Change // Look in their Eyes.
A few years back I went into high school classrooms as a presenter for the Abstinence Resource Center on a regular basis. Because of the work I do to bring awareness to human trafficking and call out issues of exploitation and abuse that feed into it, I always ended my presentations by asking the students to look each other in the eyes. I wanted them to see the people around them as human beings because seeing people as objects to be used instead of people to be valued feeds a system of abuse, exploitation and trafficking.
The students always looked at me wondering if I was serious. When I assured them I was, they would squirm in their seats as they sheepishly turned and looked those around them right in the eyes. Then their eyes would look back in mine, and we saw each other.
We are trained by media messages and prejudices to look, but not truly see, those around us. We see the color of a person’s skin, their gender, the clothes they wear, their weight, who they have with them, what they drive - a million observations and from those observations we make judgements without ever seeing or trying to know that person. We decide their value, often how much worth a person has to us is dependent on what he or she can do for me, or how comfortable they make me feel. We place levels of value on other human beings based on how our judgements about who we have decided they are make us feel.
Friends, we have to stop writing stories in our minds for the people around us. We need to acknowledge our prejudices and insecurities as well as the judgements we form because of them, call them out and set them aside. We need to listen to understand and ask questions that will help us truly know a person. We need to look in each other’s eyes and recognize our collective humanity.
This month has been a doozy for racial injustice. Or more likely as my mom said when I was talking with her today, these things have always been happening we just haven’t seen them. This is true and it is resounding in the echoes of my heart.
When injustice happens and you aren’t the one the injustice happened against there are two words I have learned need to be said. They are, “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t matter if you are the one who chased down a man out for a run or held your knee on someone else’s throat. You don’t have to have committed the injustice to be sorry it has happened. To be sorry a system exists where men and women, human beings, still lose their lives because people write up hateful stories in their minds. Stories that come from generations of passed down prejudice and insecurity. Where I know good and well sorry doesn’t fix it, an apology acknowledges it, and just like I tell my children, sorry means nothing unless change follows it.
When I first learned about human trafficking, I was horrified I had been so ignorant of something so terrible happening in my back yard. I didn’t have a lot of words and I have learned there is a sensitivity when sharing about another person’s story of injustice. I feel the same now. This injustice has been and still continues to happen literally in my backyard and I have been mostly ignorant for too long. So I will give what I can, my voice. I will do what I know to do today, I will listen to the stories, I will put aside my prejudice, ask forgiveness for my ignorance and choose to do better at learning.
I am here friends, and I desperately want to look into your eyes. I want to sit around your campfires and I want to hear your stories. I want to say I am sorry for the hurt. I want to cry. I want our stories to rub up against each other’s and I want to change.
Every day we are living in communities that are becoming more and more divided and friends, we have stopped looking in each other’s eyes. We have stopped seeing humanity as the great unifier and instead we have allowed fear, insecurity and fabricated stories to turn our hearts hateful and bitter.
I beg of you, let’s stop. Let us commit to be story listeners, deep eye lookers, positive assumption givers and when injustice is blatant let’s do the adult thing, humble ourselves and say sorry. It is the kind, humane thing to do.
Look into my eyes, none of us are objects to be exploited, we are each human beings to be valued.
Let’s live it.
