Confronting People With Humanity

One of my talents is that I can get anybody to laugh. For instance, one of our more serious professors, who is olde and wizened and wears khaki trousers up to his chin, was asking what the function of the auricles of the heart was. For those who don't know, the left and right auricles of the heart are like little flaps, and these flaps are responsible for secreting atrial natriuretic polypeptide (and because of the change in font, you can tell that I had to look it up again). However, what I said was that the auricles were responsible for flight. He stopped pointing and gesturing and just looked at me and repeated "Flight?" and I, with the projected false confidence learned from years of exposure to science and medicine, responded, "Yeah, to fly" and made a flying motion with my fingers (and didn't include my arms). And then he laughed a small but real laugh, and I won that battle, and everyone there remembered auricles (the name, at least) because of this exchange.

That is an instance of confronting people with humanity. People can seem intimidating. They can come across as jerks or angry or bitter or sad or aloof, and they very well could be at this stage in their lives. But those are all just attributes that are put on top of people. They aren't ever just angry or jerks or bitter or sad or aloof. They're people. And if you can recognize that, you can find the people underneath the circumstance.

I learned this principle while traveling through Europe. In a given day, I could be exposed to a variety of languages, cultures, upbringings, religions, social constructs, and whatever else. But at the end of those days, every single human I met ended up just being a human. They weren't French or Scottish or German or Spanish or Italian or Turkish or perverted or depressed or creepy or old or young or ugly or hot or fat or skinny or tall or short or rich or poor or thieves or generous. They were people. And once you can recognize the personhood behind all of the layers of culture and social norms, you can speak to that. And it will speak back, because we're all humans here. And that's how you confront people with humanity.