Posts tagged as:

connection

The Bad Part of Town

by Megan M. on July 7, 2010

I live in the bad part of town. I try to be charitable by calling it the “not great” part of town, instead, because what the hell do I know about the bad part of town or how bad it needs to be in order to get that label?

Maybe it’s bad. Maybe it’s “not great”. Maybe it’s whatever it is. The people with a little bit of money push out the people with less money in order to feel better about themselves — maybe because the people with a little more money pushed them out a long time ago.

When I go for my morning run, I see people who look poor and tired. Their clothes aren’t fashionable. Their faces look blank, turned off. There have definitely been a few junkies. Sometimes there’s a man and a woman, and the woman looks tired and half-dressed, and the man is counting cash. They’re always really skinny — sometimes scary skinny. Sometimes I see other people out running or walking for exercise, but not many.

At first I avoided eye contact with anyone, thinking about my neighborhood’s danger potential and wondering if I should carry a taser or something. Then I decided that was exactly the attitude that created the “bad parts of town” in the first place — and a bit retarded, to boot. I started keeping my head up while I was running. I treated my neighborhood like any neighborhood. I opened up my attitude, and started to nod or wave and say good morning to the people I passed. (Well, except for the ones counting money. If I were counting money, I wouldn’t want some random person to run by and make me lose count. Maybe that’s my reason… maybe it’s not.)

Most of the people I smile at smile back. Many of them say hello or ask how I am out of habit, and then I’ve run past and that brief interaction is over. But it’s on my mind all the time. The elderly Mexican man who hauls branches from yard to yard a few streets over from me is a real person, even if he’s poor and badly dressed with a grim face and missing teeth. I’m starting to be ashamed when I don’t look people in the eye, no matter who they are. Where did this habit come from? It puts up walls we don’t need.

You’ve probably guessed; no, I don’t know where I’m going with this. But I don’t think it matters. It is going somewhere.

Saying Yes: Panhandling, Hospitality and Fundamental Human Connection

by Megan M. on March 6, 2010

If you sit downtown at an open-air pub downtown (like the one I’m at now), something interesting happens.

First — I can only assume — you are an appealing possibility to anyone who is on the street asking for food or cash. The reason I stopped at this pub to work was because I passed a guitarist with a harmonica standing on the sidewalk and singing for donations, guitar case open, his music mojo simply rockin’. He put a smile on my face, and I dug money out of my wallet. And I went into the pub next door, because I wanted to keep listening.

Second… you start really thinking about it, because you know it’s going to happen again. Once I sat down next to the open doors — it’s like a little balcony with a railing — a man in a wheelchair paused just outside on the sidewalk to ask me to help him get something to eat. So I bought him a burger. And another man asked me for money about an hour later — but at that point I was tapped out and had to wish him luck. These experiences are still fascinating to me, not on a scientific level, but on some kind of visceral level. Something else is going on during these exchanges.

Pinning down that something has occupied a lot of brain power for me in the last few years. And sitting downtown to work right out in the open is an excellent way to expose myself to this interaction more frequently, and give me more of an opportunity to figure out what the hell is going on. It’s something human, something pervasive, something universal… and I think it’s about a gut-level hospitality that we don’t talk about quite as often as we should.

It’s not simply that there are people on the street who need that help — or who make a living by asking others for assistance. I don’t think I have much of an opinion about that, except that when someone asks me for help in a way that feels genuine to me, I generally say yes — especially if I can say yes with food. There is a healthy positive energy and connection and emotional openness in saying yes. Usually, saying yes takes nothing from me. It’s five bucks, or a meal I could just as easily have bought for myself or a friend.

There’s a whole debate about saying yes, of course. Entrepreneurs whose time is more and more in demand must learn to say no in order to focus on the things that they do best. And there’s an enormous conversation about whether to help or ignore people on the street. Do you meet their eyes and respond? Do you look away and walk more quickly?

But this is different. This is more basic and human. This is a fundamental kind of hospitality to the universe that maybe mirrors cultural hospitality that I’ve heard of in the past, traditions with guidelines for inviting travelers — strangers! — into your house and feeding them and giving them a comfortable place to sleep. Now that we’re all isolated, now that we lock our doors and want lots of space and hear scary stories on the news, you don’t hear about those traditions so much anymore.

But making a connection with someone living a completely different life from me in that little way, being asked, and saying yes, that is somehow really amazing. It’s such an amazing little exchange that I feel like it’s long past the discussion of whether it’s appropriate to encourage panhandling, or whether the person should (or can) be looking for a job, or whether the money is safer going to institutions that help homeless people, or whether the person you’re interacting with might be taking the money you give them to go spend on alcohol or illegal substances and so on and so forth.

And sure, I care. Of course I care. I’m not crazy about the idea of giving someone money to fuck themselves up.

But this isn’t ABOUT THAT.

This is about two people looking each other in the eye. And one of them asks. And one of them answers.

And because both are human and both have a pre-existing cosmic link — me and them, you and I, all of us — when the one asks, the second says yes if the second can say yes.

It’s the same thing I feel when a client with dwindling resources and a panicked note in his voice asks me for help figuring out how he can make money the way he wants, instead of the way he’s supposed to (at the job that’s killing him). It’s the feeling that I can help, and that I want to. That if I funnel as much mental juice as I can into that one phone call, I might make the difference they need, and that it’s far more worth it for exactly that reason. The way I do it outside of consulting, as often as I can do it, is by saying yes.

