6/20/24 How my College Reunion Changed My Perspective on Life
What is the purpose of this podcast? To encourage people by sharing.
Live intro with hook - Hello my lovelies. Welcome to the Moving Toward Better Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Bemmes, and Today we’re talking about perspective. For this episode, the perspective is based on my recent college reunion and memories from the past. It was a fascinating time, and I’m excited to share what I gleaned from the weekend.
So why are we talking about my college reunion? Because it was filled with lessons and illustrations of some of the things I talk about all the time, and human behavior is truly one of my favorite things on the planet to discuss, so here we go.
Let’s start with the fact that I attended Denison University, a small liberal arts college in the middle of Ohio in the 80s. Fun fact, Steve Carell went to Denison at the same time I did and was hilarious back then too. Some people, including my own children, wonder why in the world I would choose a small school, essentially in the middle of farmland to go to college, but even at that age, long before I knew I had ADHD, I knew that a small college in a small town was exactly what I needed to be able to concentrate on my education and not get too distracted by the allure of social events, bars and whatnot, and it worked for the most part.
My college graduating class of 500 ish was actually smaller than my high school class of nearly 800, and I was mostly happy with it. What was challenging eventually was that everyone either knew each other or knew of each other, and that sometimes meant people made assumptions about you that were completely off base. It made for quite an interesting time to hear a rumor about yourself or someone else that was completely untrue, and being on the staff of the newspaper and residence hall staff, there was plenty of gossip to go around, but I digress.
For most of my life, I felt like I was different, and college mostly confirmed rather than destroyed that, but for the first time in my life, I learned to lean into who I truly was, and I felt better about myself than I ever had which is probably why I look back on those years fondly for the most part. I say mostly because I was assaulted on that campus as well, and before you ask, I never pressed charges because it was the 80s, I was at a frat party and I had drunk a beer. In the 80s, that was enough to dismiss the case, so I left it be. Years later, I’m healed from that incident, and I can look back on my college days for the amazing life experience they afforded me.
I got a social education beyond anything I could imagine because I was around people who were so different from the people I grew up around. For the first time in my life, I had friends who were black, who were not born in the US, who were wealthier than anyone I had ever known and who had lived lives I couldn’t imagine having lived.
Most importantly, I found a group of friends who were like me. We didn’t quite fit the mold of the traditional young woman of the 80s, and we were ok with that. It was what bonded us together. For me, it was the first time I truly felt at home in my own skin, and I loved the young woman I was when I graduated.
Before we get to the reunion part, I also want to add that for years I didn’t go to any reunions because I graduated in 1985. Yes, I’m that old, but nearly my entire friend group graduated a year earlier. One year while visiting campus for something else, a friend who worked for the college asked me why I didn’t come back for reunions, and I told him that he and all of my other friends had a different reunion year, so I didn’t feel the need to come back. He, then, worked a bit of magic and made me an honorary member of the Class of 1984, and now I go to reunions.
So, this year was the 40th reunion for the class of 1984, and my best friend from college and I decided to attend. Most of our friend group was unable to make it, but that let us spend time with others who were friends but were not the friends we hung out with every day. So where did the perspective come in? Let’s start with the elevator ride from the garage before we even got our registration package.
Someone I knew of but wouldn’t remember me because he was much more popular than I was was talking with a couple of his friends, telling them how he got sued for something that wasn’t his fault. He was telling them how much he appreciated his insurance agent who worked very hard for him for over a year to make sure that the outcome went the way it was supposed to. It was a moment for me to realize everyone has ‘stuff’, even those who haven't aged much in 40 years and have so much success in their lives past and present.
Then we went to register and had difficulty finding the right spot because the building that we needed to go to didn’t exist the last time I was on campus, and we didn’t have a map. That reminded me of how we can completely take something for granted because it’s part of our everyday life and not realize how difficult that same thing can be for someone else.
Then we started meeting up with friends, some we hadn’t seen since graduation, and it was eye opening. Some are doing so well, and some are doing the best they can. One friend has multiple immune disorders and yet, her smile still lights up any space she’s in. Another has had five major surgeries, including a burst appendix that caused sepsis, and she’s still fighting for the rights and acceptance of marginalized groups for a living. Yet another lost the love of her life, and she continues to build an amazing life and legacy. One lost both of her parents early, and she helps older people have a wonderful day each day that she spends with them, and I love each and every one of these women for who they were and who they are, and it reminds me that there are so many good people in this world. It also reminds me of the saying that if everyone threw their problems in a pile and you could see what everyone else deals with, you would gladly take your own problems back.
Then there were my personal revelations which were no small thing. You see, my best friend from college brought her photo albums, and I was astounded by them because there were pictures of me that I had never seen or didn’t remember seeing, and they blew me away. I saw pictures of a young woman who was nearly 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighed 125 pounds soaking wet, and I say that because I was literally soaking wet in the pictures because of a tug of war event we participated in that landed me in a pond. I looked at that young woman and for a moment I was sad because that young woman thought she was fat. You could see how happy she was in the moment, but I wish I could go back and tell her how amazing she looked since no one in her life at the time ever did, but as I said before, those were some awesome days.
That tug of war and being the one that got pulled into the pond meant I had to shower three times to get the yuck washed off. Sounds awful, but it was such a fun day that the yuck was a small price to pay.
