To me, one of the most beautiful, magnificent parts of this world is the spark of humanity we see every day. Humans are able to feel pain and love and heartbreak and fear. One of the most notable pieces of our emotions, however, is our ability to create meaning from our life stories.
I’ve been told that our generation is a series of mess-ups and that we aren’t going to be able to create beauty from the ashes we were given, but I don’t believe that. Our generation has been bombarded with organizations that fight for our humanity, such as More Love Letters, So Worth Loving and To Write Love On Her Arms. We’re constantly seeing people fighting for other people.
One of the most well-known story-fighters is the photographer Brandon Stanton who takes portraits of strangers in New York City. He posts these pictures onto his website and social media sites as a platform called “Humans of New York,” with a quote from the strangers in each picture.
Most of the time, comments are very sweet underneath the caption. People scroll through their Instagram feed to encounter a stranger with a quote, and we are able to relate to the stranger in a 1 x 1 picture because the words remind us of a similar situation we have been through. This mixture of quotes from strangers opens a door into a person’s life like we’ve never really seen before.
However, this week, the comments weren’t as uplifting. Stanton posted a picture of two teenagers wearing matching Adidas pants with their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. The caption under the picture said, “We’ve been dating for 10 months now, so we are just trying to keep the passion alive.” People left comments on this picture explaining how the two teenagers were too young to experience passion. Other comments explained that if they lost their passion so quickly then they should probably just break up now.
Hundreds of negative comments piled up until Stanton had enough. Stanton rarely ever comments on his pictures, but this time, he did.
“Not sure why the comment section is trying to force an adult perspective of relationships on two high schoolers. Let them be sixteen,” he explained. “Ten months is 8 percent of their lives.”
After Stanton’s wise words were posted, the comment section changed to more uplifting words to encourage these two lovebirds. His comment ended up receiving over 100,000 likes.
However, why did it take Stanton’s comments to understand the hurtfulness of people’s words toward this young couple?
I think it’s because most people experience some form of young love, and we are told that our relationships and feelings aren’t real or prominent. Older generations have explained to us that there will be worse pains in our lives and our feelings right now are inadequate to the other heartbreaks people face out in the world.
I believe this way of teaching is almost poisonous. We’re all born into a pile of skin and we learn, day by day, how to work with all of these emotions that are placed inside us. As we grow up we all walk down different paths, and each situation affects each person differently. We all feel things differently and we all have a right to feel love and pain however we want to feel it.
Even with this freedom of being able to feel and express emotions how we see fit, we still want someone to tell us that we’re not alone. We want someone to tell us that we’re not crazy and that everything is going to be OK in the end.
That’s where the magic of “Humans of New York” comes in. I think we all love “Humans of New York” because we can scroll lazily through our Instagram feed and see a picture of a stranger who is feeling something similar to what we may be feeling. We feel less alone and we feel less crazy. We feel like someone finally understands the pain we have gone through.
It’s unfair to glance at a picture of two teenagers and tell them that their feelings are inadequate because they are young. Thousands of people see those comments and that picture, and some of those viewers are 16-year-olds who are feeling the same exact thing. That’s the whole point of these organizations: bringing hope and accepting everyone’s feelings to be all equally beautiful and powerful.
It doesn’t matter if you think their feelings are silly and immature; they're honest and raw feelings that deserve to have recognition, just as your pain and struggles deserve to be recognized. The only way we are going to make this world better is if we understand that we are all created differently with different emotions and experiences and thoughts, and we all deserve to be heard and accepted for who we are.
Because let’s be honest, all any of us want at the end of the day is to be heard, accepted for who we are and loved.
