07/14/2024
There are sometimes when I watch a show or movie and my 'Coach Spidey Senses' kick in. Surprisingly it happened while watching the BRATS documentary.
For those who will never watch it, the premise is that a member of the labeled Brat Pack, Andrew McCarthy, decided to grab a camera and ask others who were labeled 30 years ago about how it affected them when they were so all young and passionate to be taken seriously as actors. (Bonus gift was commentary by Malcolm Gladwell on the term bestowed on the group but also the lack of diversity in John Hughes/80s teen films.)
Over the course of interviews with other Brat Pack members (and a few mistakenly labeled), I found a few gems that we all should be applying to our daily life for situations like the one experienced by this group, injury to our sense of self:
1. Find a group that shares your experiences.
When you enter a room where you believe that others understand your daily life then you increase the ability for you to contemplate other perspectives. The security of not having to explain what it is like to be “you” out in the world removes some of the difficulty to share more personal parts of yourself with others.
I call this “the gift of starting in the middle of the story.” In the presence of security and shared experience, one is fully able to listen to how others have processed or perceived similar situations allowing for new possibilities to be explored by oneself.
Student groups, employee networks, professional or community organizations all exist to connect people on any number of issues, identity, or experience that can help round out how we view, judge and value ourselves.
2. Don’t waste any of your energy carrying someone else’s baggage.
30 years is a long time to hold onto a perception that one felt injured by but I am sure we all can sympathize (and ignore some similar situations that we’ve been hoarding for as long).
We may not have the option to confront all those who have injured us with their words or actions but we can make a choice on keeping the negative feelings attached to us. Often, we are the only ones who carry the weight of a detrimental viewpoint about ourselves when the other individual barely remembers anything.
Keeping the injury alive in the present, no matter how much we would wish, will never correct another’s belief of us or a past transgression. So, in situations that leave you feeling poorly envision yourself physically leaving their “baggage” with them when you exit the interaction. No Carry-Ons Allowed!
