was an ongoing cartoon caption contest for The New Yorker until reading this stellar profile of Steve Buscemi from a while back, when he recounts how his late wife used to submit the same caption for every single contest: “Does a pope shit in the woods?” I loved the tender memory, and I also love looking at the cartoons in need of clever captions and realizing how utterly non-creative I am when it comes to caption writing.

Bonus Content (A Heart Warming Message)

Last week, American Airlines announced a round of upcoming layoffs, which will cause nearly 22,000 employees to be poured out into a volatile job market with no new stimulus plan in sight. When I saw this video of a flight attendant’s final message to a plane full of passengers, I couldn’t help but be in awe of her grace, kindness, and compassion in the wake of such an uncertain situation. I can only hope to respond to troubles with this sort of humility, and there’s a lesson here we can all learn from. Fair warning, this video will probably make you cry.

A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

““Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.””

-Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

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