Crossing the Line

The Campus Y on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus is rapidly becoming my favorite place on earth. It appears only good things happen there.

Many months ago, I attended a conference there, designed to instill values of social change in high school kids. Social change... a broad term, possibly meaningless.

Perhaps no values of social change were instilled in me that weekend. I pretty much hold the same values of social change as I did before. But I did manage to find some personal change.

I sort of wrote about it previously and thought I might should post it here:

I live in a place where the only things more closed than all the shops on Sunday mornings are the minds of the citizens inhabiting the streets.
Intolerance is baked into every homemade apple pie and everybody’s welcome to a second helping of old-fashioned ignorance. It sounds mean of me to say, but I guess I’m a little bitter from all the years their attitudes have locked me within myself, bound me with my beliefs, and constricted me with my own convictions. Unable to see around what they know, they block everything else out.
It’s demoralizing to second guess yourself constantly. It’s unsettling to feel alone in your perceptions. It’s terrifying to face a world where everybody thinks you’re wrong. But I did, every day. I went to school and pretended to be something I’m not because the fear of being hated by everyone was greater than the fear of destroying myself from the inside out. Something had to give.
Finally, a beautiful beacon of hope landed in my mailbox one morning in the from of an acceptance letter to a youth conference at a nearby college. This conference was supposed to be all about tolerance in various forms and about being an active part of changing the world you live in for the better. This was what I needed. At the time, I had no idea how much.
The first night of the conference, I distinctly remember walking with the 100-member group across the sizable campus. The night air was the perfect temperature, and the campus streets were no longer cluttered by college students running late or cars circling around, lost and aimless. To be there after dark, it was like I was already an enrolled student.
In addition to the depiction of my collegiate fantasies, I was surrounded by people, for the first time in a long time, that I could’ve voiced my ecstatic appreciation to and they would’ve understood. On my right, two girls were engaged in a deep discussion about the theory of evolution. A pair ahead of me was comparing notes on their different religions, one Muslim and the other Christian. I overhead snippets of an openly gay boy chronicling his childhood and when he first recognized he was different. These discussions would never take place in the town listed on my nametag as “home.”
I could write for days about the many wonderful experiences that ensued, one stands out clearly as a turning point in my personal ideology.
In the run-of-the-mill feel good story of a movie “Freedom Writers,” the students participate in an activity in which the teacher reads a statement to the diverse group of psuedo-delinquents with hearts of gold, and they pass over a line taped to the floor if the statement applies to them. Watching the movie, I considered this just a passé plot device, designed to pull tears from the eyes of mushy viewers.
This was until I was asked to cross that line myself.
They marched all 100 of us into a room that looked like a shrunken gymnasium and lined us up against the wall, explaining the rules. At first, as they read the easier questions, to get us accustomed to the format, having to remind us every few seconds to remain completely silent. But as the questions delved deeper into the most personal aspects of our existence, the silence became voluntary.
In the beginning, I stayed mostly on the right side of the wall. I live a mostly untroubled life and the statements applying to depression, feeling unloved, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders just didn’t effect me.
Then came the religion questions. First she called, “Cross the line if you classify yourself as agnostic.” I wavered on the spot. I didn’t really consider myself agnostic, but people were more receptive to the word… They’d never know…
A handful of students walked across the room and turned to face their peers. I looked up at them, trying to arrange my face into an accepting expression. I felt for them.
Then I heard the words I had been dreading.
“Cross the line if you classify yourself as an atheist.” For a second, I hesitated. Nobody would ever know I was lying by staying safely on the right side. Then one brave girl slipped over the line and turned around. I couldn’t let her stand there alone. I couldn’t lie to myself. I walked.
With each step, I grew bolder. These were my beliefs. I should own them. I shouldn’t care about the judgmental thoughts I could see the 98 pairs of eyes trying to suppress. I faced them all defiantly. Where I thought I would be afraid, being in such a minority, I was emboldened. Empowered. In my thoughts, I dared them all to challenge me.
Then I slipped back into the group, and all the eyes watching me fell away.
Suddenly, I saw the kids on the other side of the room in a whole new light. I imagined the internal struggle they were probably undergoing and how heavy their feet seemed as they propelled themselves across the room, lining up to face judgment, themselves, their lives.
I greatly underestimated the value of this exercise. It’s hard to examine yourself and it’s hard to acknowledge that every person has a problem you will probably never know about. All of the people I’d formally seen as 2D were now real people, with real struggles.
I carry that feeling of standing on the other side of the line with me everywhere, every day. I try to cross that line at every opportunity. Instead of being scared of judgment, I try to face the crowd and own myself.
And, hopefully, I appreciate those who are also simply trying to do the same that much more.

Well, I meant to also write about the second Campus Y experience, but I think that is more than enough for now.