How to follow the project?
You can follow the project on Instagram and read the contributions while I'm gathering them and be informed when/if the book will be out. 😊
For more empathy and less discrimination
Empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/ noun:
The ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation.
This is the question I want to ask people, and gather their answers for others to read them.
Well, I find really difficult to stay silent about discrimination, and doing something against it helps me to channel my energy into something helpful, while maintaining some kind of mental balance.
The way I see it, there is an obvious lack of knowledge and understanding of the world we live in behind discrimination. I do believe that our education should never ever stop and that the education system has never been enough, it clearly fails at educating us in many ways, mostly when it comes to our emotional world, and knowing and understanding more can only help and will never harm. So I guess that's it, deep down, I just want to help people to understand more about others while I try and understand more about them, by listening to people's experiences, beliefs, issues, ...
Some time ago, I remembered an interview of a personality telling how society made him homophobic, until he discovered that his cousin was gay and that in short, because he was close to a person that suddenly he knew was gay, started to reconsider his beliefs. This might sound so simple and it is; a lot of discrimination happens because/when we don't know enough the people we discriminate. And of course, the same applies with all forms of discrimination, whether it's based on race, gender, status, age, disability, ...
This is also inspired by a video of Byron Katie on terrorism. Byron Katie has developed an impressively efficient technique to deconstruct our judgments and beliefs. In this video, she helps a person who is angry at the terrorists of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris to see things from the point of view of the terrorists; the person realizes that the terrorists simply have a different and totally understandable idea of how to reach peace, and starts to understand them and the actual facts with a lot more clarity.
Realistically, and despite the thousands of other humans we might meet during our lifetime, very few people will have the chance to meet and hear what an imam has to say, as well as a prisoner, a refugee, a porn actor and a military. I want to meet this whole range of beautiful humans, question them and publish what they say so others can read them. By reading how they feel and perceive things, I believe that the readers can develop more empathy and understanding of others.
The other thing I love about this idea is that, for those who will contribute by sharing their experiences, talking openly about ourselves in the most vulnerable way, while knowing that others will read what we feel, can actually be an incredibly efficient therapeutic/healing thing to do!
This is still a "work in progress" idea, it might evolve along the line, and I hope you will find it interesting too!
The Myers-Briggs personality test says I'm an advocate. Ah! What else... I've got a rare curiosity for a lot of very different things (including humans) as well as a genuine belief in the power of empathy and listening to our/people's emotions. Apart from that, I'm just some guy, really...
I would like to hear from all kinds of people: activists of all types, people who have been rejected by their families and people with the most amazing and healthy family, refugees, priests, imams, sikhs and people who don't believe in any gods, sole mothers, therapists, people who experience paranoia, people with a very high IQ, world travelers and people who have never left their country, homeless people and millionaires, feminists and sexists, people of any race and ethnies and racists and xenophobes, polyamorous people, prisoners, yogis and buddhist monks who spent most of their lives meditating in a temple away from the modern world, sex workers, people with one or several mental/physical disabilities or disorders, new parents, vegans and pro-meat eaters, twins, psychopaths, incels, undertakers and people with addictions, very old people, workaholic, victims of sexism and racism and hate crimes and rapes, hippies, sailors, people who are part of the BDSM/kink scene, war veterans, extro/ambi/introverts, people with OCD, transgender, non-binary and agender or gender fluid people, homosexual and pan/bisexual people and homophobic ones, people who took drugs, who are bipolar or mute, the most normal person in the world (if that really is a thing?), who lived in many different countries with very different cultures, blind and deaf people, dwarfs, autistic people, people who committed crimes, people with the most unusual professions, people who grew up with a single parent or parents of the same sex or have been adopted, artists who struggle or who are successful, punks and thugs, hikikomori, drag queens, people who experienced depression, who found love, people with ADHD or ADD, people who are very isolated, who grew up in a very toxic/broken environment, people with AIDS, people who lost their lovers or children, people suffering from anxiety or PTSD, gang members, people who cross-dress, people who meditate every day, people who practice tantric sex and people who struggle with their sexual life, fashion victims and people who don't care at all about how they look, astronauts, social workers, firefighters, people who are about to die or who almost died, ...
If you feel like sharing your experience, please feel free to! And/or if you know someone who you think could have something interesting to share, please help by sharing this page!
I publish the contributions I gather on Instagram, where I encourage you to follow the project to read them whenever I add some more. You can also read all the contributions here on the website.
By sharing this project!
That would truly be the most helpful thing, if you can share it on social media, send it to a friend or someone you know who might be interested in reading or participating in it, if you can write an article about it on your own website or anything... that would all be so helpful and encouraging! 😊
You can follow the project on Instagram and read the contributions while I'm gathering them and be informed when/if the book will be out. 😊