Being Seen and Heard

 

Earlier this year, my wife turned me on to a podcast called Armchair Expert which is hosted by Dax Shepard. In the podcast, various celebrities are interviewed on a variety of topics with a focus on the messiness of humanity, vulnerability, and honesty. To be honest, I have never really been the type of person to listen to podcasts, but in an effort to try something new, I gave it a try. I searched through the episodes on Spotify to find a guest's name that I thought would be interesting (Seth Rogan) and I was hooked immediately. Since that first podcast, I have listened to countless others and each time, I find myself relating to people I have never met before through shared experiences. This virtual connection allows me to see and hear people for who they are instead of how they are portrayed in the media. It truly is a really cool experience. This past weekend, I listened to an episode where Matt Damon was interviewed. I've always respected the work he has done as an actor, so I knew that I was going to enjoy the time I spent listening to his thoughts. What I didn't realize was that he was going to be the inspiration for my next blog post.

As I listened to the podcast, Damon started discussing a pretty abstract concept of people living their lives in their own subjective experiences while the world around them keeps moving on. The rationale behind this thought was that people's individual experiences with things typically become universal facts to them based on their individual accounts regardless of whether they are generally true or false. For example, you could be the most pleasant person in the world, but having one bad encounter with another individual might permanently stain that person's perception of you because of their personal experience. Another example for you visual types is the video It's Not About the Nail. In this example, it is clearly obvious that the woman's issue is the nail in her forehead, but her subjective experience is telling her something else. If you agree with this concept, there can hardly be any room for universal truths. This all seems pretty deep for a podcast and I am sure that the intent was not to get this deep, but this was my subjective experience with the interview, so that is what I am writing about.

As I continued to listen to the podcast, it dawned on me that one of the few universal truths that many can agree on in spite of their subjective experience is that everyone wants to be seen and heard for the person they are. This is the essence of #OwnYourEpic. Everyone has a story and a voice, but not everyone has an advocate that is helping them along and trying to amplify that voice. That is where we as educators come in with our students. We have students from all walks of life in our classrooms and seeing them and hearing them is the biggest gift we can give them. They are starting their journeys at a very difficult time and helping them navigate the waters shows them that we care. At a time when their voice may be stifled, we need to be there to let them know that their story matters and that we are going to help them learn how to tell it. If we do this for one student, we have made a difference, but if we can collectively work together to make this happen for all students, we can change the world. If we can't agree on universal truths, let's at least rally around the concept that everyone, including ourselves, needs to be seen and heard because our subjective human experiences are what make us unique and our stories more interesting. We all have that in common.

#Onward #FORGE