Everyone has a story
As the end of the year is quickly approaching, many of my afternoons and evenings have been spent going around to different departments and supporting my friends in their final performances, presentations, and readings. And yesterday was no different; one of my friends was doing a short reading of her senior honors thesis, an autobiographical piece she had written about a devastating upheaval in her life and the huge changes that followed.
Rebecca is someone I have known since freshman year, but we didn’t really become good friends until the end of my junior year. 3 years ago, she had been a suitemate of one of my friends from home, and when I heard the news about what had happened, I remember I felt sad, but I really didn’t know her all that well. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the audience and listening to Rebecca read the excerpt from this story that I was able to truly grasp what she went through.
You’re probably wondering: if Rebecca and I are such good friends, why hadn’t I talked to her about it before now? There is a very simple answer to this, and that is that she doesn’t let it define her, and the heartbreak that she has felt since then doesn’t show through her personality in a regular conversation that you have with her. There’s no way for anyone to tell. And it got me thinking – you never really know what people have gone or are going through just by seeing them from the outside.
Everyone has a story to tell, and I think that if we spent a little more time trying to find out just what that story is, that we would all be able to share a greater understanding of one another. It takes trust and the ability to listen to more than just spoken words to hear someone’s story. Not everyone is brave enough to stand in front of a room and share the intimate details of their life, like Rebecca, but I feel I have found ways to hear others’ stories, just by simply listening.
I have met some truly incredible people in these last four years, at UNC and all over the world; people that are built by their own experiences, brick by brick, that make them the person they are today. I think these stories are mesmerizing, captivating, and that every story deserves to be heard.
Graduating and moving to a new city is going to make it easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of a new chapter in life, but this is my challenge to myself: I am challenging myself, and each of you reading, to take more time to listen. To stop talking about ourselves and what’s going on in our lives, and instead just to listen to someone else and understand their story from the ground up.
