First, remember that we are all the same. We're all regular people trying to make the most of our lot. So, don't let people convince you that they're any better, but on the flip, don't let success go to your head. Second, never fall into believing that you really understand anything.
Always focus on what you don't know. If you're doing it right, every five years you should be able to look back and marvel at how naïve [you are] and [how] little you understood. That's how you know you're growing.
These are the words of my first Sociology Professor. A visiting professor from another University who introduced me to the field of study I would come to call my own—a field of study I would both fall in love with and find myself hating for every bit of inequity it revealed to me.
This man, over the course of two semesters, would help strengthen the foundation upon which the majority of my academic and personal identities would be built. Though he had his reservations with the field of study, he taught it as passionately and convincingly as I have ever seen.
All the same, he did so without falling into the trap of self-assuredness. As I sit here at 2:32 am, looking back on our last bit of correspondence and reflecting on my previous semester, I realize that the words I have shared with you all above—along with the rest of the email this professor sent me—are incredibly important. In fact, once I get back to campus, I intend to post these words somewhere I can see them every day because they ring so true.
Ultimately, no matter what my pride or anyone else’s says, “we are all the same”.
At first glance, this line seems obvious, it seems like something that not many people in the 21. Yet, there are individuals who challenge this seemingly simple notion. Regardless of those individuals, it is important to acknowledge that every person of every race, gender identity, sexuality, religion, citizenship status, educational status, socio-economic status, and anything else you can think of, is the same. As this professor told me to remember, we are all trying to “make the most out of our lot”.
Now, this is not to say that there are no differences between people—such a statement is obviously false and could lead to the increased marginalization of certain individuals (for further evidence to this effect, consider reading Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva).
The differences between us, however, are one of the things that make interaction so beautiful, one of the things that make life worth living. But it needs to be said that we are all human and thus all worthy of some small amount of mutual respect. Do some people work to revoke that mutual respect? Yes. But we should never forget that we’re all sentient beings who are capable of the greatest acts of love and the most horrifying acts of betrayal.
In the end, my professor was correct—we are just people trying to make it. Our differences come from the fact that making it is defined differently from person-to-person. We all face our own struggles and we all have to deal with whatever life throws at us, and I can honestly say that I, as a person, am guilty of devaluing the struggles of some individuals—specifically those who I view as more financially stable than myself.
This is something we cannot allow to happen. We can’t allow ourselves to fall into the trap Marx describes as false consciousness
We need to be aware of inequities and we need to fight them passionately, but we cannot allow ourselves to lose compassion for those on the other side of the arena while we are doing so.
If we do, we become just as culpable as they are for reproducing the social situations we are trying desperately to escape. This is something I do not want to do, but it is something I fear I may have fallen prey to because of the severity of my discontent with our current social and political climates.
No matter how unsavory it is, it is alright to fall into that hole as long as we recognize that we are in it and climb back out—we’re only human after all.
A good way to make sure you climb out of that hole is by, as my professor said above, “Always focus on what you don’t know.”
In the end, there are always a billion things that we do not know about. In fact, the act of learning is really just the process of discovering more things we don’t understand. With this truth ringing in our ears, it becomes important to acknowledge that we’ll never know everything. Doing that, and focusing on what we do not know instead of hyper-focusing on what we do know allows us to gain perspective.
If we never know everything, how can we know anything about anybody else? Hell, we’re all ignorant of something in the end, and recognizing that can get us out of that hole and back into the fight for equality—or even just back into life.
All in all, as we move forward into the future and as every day comes and goes, keep my professor’s words in mind. “We are all the same” and “we never really know anything.” If you do, I promise you, your impact on others will be magnified beyond your wildest dreams.