It matters so much — regardless of who, or what mistakes there were, or anything else — because we’re together in this thing. We’re together in this thing even if the person who asks is on the street living a life I can barely comprehend, and ten minutes ago I was whingeing about having an income gap in March, and having to temporarily figure out how to make rent in my very decent apartment with all my cool electronic toys and pastimes and ways to make myself a living doing whatever the hell I want.

I’m not saying you should always say yes. But saying yes is an acknowledgment of our sameness, despite differences, a way of offering hospitality of whatever kind because it’s the right thing to do. Remember who you are. You’re certainly not as isolated as it seems.

If any of us are ever going to say no, it should damn well be for the right reasons.

Use Couch Covers – Meaning is Messy

by Megan M. on January 22, 2010

Hit rewind, and take a look at last week.

I’m sitting in this tiny Greek deli in New York City. There’s no cell reception on the corner outside, because AT&T has totally lost its ability to cope with the mobs of iPhone users all living on top of one another. The deli is crowded, and my table is pushed up against three or four more just like it. I haven’t touched the chicken caesar salad in front of me, because I’m experiencing a tangle of emotions that I can’t quite name. But since I’m sitting at that table with ten of my closest friends — people who care about what I care about, people who are trying to make things happen in the world — I’m trying. I’m trying to name it, and I’m trying to work it out.

But the thing that keeps happening is that I feel foolish. I make self-conscious jokes about bursting into tears, even though I haven’t. I’m clearly a teensy bit verklempt, and I’ve been that way since we wandered out of the Linchpin Session on West 27th. I’m determined not to turn into a raccoon with even the small amount of eye makeup I have on, but I’m also not willing to let it go — because it’s important. Because I want to work it out.

Except even with ten of my closest friends, this is awkward. We don’t really all know each other that well; we just know that we’re looking for very similar things, that many of the same concepts resonate with us and make us want to do better. At first I think that this is the perfect time to work a few things out, especially with all the clever brains at the table. But I quickly find out how weird that can get.

The thing is, none of us really knows how to deal with an emotional display — even a mild one, like this. I’m clearly struggling with something, but I’m having trouble explaining anything about it. Some people think I’m upset or unhappy. A few of them simply take it in stride, and that makes me particularly grateful — but others obviously feel a little bit uncomfortable. And of course that’s perfectly reasonable. How do you act around someone who’s experiencing something you don’t understand? You barely know her!

This gets me thinking.

And right there at the table, I begin to expostulate over my (untouched) chicken caesar salad.

We are all searching so hard for meaning.

But when we find it, we don’t know what to do with it. It leaves stains on the furniture. It’s inconvenient and sometimes downright strange. It’s rarely predictable. Meaning is messy.

We look for it in our work, and maybe we even find it sometimes — when we’re alone at home, with a trusted partner, someone we love, or someone we work with, or both. We know what it will probably look like when we find that meaning in our work; we’re expecting it, and we think we know what to do with it when it arrives. We don’t expect it to hit us like a train at midday, in a crowd of people. And we don’t expect it to disarm us the way it inevitably does.

Because we are trained to turn away from meaning.

We’re trained to isolate ourselves. We’re trained to maintain distance; we are taught that displays of emotion are inappropriate, or something we should grow out of. We’re supposed to “leave room for the Holy Spirit” and be very careful not to touch one another. Real meaning, deep meaning, is anathema in a public space. Do your crying at home. All I could think as I walked from the session to that Greek deli was this: Oh, god. I need to calm down. Collect myself. Be professional. Be clear, be friendly. Don’t let them see you upset — no one will respect you if you lose your shit here in public. Pretend you’re normal. Pretend you’ve got it covered.

Of course, I wasn’t normal, and I didn’t have it covered. In the deli I’m reeling from a series of complex emotions I haven’t quite been able to identify, and I want to talk about it with people I trust. Furthermore, I remember (as I always do, over and over) that the urges to “be professional” and “calm down” are exactly what have kept me from getting things done in my life before now. Things I identified and did away with — things that served no purpose for me. Getting worked up is what I do. Getting excited, tapping into feeling, sorting out the tangle and understanding what it all means, these are acts that allow me to deeply connect with the people around me. They are my work. Why am I trying to bury them now?

Really, why? These same displays of emotion are inconvenient. None of us are used to them. We’re supposed to set up these tidy little walls between ourselves and the people around us so that everyone can feel clean and safe and not have to deal with anything confusing or uncertain or upsetting. And let’s be clear: I’m NOT talking about frequent, ongoing cycles of anxiety and pain and fear, the kind of constant emotional imbalance that obstructs us from our purpose and delays our work. I’m talking about important individual events that give you windows into the things you care about. That movie that really touched you and made you cry. The letter you received from your grandmother after she passed away. The day you realized what your work really had to be if you were going to be happy. But you quash it a bit in front of other people — we all do! — because there’s this constant need, this pressure, to appear seemly.

We’re not talking about emotional hygiene, the importance of claiming responsibility for your own stuff. We’re talking about open, honest meaning. We’re talking about a thing that connects you with the people around you. We’re talking about the path that brings tears to your eyes when you reach it, because it’s so important, because you’ve been working so hard to find it, because you know you can help so many people once you’re on it, and you’re nearly on your way.

Of course you’d cry.

But the very idea that you’d be embarrassed to cry — that you’d try to pretend nothing untoward was happening, even in front of people who are looking for the same thing — is astonishing.

If I turn away from that meaning so readily, so mechanically… how can I possibly expect to find meaning when I’m seeking it out? How can any of us? Why on earth would that long-sought meaning bother to appear if we constantly push it aside, whether it’s manifesting in ourselves or in those around us?

Why shouldn’t the meaning go find someone else to enlighten — someone who welcomes it?

No wonder we’re so confused.