photo by malias
I recently finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth. This isn’t a book review, but Lahiri has a remarkable way of writing characters and stories that seep steadily into the deep pockets of your mind. The kind of characters who leak into your memories and thoughts, leaving you baffled as you sit at your desk trying to remember who it was that said that thing to you yesterday. Oh yeah, it was a character in Jhumpa Lahiri’s book. Oops.
This is something we all strive for, whether consciously or not, in nearly any project we undertake — having people who really care. Bloggers need people to care about what they think. Activists need people to care about their cause. Fashion designers need people to care how they look. You may not need people to care in order for you to create, but once it’s time to share/show/sell, it sure helps to have people who want to know. It fascinates me to explore why people care — what stories make us invested, what channels penetrate our cores.
You can’t force people to care
But it’s not about making people care. Forcing people to put their heart in something is never a recipe for success. Instead, it should really be about tapping into the part of people that already cares — the part that wants to understand and connect with other people. I think each of us has this part. It’s a bunch of threads scattered within yourself, and you know they’re part of some enormous fabric, even if you can’t always see it or you sometimes lose touch. That fabric is simply — and significantly — the fullness of the universe, and the part we play. It’s that curious wonder of how something unfathomably large can also be extraordinarily interconnected.
Or, to put it in slightly less hippie-woo-woo terms, it’s when something or someone makes you feel like they are speaking directly to your deep, honest self. There are countless ways to describe this, and we all have our personal understandings that feel right to us. But however you look at it, it comes down to this: we humans thrive on connection. Your thrill may be connecting to the people around you, or it may be connecting to those dead white European males who wrote some pretty good books. Or maybe you get a rush connecting with majestic trees and clear waters. Whatever your high, you want to feel like part of something. You want to care.
Tapping into the connections
The triggers of this rush will certainly be different things for different people, but there’s also no denying that some people are more skilled than others at grabbing hold of your threads. This talent for tapping into the urge to connect could be broken down into three main areas:
- the right content
- the right tools
- the right voice
If you want a sustainable network of people who care, the content absolutely must be great. This can mean a compelling cause, a beautiful sculpture, or a useful product. Then you need tools to make, share, improve, and connect. Tools can be anything ranging from a paintbrush to a Twitter account. Next, you need a voice. How will you tell people what it is you’re doing? Will you challenge? Will you empower? Will you ask? This all depends on your voice. Emma Newman wrote a great post that discusses strategies for influencing the masses (hint: it’s not easy).
Now, it’s all very well and good that I’ve laid out the key areas that shape your thread-grabbing capacity, but it doesn’t really answer the question of how you find the voice, the tools, or the content that tap into the urge to connect. I do have a response to the how, but my response has no drumroll, and it may even feel a bit anticlimactic. In the end, I believe it comes down to honesty. Not honesty as in, “If you don’t lie, people will be falling over their feet to care about you and your project,” but honesty in the sense of a deep rawness. Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories tapped into something deep in my flesh, because she wrote honestly about the awkward, the beautiful, and the shamefully painful. A really great blog grabs hold of people because they feel like they really know the blogger, whether it’s through personal details revealed or a strong, honest mind that shows in the writing. People will start to care about a cause when the raw human aspect is under their noses. Your really cool product matters when it latches onto a raw need of our existence, whether it’s a physical need or a deeply ingrained part of our nature.
There’s plenty of talk of authenticity on the web, so this is no new idea. But since “authenticity” has come to acquire that buzzword-ish feel, I wanted to delve into this topic in the simple frame of why people care. We care because it is deeply woven into our flesh to do so; sometimes it just takes some honesty and a few raw stories to coax those threads to the surface.
What’s the last thing that you couldn’t help but care about? Why?
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the trick (I’m saying “trick” a lot these days for some reason) is to get people’s attention, freely given, for long enough. Long enough is a variable, but if you get it freely, then they become invested in your story. They become part of your story, and you theirs.
If your story as presented comes from the heart, the gut, authentically, whatever, consistently, then they will care. And not just the “I wonder what this can do for me” caring, real caring connected to basic humanity.
I think, for my case, I get hung up on my voice. I’m not used to talking, not practiced in communicating emotion. But I’ll get there.
Thanks for the guide you put out with Chris.
Peace.
@vinylart
Daniel Edlen´s last blog post..What’s Not Painted, Played
I was just thinking about this yesterday… or rather perplexing over it. And I found a solution, or at least something that calmed my troubled ego.
When I write, I’m often overcome with this feeling of “no one cares, you bumbling idiot!” (I believe you recently tweeted about writing and then wondering if what you were writing even mattered….) But yesterday, for one of the first times ever, I was able to convince myself that yes, someone cares. That’s a big accomplishment for me.
The unfortunate thing is that the next step of actually connecting with those people is lost on me. I’m not even sure I want to connect with them. If they want to read my stuff and it helps them, then great; but don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know, and I don’t know why. I want to connect with my own words and then let those words stand out their for others to experience if they want.
