Transcriber: Annet Johnson Reviewer: gaith Takrity
Have you ever felt completely and utterly different?
Not in an attention-capturing kind of way,
like telling people
that you only eat your chicken nuggets while you drink milk at the same time.
But inside, internally, as if the machinery that exists in you,
the cogs and wires that keep you going,
they’re different than everybody else,
as if everything in you turns counterclockwise
while for everybody else it goes the opposite direction.
You’re not alone.
This isn’t specific to you,
because within us all we crave something called community.
A system of relationships that builds us up,
that gives us a safe environment,
something stable, comfortable, secure,
to take risks, to realize our potential.
And to also be challenged, but be taken care of at the same time.
It’s hard to find this.
You don’t just find it anywhere.
And some of us can spend our entire lives
trying to find the people that make us truly feel connected,
and could remove that empty space inside of you
that can sometimes feel like you’re not in a place of belonging.
Again, you’re not alone with this.
And I think one of the key aspects of feeling it
is when you feel as if the people around you,
whether they are family, your peers, or your colleagues,
you don't feel as if they have the same values or beliefs.
They have different backgrounds.
That one piece of thread
that would connect you with them, doesn’t occur.
Throughout our lives, we’re going to transition through these intervals
because we don’t all just stay in the same place.
So even if right now you feel a bit comfortable with who you are
and the people you’re around, whether it’s moving to a new job,
moving to a new country, or transitioning to a new school,
you’re going to be in a new environment
and with that, you’re going to find yourself looking for a new community.
I know a thing or two about trying to face the mystery, the unknown,
and the challenge of finding people to be one with.
Because if you keep that feeling of adversity in you,
you can feel as if you’re never going to progress,
things are never going to get better,
and you’re always going to be kept where you are.
But I’m getting off track.
My name is Joey and I grew up on a sailboat.
When I was six years old,
my parents decided to move and live on a sailboat
with me and my sister at the time, just for one year.
I grew up and was born in the United States
and they had felt as if their careers, their nine to five,
had kept them away from their children.
In addition to the fact that being parents
and having responsibilities meant they couldn’t find the challenges
or seek the risks that would help them grow as their own individuals.
So as a six-year-old, I lived on this catamaran with my family.
Oh, that tan.
I miss it dearly.
We lived on this boat for one year as they learned the ins and outs
of what it meant to generate your own electricity,
to make your own water,
to be going to bed during a night in which you were rocked to sleep with waves.
There were a lot of idiosyncrasies that came with it
and didn’t stop after a year.
One year turned into nine years
and I didn’t move off the sailboat until I was 15 years old.
Now, if you’ve ever felt a hard time connecting with somebody
because they might have a slightly different background than you,
imagine growing up on a wooden boat in the ocean.
I was also homeschooled.
I know, right?
These kinds of things presented challenges to me as a child.
They made it more harder to find people that I could connect with.
Now, when I was this age, I didn’t mind as much
because the only thing a kid needs to do to connect with somebody
is to know how to play tag and have fun.
But as I got older,
it became more difficult as I was within different environments.
When I was nine, we moved to Mexico
and I ended up entering a local Mexican school,
all Spanish speaking.
I was one of the only foreigners that went there,
in addition to not speaking Spanish.
Now this was where I started feeling really isolated
and very different from those around me.
And subconsciously to cope with it,
I tried to figure out, “What did I need to do?”
What did I need to do to be connected,
to feel like I was just one of my classmates,
one of my friends?
This was when I started to do something called “code-switching.”
Code-switching is a popular theory that has many definitions.
But for me, and the way that I’m going to talk about it today in this talk,
it's a way in which when you're entering a new environment,
whether it’s a new culture within a larger country
or within a micro environment
like a new job, workplace, or school scenario,
where you feel like you need to abandon some of your own behaviors,
your natural background and mannerisms in order to adapt and assimilate
to be synonymous with those around you because you want them to like you.
More than that, you crave that connection that you don’t feel like you have.
So when I was in this Mexican school,
I was the one white guy who was trying to pick up local slang,
trying to listen to local music, going out with friends,
and doing a bunch of things
that I would have never thought of doing beforehand
because I really wanted to fit in.
This isn’t uncommon.
We do this all the time.
But what I had to do when I was 10, 11, and 12,
was really pay attention to people around me to learn these behaviors,
to learn what they cared about, to learn what they liked,
because that’s how I knew I could build a stronger friendship.
This is me,
looking very happy, just thrilled,
being content within my school and trying to find my way.
Because ultimately I wanted this.
And classmates and friends and I got that.
But then life took a slightly different turn.
And when I was 15,
and after I spent a couple of years studying in this exact school
and then transitioned back to online digital learning when I was 14,
before it was cool during pandemic era studying online,
my parents decided they wanted to move and I was right there with them.
I was just as excited to travel and see another place.
And so we decided to move and live in Malaysia
for a year and a half when I was 15.
Now, I had lived in Mexico for six years.
I was super comfortable, I was having fun, I knew my friends, I knew the language,
I knew all the cool hangouts, there was a vibe.
But moving to Malaysia was a different experience
because I wasn’t going and entering a new school system.
I was going and continuing to homeschool while being that one guy who showed up
outside of a high school to do extracurriculars when there is free time.
Now imagine you’re 15 and you’ve been going to the same school for five years,
and then suddenly when school’s over and you’re going to go play basketball,
some random dude walks in
and he’s just like, “Hey, can I play with you?”
There are some challenges.
I wasn’t fitting in.
I wasn't just hanging out with everybody.
And in addition to this,
I was in, yet again, a country and a micro culture
in which I very visibly
and superficially looked incredibly different than the people around me.
