In college, Cheesy had an 8 a.m. English class. It was part of a liberal arts program in which the teachers were all wry, aging cynics who’d never quite escaped the hippy culture enough to make it as university professors. Her English teacher was the prototype. Under his sarcasm and witticisms lurked a simple love of humanity, which came out only when he taught Shakespeare. One morning, he walked into class and put his books down on his desk. He folded his hands together. He looked at the students seriously. He said, “Class, today we’re going to talk about… our feelings.” Cheesy burst out laughing. The rest of the class was silent. The teacher looked at her with fake shock on his face; Cheesy knew his dramatic entry had been just another joke. “Cheesy!” he smirked. “You’re so cynical!”
Students learn early on that, if you’re going to be a serious academic, you don’t talk about emotions. Ever. You don’t even talk about sentimentality (except maybe if you’re a sociology student, which is not real academia anyway). Cheesy knew that the moment she began to talk about… well - cheesy things, she would be alienating any of her listeners who considered themselves true academics.
But Cheesy’s gonna do it anyway. She would like to show you that traditionally cheesy subjects can be talked about in a professional, and even pleasant, way.
And since all cheesy things start with a story, we’ll begin with a story about Cheesy’s weekend. It was pretty outstanding. She hopped across an ocean for a surprise birthday visit, went to the concert of a South African peace hero, partied with friends and family from across the globe, and even got serenaded by mariachis.
But of all the outings and celebrations, there was one simple moment that kept resurfacing in Cheesy’s mind (like the English teacher’s entrance, but cheesier). Most of the birthday girl’s friends were staying overnight as guests in her house. One afternoon, a neighbour came by to introduce herself. One of the guests said hello back. This is the moment Cheesy remembers: the simple sweetness of the friend saying hello. The neighbour could have been anyone – an astronaut, an axe-murderer, an abortionist. What amazed Cheesy was how her friend immediately and unconsciously treated the neighbour as a sweet person, without knowing a thing about her.
Cheesy had always considered herself a more or less tolerant person. She had friends of all kinds of ethnicities, religious beliefs, and professions (although she’d never knowingly met an axe-murderer) (which one of “axe-murderer” or “axe murderer” means “person who murders with an axe” versus “person who murders axes”? Place your vote now). But until that simple, sweet hello, Cheesy had never realized that tolerance involves way more than race or religion. It means approaching every person as an individual, thinking of everyone you don’t know as a blank slate.
It’s surprisingly difficult to give people the benefit of the doubt. Prejudice pops up everywhere. We approach tall people with the assumption they’re more confident. We approach Asian people with the assumption they’re shier. We approach smiling people with the assumption they’re generally happy. We make assumptions based on makeup, gap teeth, gait, vocal pitch, and facial hair. One time Cheesy even assumed a guy was a dunce because he wore a track suit into a restaurant. Such stupid, meaningless things lead us to judge.
And we don’t just prejudge strangers. We do it even with the people closest to us. We assume that if a person liked Tom Petty ten years ago, he still does. We assume habits persist. We assume values persist. We assume beliefs persist. But all of these things change. It’s the hardest thing to approach someone you’ve loved for ages as a blank slate.
But it’s freeing. The best friends are ones you can continue to learn from. And it’s so cool to meet someone thinking, “Dude this person could be a leader in Scientology.” What fun conversations that would make. And it’s so cool to see someone and think, “Dude I’ve known this person for years, and I’m still learning about them.” Every person out there knows something you don’t. You can learn something from everyone. The track-suit boy indeed turned out to be a bit of a dunce, but a sweet one, who inspired Cheesy in many ways (and who she’d happily meet again, anywhere in the world, wearing any kind of track suit he pleased).
A blank canvas can be approached a million different ways. Some artists attack it. Some artists fear it. Some artists flirt with it, very gingerly, for a very long time, until they jump in. But the best artists retain that initial childlike enthusiasm with which they started off. And as many great artists have said, the artist’s job is to discover and reveal the beauty that is already there. It’s an attitude that can be applied to people just as well as art.
Cheesy’s English prof had taught Shakespeare for years and years. But you could still see the pleasure he took from it. He was still learning from Shakespeare, after four hundred years, after four thousand readings of the same forty texts. He was childlike about it. He was excited to discover and share interpretations. Cheesy does not want to moralize, because that isn’t professional. She only wishes to suggest that a particular approach to people leads to a particular state of mind which yields particular results and gives rise to particular emotions– respectively: blank slates, inspiration, education, and happiness.
There, was that so painful? If you said yes, then you’ve engaged in a conversation about pain, which is an emotion, which means you have no choice but to face the pain of talking about emotions. But don’t worry, we’re starting slow – open-mindedness isn’t really an emotion anyway.
