Who are YOU?
The UK government wants to know…. because it’s Census Day!
Don’t worry – it’s quite superficial.
You won’t be asked about your sneaky cheat day on your diet or that search you did for “Killer for hire to take out my Math teacher”.
Who do you know, knows you?
At a deep level..
Your fears
Your concerns
Your desires
Your dreams
All of us want to know we matter
And that we mean something to someone around us.
The fear of loneliness can drive a lot of behaviour is questionable.
If you want people to know you, then you must begin by being curious, and listening in a non-judgemental way.
When you put in the time to sit down and listen to someone else, you will make a deep human connection that can only go both ways.
For me, there are times when I wish I was immortal, so that I can explore everything the world has to offer, learn about the different cultures of the world, invent things that make life better.
But the people I love would not survive, and it isn’t feasible to have everyone be immortal, as the planet would quickly be over-run with humans.
Now you know a bit about me: that I have an impossible wish.
So tell me.
What’s the one thing that very few people know about you?
Day 21 of #30daysofvideos challenge.
Transcript
Hi, it’s a 19th of March. In the UK it is Census day.
It’s the day where I’ve had to log on to a portal and answer some questions about myself about who lives with me, but people my household, my age, what I do my education, my, the sex I was born with, and gender I know identify myself with.
Which is, I believe, a really good step when you compare to previous years where you only had a binary male, female answer to this particular question which didn’t serve all of us.
This led me to, to think about the question the Who are you? Who are you? Who am I question? question is not something that is easy to answer, because it’s multi layered.
The people that you work with you only know them from a very superficial level.
If you have lunch with them, then it’s deeper.
If you have things in common, deeper still.
You could live with somebody and not know anything remotely important about that person.
That brings me to thinking about the value of listening, really non judgmental, listening, that we don’t practice enough in our day to day lives.
I go on about this quite a bit, because of my work with Samaritans, but I like to highlight this again today because it’s census day.
This morning, I was having a conversation with a friend who shared with us (there were few us few of us on the call) that he had taken a shortcut in pursuit of his goals, a shortcut that he wasn’t very proud of.
And it was a vulnerable moment that he shared in our little group, and asked us what we thought.
And I felt that this sort of conversation is not something that would happen easily. And he’s admitted that it’s not something that he shared outside our circle anyway.
It’s because, and he said this, it’s because he knew in our circle, there was no judgement. And he felt that he could share everything about himself.
And that’s what I just wanted to highlight today.
Because I really, deeply feel that what everyone needs, at our core, is to know that we are loved, that we are heard.
And that we are seen, maybe even that we are understood.
But not anyone can understand how we feel unless they’ve walked in our shoes.
But the important thing is, we want someone to see us and to hear us.
And you can’t do that if you have a filter that says “Oh, you like dancing instead of science. That’s really girly.
And that’s quite judgmental thing to say to somebody which stops them from wanting to tell you more.
So if you want to have a deeper connection with the people around you, to know who they really are, then sit down and listen.
Ask questions, be curious and don’t let judgement get in a way.
That’s my thought for you this Sunday on census day in England.
I hope you found it useful and I wish you a fantastic day.