Nobody Gets Anybody

I just finished John Green’s new book “Turtles All the Way Down” and it’s fantastic. I could create dozens of posts about the ways in which this book moved me, but I’m going to focus on a single line A character named Daisy is lamenting that she can’t fully grasp the mental illness that her friend, Aza, struggles with, to which Aza responds “It’s okay. Nobody gets anybody else, not really. We’re all stuck inside ourselves.” This line struck me as a teacher, husband, father, and, truthfully, as someone who struggles with his own particular brand of anxiety (case in point, I’m writing this post absurdly early in the morning despite desperately needing sleep to fight off a cold because this was one of those days where my brain decided it wanted to do donuts in my skull). Try as we might, we can never fully understand those around us. We can never truly climb inside their head and see the world through their eyes. Hell, we can’t even truly understand ourselves (as the book poignantly illuminates). But we have to try.

There’s two pitfalls that we can find ourselves in when it comes to empathy. One is arrogance: Assuming that we can fully understand how another person experiences the world. That we are expert empathizers who know precisely what others go through. Or that the way that our brains are wired must be the way that other people’s brains are wired. That our strengths and struggles are the same for everyone. My wife, who battles anxiety, often jokes about the banal advice she often receives. She’s constantly told “just don’t worry about it,” as if this will be the secret solution that she’s been searching for over decades. Eureka! Simply “not worrying” might be easy for some people, but it might not be as easy for others.

The other pitfall is nihilism. Once we acknowledge that we can never fully understand another’s world, it’s tempting to just not even try. To go through life only focused on our own perspective since that’s the one we know the best. This is an equally flawed approach that results in us being detached from those around us. Our brains are sorting machines. They insist on categorizing information into separate sections. As a result, we gravitate to binary, all-or-nothing categorizations. But we must resist this. Our brains will probably tell us that we either can know exactly what others are going through or that we don’t have a chance of knowing so don’t bother trying. But we have to embrace the messiness of the gray area between these two poles.

As a teacher, this is difficult for me. It’s hard enough for me as a husband, when I only have one person who I struggle to understand. I’m constantly failing to understand my wife’s particular struggles, and she’s constantly failing to understand mine. Then I head into school where I hope to pull off this feat with a thousand kids. And this is when I need to resist my impulse to either assume that I know what’s going on with each student or to not even try since it’s such a monumental task. How do I do this? Ummm… not quite sure. But I have a few places where I’d like to start.

To begin with, I need to constantly remind myself that education revolves around relationships. That students are not emotionless empty vessels that we are expected to simply pour facts into. A teacher may be the world’s foremost historical expert, but if they don’t know their students and the students don’t know them then the kids won’t learn a thing. Acknowledging this fact will force me to try to know each kid (despite the fact that I’ll never fully accomplish this goal).

Next, I need to be a better listener. As educators, this doesn’t always come naturally. We’re the ones that are supposed to do the talking, right? How else can we rain down wisdom and knowledge on our pupils? Although we may know the most about our content, the students know the most about themselves. We ask them to diligently and patiently listen to us when they’re learning about the topic, but that also means we need to diligently and patiently listen when we’re learning about them.

Finally, I can read. I’m reminded of a James Baldwin quote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” A truly exceptional book helps you to step inside another’s head and live there for a few hundred pages. It helps you see the ways in which people are differently but also the ways in which we are similar. John Green pulled this feat off with “Turtles All the Way Down” and in doing so, he left me a little better equipped to connect with others. As a result, I think I’m now a slightly better teacher, husband, father, and anxious human.