The Background Story

So. In a class yesterday, we mixed things up a little bit and did a class activity. The professor had us write three things down on a piece of paper: (1) where we were from, (2) our family members, (3) a struggle we had to over come in our childhood. After we finished he stood up and said, "Okay. I'm going to go first, and then whoever wants to can take the floor after." He told us about where he grew up and about his family that included his mother and father and his two brothers, one older and one younger. He shared with us the untimely death of his mother and the later death of his father. His father's passing was followed by his youngest brother deciding he wanted nothing to do with his family - they haven't been in contact for over 15 years.

He finished and everyone sat in silence. I can't tell you what everyone was thinking, but if it was similar to my thought process it was something along the lines of, "Are we really supposed to share what we wrote with the whole class? This is kind of personal...do I want everyone to know this about me?" But after a long pause, someone bravely stepped up and told their story. After each person finished telling, there would be a moment of silence, almost out of respect for that person's struggles, before the next person would pick up and start to tell us their story.

It reinforced to me how little you really know about the people you encounter on a day-to-day basis. I am in class with these people for a minimum of four hours a week - and I never would of guessed that some of them had been through or were going through some of these tragic things. People told stories of their parents divorce, the teasing they experienced as a child, mental or physical disadvantages that they were forced to cope with growing up, alcoholism, cancer, abuse...all of these stories in a class of just 20 people.  I've always been a big believer in not judging someone you don't know, or not judging their actions because you don't know what their life is like or what it has been like. This really reinforced that for me. I haven't been judging the people in this class, but I'd never really gotten to know them either. You don't know these sort of things just by looking at people.

People connected within an hour over their similar stories. Not by verbally saying, "That happened to me," but by silently supporting and being able to stand up and share their story too. What was my story about? Alcoholism. But I only told it after another student was able to share how her mother's alcoholism effected her life. My experience wasn't with my mother, but it still greatly affected me, and she gave me the courage to say what I had to say because she took the brave step and told her story first.

Needless to say, it was a pretty interesting class period. Heavy, but interesting. Kind of changes the way you look at someone, but not in a bad way. At least not for me.