This was where I had to go into overdrive.
It wasn't about making friends anymore,
but I needed to analyze the behaviors in the people around me
just so that I could understand what was going on.
A melting pot of religions, of cultures, of nationalities
from all over Southeast Asia.
And then I’m just kind of here in the middle looking back and forth,
and trying and hoping desperately that nobody was going to catch on
that I was not meant to be there.
All of this changed when towards the end of my time in Malaysia,
my parents decided to move back to the house that my dad grew up in,
in Massachusetts, United States,
where I’d end three years of digital learning
to enter a local public high school in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts.
Now this was the moment that I thought I’d been waiting for my whole life,
because I watched American TV when I was growing up.
I knew what high schools were like.
I knew that there were cool clicks that you had to join for you to fit into.
I knew that there was a rec room and a gym and a cafeteria.
Things that I hadn’t genuinely experienced before.
And on top of that, I figured I sound American,
I'm going to be able to fit just in.
Nobody’s going to question me
and I'm just going to be able to find my own community right here
and be one with them.
So I moved to Massachusetts.
I started studying.
I started going to school.
I became the lead actor in a play.
I joined the cross-country team.
I started dating.
I grew a group of friends.
When people asked me where I had moved from, as the new kid
in a class of 150 kids who’ve known each other since they were five,
I said I was from Virginia because that’s where I was born
so technically, I wasn’t lying.
Eventually they caught on.
They found out because I may have not been exactly the same as them when I was there.
And all of a sudden I was accepted.
I had no problems.
I had no issues integrating,
at least not with them.
The issue was with me.
Because when I had finally graduated,
I realized that this wasn’t the place I was meant to stay.
Because the things that I’d been noticing
and the differences that had made me feel so different
and the behaviors I’d tried so desperately to study
so that I could understand them
and understand how people could work so I could be one with them,
it wasn’t me.
It wasn’t who I was.
The values I have, the beliefs I have.
Who I want to be in the next 5, 10, or 15 years,
it wasn’t going to be defined by the people around me.
I needed to make my own path for my own
and be friends or find connections being that person;
not trying to be somebody else.
At this time, I’d been code-switching.
I’ve been really focusing on other people’s behaviors
to better understand them for a really long time, until I was 17.
At least five or six years subconsciously,
and then a little bit more on purpose as I got older.
So when I decided to move to Prague
and study at a local international university here,
over three years, I found myself using this not as a tool to survive,
but a tool to build myself up and the people around me.
The focus and the attention that I had learned to give to other people
for my own benefit could also benefit them.
Because in international communities, in an ever globalizing world,
it's more important than ever to know how to empathize
and understand those around you.
And so I was no longer trying to fit in with the community,
but I was making a community of my own.
This is where I’m going to say a few things that I hope resonate with you.
And that is, with code-switching there are a couple of benefits that I had
and that I still use today.
As I work as a marketing manager
and as I work as a manager of a community NGO of over 30 people
from all types of backgrounds,
I find myself needing to switch and understand people consistently,
and to make sure I’m building relationships and empowering them
to make my own community on the terms that I prefer.
To practice it,
embracing globalization with comfort and ease is one of the key factors.
And it’s something that everybody here today and around the world
is going to be facing more rapidly.
You’re not going to be able to have the same sedentary stability,
that maybe you’ve been able to achieve now, for the rest of your life.
You need to be prepared for changes and for many different people along the way.
It helps you diminish just how intimidating your personal challenges are.
This isn’t a new concept.
It’s about gaining perspective.
Because sometimes you feel like you’re standing in front of a huge mountain
and how the heck are you going to climb it?
But then, when you spend some time listening
and looking at other people's stories and their own challenges,
you gain a better understanding that they've got a mountain just as high.
And within a community and with people that you can understand and relate to,
it helps you climb your own a lot easier.
Ultimately, empowering yourself as somebody who’s not alone,
as somebody whose internal machinery, yes, might run a little bit differently,
that doesn’t define you,
it doesn’t make you different in a bad way to others.
Rather, being different is less unique.
It may be the least unique thing about anybody,
because it’s the one thing that we share and that we can use to bond together.
So how do you do it?
How do you code-switch?
As I tell my own stories of living on a sailboat and traveling around
and trying to fit in everywhere,
I hope that you can skip some of these steps
and practice it in your day-to-day life today, tomorrow, and the next five years
and become good on your own at building your own community.
To do it, you need to listen to another person's story as if it were your own.
Put yourself in their shoes, it’s vital.
If you start listening to other problems as theirs,
one day you’re going to face a similar challenge
and you’re going to wish you’d listened.
You're going to wish you had been there.
And these shared challenges are a huge part of what makes us stronger together.
Leave your comfort zone when your gut tells you to.
It’s so important to take big chances, to take big leaps,
whether it’s that job you’ve always wanted to get out of to try something new
or whether it’s because you’ve been hanging around people
that you don’t feel like elevate you or lift you up.
Your gut is going to tell you when to take that risk.
It doesn't make it easier, but it's you who needs to make that decision.
And ultimately you need to take time to understand yourself.
I know, that’s a little weird as I talk about how do you build a community,
how do you build interpersonal relationships.
It shouldn’t just be about you.
But, rather, if you don’t know who you are and what you stand for,
how are you going to possibly help somebody else
who, as well, has just the same amount of uniqueness and build-up as you do?
So as you leave today,
I hope that even in this room you look around you
and you take a little time to wonder about what that person’s going through
and how you can build this and bring this skill set into your day-to-day life
to make your life, to make your community just a bit better.
Thank you.
(Applause)