How do we try not to try so hard?

Alexa Beyer
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

Today, our group went to Hunt’s Point for our first of many visits getting to know the community. I felt us — all of us, myself included — mining the people we met for answers, pelting them with questions like where should we go and who should we talk to: anything to craft our agenda for the afternoon.

It’s interesting to compare this experience, which almost seemed impossible not to do, to our conversation in class this week in which we all agreed how important it is to listen and build genuine relationships with people before doing this. I would guess the reason a large number of us are in the program stems from this core belief. Carrie repeatedly emphasized in class how this was only the empathy step in the process. And yet…

So this leaves me wondering how to fight the urge to be freaking productive and get stuff in exchange for interactions if our conscious beliefs don’t appear to protect us from ourselves.

I’m going to be honest — I have an easy time having interest in people once I know them a little bit. But in these early interactions, I find that it’s the time I’m most prone to my ego taking over and only being interested in others to the extent that they can plug me into what I want to uncover. Having done this alone almost every time and in a group so rarely, it was a privilege to get to later bring this up with 3 people who also have these topics at the forefront of their minds. I’d like to pose this question to any Social J-ers out there who identify with the conflict.

After the community center, we all went to a cafe where Ariam and I fell into conversation with the barista, David. He told us about the protests against the cafe yesterday. Some in the community feel that it’s a sign of gentrification, but the owner is a black woman who has lived in Hunt’s Point her entire life. And I’m just going to be real: it was a way better conversation than the conversations we were trying to have earlier. It taught us a lot more about the community and potential conflicts within it. And we weren’t trying half as hard to have it.

I don’t know where this leaves us, since ‘don’t try so hard’ is stupid advice for anyone who takes anything seriously. But that was the pattern — and for the neurotic among us, I’m wondering how to reproduce this in the moments when we really, really want to build a relationship with someone who we know in advance to be essential to the community.

Alexa Beyer

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Writer, journalist, and bad democrat who wants you to think differently about democracy. You can sign up for my email list here: http://eepurl.com/c5gGwv