lead with the heart
i was nominated to give a senior talk at memorial church on behalf of kirkland house. audio here (my part1 begins after the initial reading and hymn); art below.
last saturday, i was standing in the rain watching a freight train go by. there were hundreds of wagons. maybe one or two wagons were open-air (those contained lumber); the rest carried enough standardized containers to make a supply chain manager proud. interestingly, almost every container had graffiti messages on the side: some clearly political, others seemingly satirical, and not always in english. one stood out to me, in bold white letters: “lead with the heart.”
lead with the heart. since i read it, i’ve been wondering about this phrase a lot. i’ve also been wondering why this particular phrase got stuck in my head.
it’s the latest in a long line of Things That Get Stuck in Julie’s Head — Stuck Things, if you will. junior year fall, i obsessed over philosopher martha nussbaum’s question of whether one can be “reliably good and still be beautifully human.” i often think of what our beloved kirkland house faculty dean david deming tells us at our holiday dinners, that amid the many opportunities for us to strive to pursue “resume virtues,” that it is harder still to practice “eulogy virtues” — to do good and be kind. and tons more — joan didion and frida kahlo and virginia woolf and andrew murray lines that have echoed in my head long after i heard them ring.
i’m sure you can remember phrases, or perhaps songs or films or photographs, that got stuck in your head, things that you turned over and over until they smoothed out or that you simply couldn’t stop talking about. (i’m extremely guilty on this front, by the way: my quoting the poet rainer maria rilke has become a meme to the point that my roommate melissa sometimes tells me that i’ve reached my rilke quota for the week.) sometimes, i go spelunking in the meta-level data of my stuck things. i parse through the albums recommended by chase and poetry sent by mira and notice the frequency, duration, and amplitude of what’s on my mind and whether it got there deliberately or unconsciously.
the science isn’t settled, but some researchers say earworms come from your brain trying to trace a melody to completion, that things start to loop because you haven’t yet configured how the song ends. so then maybe Stuck Things are stuck because they’re in the process of resolving, and we’re testing them in real time, holding them up against new contexts and changing light.
here’s what constantly leaves me awestruck: despite how things resonate differently to us, we keep trying to understand each other. obviously, what’s on our minds is highly contingent on infinite environmental factors, assumptions, and upbringings, and perfect translation is impossible, and yet we still vehemently try to understand each others’ Stuck Things. when we speak, it’s a leap of faith; when we listen, we approximate these ways of seeing and being in the world, like mini-experiments in curiosity and sincerity.
i want to try such an experiment now. you’ll see that there are slips of paper and pencil in front of you. i want to invite you to take a moment and share something — anything — that’s been on your mind. you could draw something, write down a song lyric, note something you’re yearning for, describe something that you’ve wanted to try for a long time. when you’re done, i’d love for us to trade Stuck Things with each other. and then you can take one with you on your way out this morning. kind of like a small piece of graffiti, a small leap of faith.
last fall, i went to the yard with a sign asking strangers what’s on their mind. few passersby made eye contact, and frankly i was terrified. on a scale of clunky to extremely awkward, how would it go? would i be able to connect with anyone? would they even want to? i kept smiling, though, leading with curiosity and sincerity, and by the end of the sunny afternoon, dozens shared their anxieties and hopes with me. we learned about each others’ Stuck Things, and i think we all ended up stuck on each other a little, too.
as far as i can tell, this is what it means to lead with the heart.
some new favorite sights and sounds:
+ man ray’s “Ridgefield Landscape” (1914):
+ tarsila do amaral’s “The Moon” (1928)
+ meret oppenheim’s “Little Ghost Eating Bread” (1934)
+ corot’s “Charrette de Foin Longeant une Rivière” (~1865)
+ oscar bluemner’s “Eye of Fate” (1927)
+ louis cato’s “Unsightly Room” and john roseboro’s “80 Summers” ♫
+ “The Cloud Under the Sea,” “How to Stop Losing 17,500 Kidneys,” “The Moon Landing was Opposed by Majority of US”
which definitely wasn’t written deliriously four hours before i gave this speech