Transcriber: Phương Thảo Ngô Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Raise your hand if you hate someone or dislike someone
or however you might word that to yourself.
All right, we’re all real.
OK, but keep your hand up or put your hand up
if you also think you’re a good person,
a person who’s worthy of love, respect, and care.
I’m glad that’s almost all of us.
Thank you.
I’m going to let our answers to those two questions sit off to the side for a moment
because what I want to talk to you today about
might make you feel a little differently about other people.
It is going to involve turning up your empathy
and seeing in others what we see in ourselves,
seeing how everyone is someone, someone worthy of what we are.
I was raised in a large family, and when I say large,
I mean that we had to use a 12 seater van to get to church on a Sunday,
and it was always full.
It was also bright yellow,
so you can imagine how happy all these kids were being seen in it.
(Laughter)
In school, I was bullied a lot.
I was beaten up many times and ostracized from my peers.
This was in part due to allergies that I had,
my own attitudes, and the fact that I was a very bookish child.
What this meant for me was that as I grew, I became angry, disenfranchised.
I’m sure anyone with a teenager in their house
can identify with the phrase “sullen teen.”
I ended up dropping out of high school, and I left home at 17.
After enduring a very tough year,
I made my way to the army when I was 18 and a half.
At this point, my anger had only grown.
Compounded by my environment,
I eventually became what you and I would probably term “a bad person.”
I was racist, Islamophobic, homophobic,
probably a few other “obics” in there as well if we’re being honest.
And if I was pressed for a reason on this, I would say that as a lonely, angry teen,
I wanted to feel welcome.
And unfortunately, I found that welcome in an echo chamber,
one where hatred festered and multiplied.
My anger never left.
And three years after I joined the army, I was discharged due to injury.
And it was then that my life changed,
and it changed thanks to the power of empathy.
I moved into a share house with three other young people,
all of whom were uni students undertaking higher degree research.
It’s important to know
that none of my new housemates spoke English as a first language,
and none of them went to church on Sunday.
Now when I moved in, I initially tried to keep to myself,
but these lovely people insisted on talking to me, cooking for and with me,
watching TV together, generally being the best housemates on Earth.
It was some time after I moved in
that I discovered one of my new housemates was Muslim.
Finding out rocked me to my core,
but not because I was angry.
It is because I found out he was Muslim after I learned about him.
This was a man who played soccer on weekends.
He was a PhD student who was a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza.
And this kind man who I thought I knew so much about
had smiled at me as I had spoken about the flaws in his faith
and how fantastic it was that coalition forces had gone into the Middle East.
Now, if you wanted to be polite, you could call that being tone-deaf.
Ahem!
But no matter what I said to him, he always greeted me with a smile.
And when I found out he was Muslim, I can’t describe what it felt like,
but if I said I was the smallest, most ignorant, worst person on Earth,
that would only be scratching the surface.
Now, I will call my housemate of this time Ahmed ... because that is his name.
(Laughter)
And Ahmed did something that I now do, and what I’m asking you to do.
He saw through my negativity and my attitudes.
He saw me.
He refused to let my anger dehumanize him,
and he stood tall and loving in the face of it.
Now, he might not even remember the incident
if we’re being honest with each other.
We were eating pizza as a group,
and I offered him some of my cheeseburger-bacon-deluxe-style slice,
and he’s simply going: “Oh, I can’t eat pork, I’m Muslim.”
A light bulb moment, if there ever was one,
and it was a moment that instantly changed me.
How could I have been so wrong?
I had been taught to hate
without ever having met the target of my hatred,
conditioned to dislike an unknown.
And Ahmed showed me how all of that was built on nothing.
This is where empathy comes in.
If you raised your hand before, I’d like you to do it again,
and with your hand up, I encourage you to look around the room.
So many of us dislike another person or whole groups of people,
yet each of us knows that we are worthy of love and respect.
Now, you might not hold as much anger in your hearts as I did,
or you might hold more.
It might be for different reasons or for ones much the same as mine.
Maybe your hatred is rational and justified,
maybe your dislike has been earned through repeatedly broken trust.
But I can tell you that no matter the reason for your anger,
you are still worthy of love.
And this is where I really need you to feel with me
because just as you are humans worthy of love,
so are the people who hate you.
They are not less for their hatred, just as you aren’t less for yours.
When you eventually leave this place,
I don’t just want you to realize that I love you
despite any attitudes or hatreds that you may have.
I want you to take that realization out into the world and live it.
Because if you and I can do this, others can.
It was care and unearned empathy that shaped who I am today.
I am a Hindu,
I am a staunch LGBTQIA+ ally,
and I’m a passionate believer in the humanity of all
and the value that each one of us has to offer the world.
Caring for people who hate us isn't easy.
And acknowledging that it's not easy, I promise that it's worth it.
In the leadup to this event, I was asked why my message might be worth sharing.
Let me tell you what I said.
The world is a dark place,
and the dislike for others seems only to be increasing.
If we are to turn back a tide of distrust, enmity and hatred,
it will take caring for others even when they hate us.
I hope you all find the strength and courage to try caring,
to smile,
and to find a pizza moment.
(Applause)