You didn’t know that?
If one of them broke, I’d have no clue how to fix it. (Image by Anja)
I have a confession to make: Despite admonitions not to, I do I read the comment section.
Definitely on my own work, and often on the work of others.
What can I say? Despite the risk of running into trolls, it’s interesting to hear how other people interpreted the article or video I just viewed.
And that’s how I ran into this brilliant comment from a guy named Glenn Davey in Melbourne, Australia.
Mr. Davey’s comment was in reply to someone named JCO regarding an article in the New York Times about documentarian Louis Theroux and his surprise rap hit last spring.
“How are people just now getting into Louis? Weird weekends is an absolute classic!” exclaimed JCO.
“Because after you were born,” Mr. Davey patiently responded, “people kept getting born. You’re old and they’re young.”
The simplicity and inarguability of this perspective delights me.
It’s really the definition of empathy to realize that not everyone knows what you know and sees what you see.
And it’s the definition of privilege to not realize that the education that you had or the circumstances you grew up with were not shared by everyone.
Of course, it’s understandable that we might be playfully incredulous that something we love has faded from public memory and is invisible to the next generation. I was reminded of this when I went to share a few Michel Gondry videos with the students of The Little Middle School and realized that they were released well before these students were born.
But there’s often an ugly edge to comments like this. Let me tell you the number one thing that my students said that drove me crazy during my years as a teacher:
“You didn’t know that?”
This attitude of superiority is the source of a lot of problems in our communities and even in our society.
From working with adolescents, I know that it comes from insecurity. Someone wants to be safe, knowing what they know. Safe being smart.
As hard as I fought to make my school a safe place to be wrong, I couldn’t fight an entire culture.
The antidote to this attitude is empathy and compassion, even better when it comes with solidarity: “I didn’t get this, either.”
And that’s why it’s worth sharing a struggle in the first place: It might empower someone to step forward because they see they aren’t the only ones who were confused. It might help them to release a little of the shame and smallness they felt when they were mocked for what they didn’t know, didn’t have, or couldn’t do way back when. It might help them to realize that they were never the problem.
It is a passion of mine to help people when they’re trying to find a way forward on something they want to do and overcome those voices of the past. The underlying message of virtually everything that I share is that we are okay just the way we are, and there is always the possibility of becoming who we want to be.
We don’t all begin at the same time. We don’t all begin with the same tools or talents. We all come from different places with different perspectives. These differences are to be, if not celebrated, at least acknowledged and respected. From time to time, we can all use a reminder, perhaps from the other side of the world, that not everyone is just like us. And it’s all right if that wasn’t obvious to us beforehand.
