Move In.

Last fall I read Brené Brown’s book “Braving the Wilderness” and it was a game changer. I already mentioned it in this post about the best books I read last year, but it’s honestly worth its own full post. I think everyone should read this book. Or at least every American over the age of 15 alive right now. It’s important.

The book is all about respecting people and honoring each other’s humanity. Here are the different sections:

1. Everywhere and Nowhere
2. The Quest for True Belonging
3. High Lonesome: A Spiritual Crisis
4. People Are Hare to Hate Close Up. Move In.
5. Speak Truth to Bullshit. Be Civil.
6. Hold Hands. With Strangers.
7. Strong Back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.

Now, some of these sections I didn't really care about. Like the first two. I mean, they were good, but they weren't crazy good. But everything after that was pretty damn incredible.

My favorite section was the "move in" section. In fact, I am very likely going to get that as a tattoo sometime soon (sorry, mom). But to be honest, it was my favorite section before I even read it. Just from the heading of the section, I could tell the Brene was articulating something I have found to be true in my own experience; the more we know people, the harder it is to dislike them. Of course, the opposite is also sometimes true (exhibit A: your annoying little brother), but for the most part, the more we get to know people, the more we identify with the deep humanity of all of their challenges in life.

For me, this realization came during my freshman year of college. I liked and got along with all of the girls on my floor of Nyland Hall...except for one, who drove me nuts. I didn’t hate her or anything, but I just found the way she spoke and acted and interacted with the world to be so incredibly abrasive. It wasn’t at all how I spoke and acted and interacted with the world, and I just felt defensive and preemptively exhausted every time I knew she’d be around. On my floor we had weekly fellowship gatherings and we did a series of “life stories” where each week a pair of roommates would prepare a summary of their life and present it during the fellowship (I don’t know why I’m trying to explain this...I feel like “life stories” is a pretty straightforward concept….whatever). Well we eventually got to the week when the girl who bothered me was telling her life story. And it was intense. She’d had a hard life. When she was a child, people that she should have been able to trust hurt her. It was painful to listen to, and I am still awed at the bravery it took for her to share that with a bunch of young women who were still kind of strangers (this was only a few weeks into our first semester of college, remember). But most importantly, she finally made sense to me. I could understand why a little girl who had learned the hard way not to trust people easily and to stay tough would continue to interact with the world the way this girl did. Before I knew where her attitude came from it seemed really aggressive to me-- and it was-- and I found it totally off-putting. But once I learned why her default mode was more aggressive than I was comfortable with, I realized I could live with it.

Granted, she still wasn’t my favorite person on the floor. And she didn’t become my best friend or anything. But it no longer stressed me out to spend time with her. I could see the humanity where I really hadn’t bothered to before.

Now, that is a kind of extreme example, but it is the most direct and obvious moment I’ve had in my life where I was like “oh look, I found out more about this person and just immediately like them more than I did without them having to actually do something to change my opinion.” I’m sure you’ve all had moments like this, too, whether they’ve been people you knew or just getting closer to any sort of situation at all and being able to see the humanity better.

One recent (and kind of ridiculous) example is after the Super Bowl a couple weeks ago, when everyone watching at my sister’s house was pissed that the Pats didn’t win (I didn’t actually care at all...I was kind of rooting for them, but also I feel like they’ve won enough Super Bowls-especially recently- and I had kiiiiiiinda started rooting for the Eagles at the end...especially since the cameras kept cutting to Bradley Cooper. Yeah, Bradley Cooper’s face didn’t hurt. ANYWAY.) and then my sister caught wind of a story about how some member of the Eagles’ team was the favorite player of a little kid with cancer, and he’d gone to visit the kid as a special treat and then the kid had died, and the player dedicated his season to that kid. And then they went on to win the Super Bowl! For the first time ever! That’s awesome, right?! And my sister said, “Okay, I feel a little better about them winning now, because that’s nice at least.”

And obviously one sportsingball team beating another isn’t really an instance of there being overlooked humanity, but it still seems like a decent example of this to me. A situation that had previously seemed so devastating became bearable because we learned a heartwarming story about the people involved. It’s hard to hate the Eagles for beating Tom Brady when you learn that the win was dedicated to a little kid who died of cancer.

It’s hard to hate people up close.

Let’s all try to move in this year, shall we?