This may be why I romanticize and envy those dead Europeans who wrote amazing stuff that we now read and experience without them having to hear about it.
It makes me think about the guy who sat at this library chair before me and wiped his dried nasal mucus on the underside of the desk; he enjoyed the experience, knowing he’d be long gone before I discovered his treasures.
“What’s the last thing that you couldn’t help but care about? Why?”
I think that in my case it is more along the lines of what could I not help but care about! There is so much in the world around us that is worth caring for, and about, that it is difficult to hold back and to care for ourselves as well.
For me, I feel a connection with most people, since in the back of my mind I am always trying to see how I can relate to their story. And in our lives we all experience so much that we can usually connect with others on some level or another. Through the comments on these blogs, and on mine, we are building an instant rapport with our fellow humans and living in a mass virtual community.
This is a new form of connection and community for humans and it is endlessly fascinating to watch, and participate, as it develops.
Sean´s last blog post..How to Work Effectively at Home!
I know when I embrace the great gift of being a human being I connect with people who care about me and what I am involved with. It seems to me that my life is really all about being who I am and not what I think I should be making happen. No matter what I am involved with, a social movement, caring for a handicap child, or teaching someone how to read, my gratitude at being able to give myself to someone or some cause resonates with people and they care about that. Its as if we all need that to feel alive in our own lives.
The last thing I could not help but care about was that man from New York (is it?) that is trying to get his son back from Brazil. He’s been gone five long year after his mother took him on a “vacation” and never brought him back. The boy’s mother died earlier this year in childbirth. I think he finds out tomorrow if the Brazilian Supreme Court will allow him to take his son home to America. Why did I care? Willa Cather said (and I paraphrase) there are only a few human stories and they go on repeating themselves as if they’d never been written before. This human drama represents two of those stories: a son separated from his father; and the death of a young mother. I cared because I connected with the agony of being separated from my child. Though only for a few weeks every summer during her dad’s visitation, in the early years it was unbearable. Multiplying that by five years w/ little or no contact. Only a beast wouldn’t care.
jen´s last blog post..yesterday, i felt like quitting.
In my experience, people care because they want to matter. They want to invest in something that reaches a part of them very few other things can reach.
I think the real challenge is to find that ‘thing’ to truly care about. There’s this urge to care, and it’s so strong that sometimes we fake it. We try to care about something because others care about it, or because we think we should care about it, or because we want to feel connected. And then we’re left wanting.
And this is the plague that is affecting so many of us today. We’ve spent a lifetime caring about things we don’t actually care about. We were told to care, and we thought we did.
But we don’t. So now we stand at this strange juncture where the need to care in an honest way meets with the inability to connect to that part of ourselves that knows what to care about. We’ve conditioned ourselves not to trust that instinct, to expect it to end in disillusionment and apathy. And we feel lost. I feel lost.
I want to care deeply for something. For others. I know I can do it. And I also know that when I do, I’ll be tapping into the most significant part of me, unleashing something more powerful than I’ve witnessed to date. The potential stirs my emotions, and I think it’s helping me to begin trusting that instinct again. Not completely, not yet. But it’s coming.
(And you’re helping Zoe).
[rq=3416,0,blog][/rq]Finding Optimism
@ Daniel – It’s funny how we can get tripped up trying to be authentic — it’s harder than it seems to turn your regular self into a “public figure” and preserve the right goods. But yep, it’s definitely necessary for making people feel invested … otherwise you’re not likely to get them to stick around long enough to find out. I’ve personally found that blogging has been a huge factor in building my writing confidence. In the end, it seems to just be a matter of practice, practice, practice.
@ Ryan – Amazing analogies there
. That’s an interesting dilemma you have — I know people who say they don’t care how others respond to their art, but I haven’t heard many people say they really don’t want to know how others respond. Are you going to start putting a disclaimer on things you write — something like “Note: you are advised not to express any praise or criticism to the author of this piece”?
@ Sean – I really agree that social media is creating new connection dynamics … it’s fascinating to watch unfold. I think it goes terribly wrong sometimes, but when it’s good — it’s great. It’s a tool, like anything, and we just have to learn to use it well.
@ Keith – Yes, the honest intentions breed true connections.
@ Jen – Ooh, I’ve heard that quote before. It’s crazy to think of how many of our stories are really spun from the same threads. But like you say, that’s why they tug at our own
.
@ Jeb – “In my experience, people care because they want to matter. They want to invest in something that reaches a part of them very few other things can reach.” Beautifully said. I really do think you’re about to unleash an enormous wave that’ll roll forward continuously gathering momentum. It just takes that one tap to hit the right spot…
Zoe– That disclaimer would state my intent well, but in order to keep clutter off the page I omit it–I’ll just rail on any commentor who dares express their opinion. Or I’ll just delete their comment or not allow comments at all. I like living with the illusion that I’m amazing and great and everyone loves my writing.