There were also pictures of an Academy Awards party where everyone dressed up, and I was the person in a tophat, bodysuit and red fishnet stockings that announced everyone as they entered the party. It was fun and camp and hilarious, and I had forgotten about it completely. It reminded me that no matter what happened in our past, most of us have some good memories to intertwine with the not so good, not all, I know, but most of us do.
Some of those memories might seem really strange to some people, like drinking in the graveyard that was behind one of my dorms, or singing ‘Satisfaction’ with others in my dorm to release stress or laughing about losing a paper I was typing on a mainframe computer at 3 in the morning and luckily having a tech savvy friend there who recovered the paper, but not before I had to agonizingly watch every keystroke I made be recreated before my eyes. Guess who learned to save her work and save it often that night? I know those might seem odd to some people, but each memory has a wonderful life lesson or hilarious story attached to it, and I am forever grateful for that.
And that brings me to a video I saw this week by Jimmy Carr, a British comedian and show host. who said that most of us in the modern western world have a bit of life dysmorphia. We forget that we are in the top 1% of people who have ever lived in terms of housing luxury and food intake. He said we live like kings, but if you think about it, we actually live better than most of the kings and nobility of the past. We have heated and cooled homes with hot and cold running water. We can go to a building to get whatever food and drink we desire, and some people have those things brought to their door without ever having to leave their home. We can travel thousands of miles in hours, even from continent to continent, when those trips used to take months, and in some cases years, and the journey was fraught with life threatening dangers. And we can talk to people in most of those places instantly and see them too. As my middle child is fond of saying, ‘What a time to be alive’. And again, I know not everyone has all these amenities available to them, but many, many do.
Do we still have problems? Of course we do, but we tend to live in a society where our news sensationalizes everything so every problem feels huge and insurmountable when we used to be a nation filled with people who loved a good problem to solve, like seeing how quickly we could get to space. The news also minimizes the good of humanity by maybe sharing one or two feel good stories in a show. That makes it look like the challenges of life are huge and insurmountable, and the good in the world is a rare thing. What if, instead of focusing on everything that is wrong in the world, we could return to being the problem solvers we once were?
What if we started looking at the problems and challenges before us as puzzles to solve rather than issues to fight over? What if we put aside what color, religion or political party we belong to and start working as humans to make life better for all humans. What if we got rid of the short sighted thinking that life is like a pie, and if someone gets a bigger piece of it somehow they’re stealing it from us? And on the flipside of that, if we’re someone who has a bigger piece of the pie, as it were, what if we look for ways to help others with less to live better? I know that’s not going to happen with all people, but what if? What if each of us could be that person?
This is the perspective that I was reminded of by some of the people who helped me learn to love myself and others better, those who are like me and those who aren’t. They helped shape the young woman I became, and probably helped me more than they’ll ever know to keep going when the going got rough throughout my adult life. They also taught me that we’re more alike than different no matter what our religion, skin color or political party, although it’s important to acknowledge differences because they are profound in the way we experience life.
And perhaps, that was the greatest gift of college and this reunion, that I’m reminded, especially in the area of Liberal Arts, that a Liberal Arts education teaches us to think critically and independently and expand our mind to see the world through the eyes of others, to understand and accept that everything we grew up believing might not be the one and only truth in this world, and when you approach life this way, you heal and bond with your fellow humans in ways that can and will astound you because you know a better world is possible.
So I think I will leave you with this challenge. I double dog dare you to help one person per day for the rest of this month or if you’re up for it, this year. Smile at a stranger. Leave a bigger tip than usual. Buy local art. Go to a festival or art exhibit that’s different from the ones you usually go to. Follow people on social media who don’t look or act like you and only comment when you can be supportive. Also, consider the things that offend you and why they offend you, and think about how your beliefs might offend them, and as long as you’re not hurting each other, what if you let it go?
If you really want to challenge yourself and you’re one of my white, Christian listeners, go somewhere you are a minority. Talk with people of other religions and do more listening than talking. Explore other cultures either by visiting or watching videos made by people from that culture rather than by people from your own culture. You may be shocked at what you learn, not just about them, but about yourself and how you are perceived by others. It truly can be eye opening.
In my hometown we have something called The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. It goes beyond just talking about slavery and the Civil War, and to be honest, I was a little scared to go there because I thought it would be an attack on those who supported slavery. When I got there, it was a lesson in perspective because I’d always been taught about slavery from books written by white people. It was a very different perspective at The Freedom Center, as we call it.
The stories were told by black people about black people during and after slavery. They centered on the black experience rather than slave owners and abolitionists, and I realized for the first time that everything I knew about slavery came from people who were not slaves, including multiple biographies about Harriet Tubman that were my favorites in grade school. The stories didn’t vilify white people. They talked about black people and their conditions, and not all of it was bad. That’s what made it so real and believable, and the stories went beyond the Civil War to ways that slavery still shows up in society today. Much of that is in a space for adults only because it is something children should never have to see or experience, even though we know it happens.
My hope in this challenge is to dispel hate and to foster understanding. Will there always be things we disagree with? Of course, but when you are willing to listen to understand rather than respond, you may find that peace on earth is more possible than our news media, politicians and those who control them would like us to believe. So, my lovelies, I wish you peace. I wish you love, and I wish you joy in all you do.
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Love you all!
Show Notes
It’s amazing what a life experience like a college reunion can bring about. It can be a humbling and yet uplifting experience, and that’s what my most recent one was for me. Come along and listen to the experiences and for the challenge that I issue to get your own perspective.
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