Today’s post is from Soles4Souls’ CEO, Buddy Teaster:
I’m a big fan of Seth Godin (writer, marketer, strategist) and his daily blog. I’m awestruck at the fact that he puts out such thought provoking content, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Today’s post was no exception.
Titled “Those People,” it’s really about how we sometimes write off entire segments of the population – solely based on their appearance, speech or location. Our brains, all of us, develop these shortcuts as a way of dealing with a complex world. This doesn’t make it right, of course, but it’s hard to fight millions of years of evolutionary biology. Often, the person who made a decision the fastest was the one alive at the end of the day.
Seth writes far better than I can about the impact on “those people” who often learn to live up (or down) to those low expectations and how it doesn’t have to be that way. Please read his post and then hold up a mirror to see where you categorize people. I did it this morning and it was sobering.
I’d like to focus on the impact on each of us when we apply those filters. Another good question to ask, after the impact on others, is “How does that affect me?” When I think about the people I haven’t talked to, the ideas I have missed, the songs I haven’t heard, the stories that didn’t have a chance to move me…wow. I’m flattened at how much I have missed by not really being open to what’s around me.
So the next time I sit beside someone on an airplane, drive past a homeless person on the corner or see a picture of someone struggling to survive in Haiti, I am going to try to be open to the fact that I don’t know anything about that person. Unless I learn to listen first, I am just one of “those people.”