Several years ago, I was offered the opportunity to speak to men recovering from addiction.
I thought I’d share my amazing story with them. I imagined inspiring them to dream big dreams.
Not sure whether any of that occurred. What happened for sure was that spending time with those guys changed me. I was invited back multiple times over several years, and I’m not sure I can think of an experience that impacted me more profoundly.
I began by thinking of them as “different,” people on the margins. Sharing my story would change them. Turns out, as we hung out together, we weren’t different at all. We were people who had struggled with adversity, just like pretty much everyone else. And I was likely changed more by their stories than they were by mine.
I suspect it’s a common attitude among those of us living in middle class America. We’ve been conditioned to perceive marginalized folks as somehow different, frankly less than. If we’re willing to be honest with ourselves, we often find remnants of some nasty assumptions and judgments.
“People like that are…”
Those judgments allow us to accept systemic injustice. But if you spend some time with “people like that,” as I did, you discover those assumptions are flawed.
Suddenly, it becomes “people like us…” Rather than us versus them, it’s a community in which empathy and compassion make more sense than division.
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I’ll confess – I’ve never hung out with kids rescued from human trafficking. But I have spent time with trafficking victims, been changed by listening to their heartbreaking stories. I’ve re-learned – there’s no such thing as “people like that.”
A challenge for each of us: what’s a group we secretly perceive as different?
Homeless? Disabled? Poor? Immigrant? Trafficking victim?
What are we willing to do to challenge that perception?