Last night I put myself into danger

I had arrived to Addis Ababa the night before and was fortunate to have a friend of a friend show me around. She took me to a traditional restaurant where we shared dinner and watched traditional Ethiopian dances — with music that was way too loud. We went to a lounge afterwards, I had a few drinks, and we talked politics and emotional health — two of my favorite topics.

But last night, I was on my own. Feeling confident in my skills to navigate the streets of Africa — as I had lived in Tanzania for 1.5 years, albeit nearly 10 years ago — and having heard that the neighborhood was very safe, I ventured out on my own. I walked through some pretty dark spots and saw a few people running. With other people, I became a little more cautious and exercised heightened awareness — walking more towards the middle of the street, making sure they knew I was looking at them, etc., but for the most part, I felt safe, and surprised at how safe I felt.

I kept walking and came across the populated part of town, where I found many hotels, bars, and restaurants. Lots of people were walking around. I walked past a few hamburger joints, thinking, “Should I really get a hamburger in Ethiopia? Actually, why not, might be interesting to compare, plus that’s where lots of people are, would be fun to soak up the vibe of the local hamburger joint.”

So at this point, I turned around to go back to the hamburger place. Right as I did, a local walked up to me and started talking to me in perfect English. He said that he worked at a fancy hotel just down the street and asked where I was from, to which I replied the US and he said how his wife and kids were there, showed me a photo of his daughter, and then said that one day hopefully he could join them, maybe next year. I kept walking with him and I said that I was looking for a hamburger and a beer and maybe some dancing, but Wednesday was probably a slow night. He said that actually, since school was out this week, the university students were having a girls’ night party just around the corner, and there was a great hamburger joint right in front of it. A little skeptical but up for an adventure, I walked with the guy. We turned off the main strip and started going down a few side streets. As we got closer, I asked him about the location of the hamburger spot, as I didn’t really see anything but houses and a little kiosk. He said, “Oh, well, they order it from the hotel over there, you see it? C’mon, let’s go inside.”

We entered through a gate into a residential property. It was quiet, no music, and it didn’t seem as if anyone was there. We went inside, he shouted “Hallo?” into the back room and soon enough, five young women appeared. They stood in a line, which I found strange, and all of a sudden my experiences from Tanzania started flooding back. This didn’t seem to be a girls’ night party, it seemed to be a brothel (not that I went to brothels in Tanzania but there were a lot of prostitutes trying to seek my attention at clubs — they never believed that I was there just for the African music). The girls proceeded to dance a choreography as he and I ordered a beer. I was quite aware what was going on, and yet I was thinking, “OK, I’ll endure it for a little, maybe he wants to do something here and who am I to judge him, I’ll just keep him company for a little until I go. What a fascinating sociological experiment.”

The girl that had been talking to me asked if I would buy the girls a round of drinks. I said bluntly that I wasn’t planning to spend a lot of money tonight, just a hamburger and beer. The guy pressed me, “C’mon man, if you buy one, I’ll buy one for them as well.” So I said why not. One beer, not a big deal, a few dollars.

The host came back with a bottle and opened it up and started to fill the many glasses. I noticed that it didn’t look like beer. I looked at the bottle and it said Remy Martin. I started getting really angry and afraid. I told him that I said I would order a bottle and she brought out a really expensive bottle and that’s not what I had ordered — I demanded she tell me how much it would cost. They danced around the issue a bit. At this point, I was telling him that I felt very uncomfortable. She brought out the bill and the beers were 20 birr each, which was like $0.75, and the Remy Martin was 3800 birr, or about $135. I got really uncomfortable and started telling him that I couldn’t pay that. I started admitting how terrified I was to be in a foreign country with no friends around and to be in such a situation. I started thinking that I didn’t even have that much birr on me even if I had wanted to pay. I had some euro, Egyptian pounds, Kenyan shillings, and some dollars, but the dollars were emergency money.

At this point, a man from the back came out, wearing what I believe was a suit. The guy next to me introduced him as the manager, and he sat down and started to discuss the bill with us. I told the guy next to me that I’m starting to get really angry and then something clicked in my brain — this was a very unsafe situation, I needed to get out of there. I thought about just running through the door and gate. Then I thought, there are two guys (that I see) and at least five women in the room — that may not work. I believed the smartest plan would be to pay and leave. I pulled out my wallet, which only had 1200 birr, or about $42. I gave the guy the money and he gave it to the manager, as the manager was telling him to pay more. He was getting visibly angry, as was I, and I didn’t like where the situation was going. Fortunately, he started throwing lots of dollars at the guy, which again confused me why he’d have so many dollars, and soon enough the manager said we could leave, and we walked out of the house.

As soon as I got out of the house, I started walking quickly. I wanted to get as far away from this situation as possible, back to the crowded streets. I was really angry that this guy kept lying directly to my face. I was pretty sure he was lying all along, but I didn’t get angry about it until I felt trapped. So when we exited the gate, I went left, the original direction in which we had come. He went right and told me to follow him, that it was a shorter route. I’m very grateful that by that point, I was on high alert. “Follow this guy down an unfamiliar dark path after he put me in this situation? No way,” I said to myself. I told him, “Listen, I feel comfortable going back the same way that I came and I will go this way.”

I walked away and luckily he didn’t follow me. I got back to the main street but it seemed to be a different street than where the hamburgers had been. I turned around to walk the other way on the street and he was there. He came up to me and said that we had made a deal, that he said he would buy one if I bought one and that I should at least pay for half of the bottle, it was only fair. Surprisingly, I felt quite safe talking to him on the street. He asked me for $30, and when I rejected that offer, he kept asking, and eventually lowering it to $10. While he was lowering it, I saw his hand in his pocket and I became hyper alert he could pull something on me. He mentioned something about my phone in my pocket, and then I gave him $10 and left while he stayed there on the street.

I walked back towards the hamburger joint and I heard him calling my name as he started following me. I turned around and told him to leave me the fuck alone. Being angry and alert, I started noticing all the other people around me. I asked the guy walking next to me trying to sell me gum and cigarettes if he would help protect me from this man. I started walking more closely to the security guards. I turned around and it looked as if the gum-cigarette guy had intercepted him and had started a conversation. I walked ahead and finally got back on the busy street.

At this point, I was scared, because being a white man with blond hair, I was quite visible in the streets of Addis — there didn’t seem to be many foreigners walking around by themselves, especially at night. I ducked into a fancy hotel and ate at their restaurant, sitting in a location where I couldn’t be seen from the road. I ate my food, nervously, and thought about how to get back home. I didn’t have enough cash for the taxi because they had taken almost all of it, and the hotel staff didn’t give me much confidence in taking the taxi. It was only a five-minute walk back, so I said screw it, I would just walk. Very very concerned I was going to make the same mistake, I was watching everyone on the street. This guy came up to me and started talking to me, “Hey, I saw you at the hotel earlier, I’m the bellhop.” I recalled seeing someone at the hotel but wasn’t quite sure if it were him. He said he was on break and was just enjoying his time. We started walking towards the main road of my hotel and when I was supposed to turn left, he started talking about a club on the right and started walking in that direction. I told him that while he may have good intentions, I just want to get home. I walked back into the hotel and felt very relieved and grateful that I was safe, still had my wallet and phone, and only lost a little bit of money. What I didn’t realize at that moment was how much pain I had caused myself.

This afternoon I healed

Cut to this afternoon. I’m lying in bed, probably because I feel pretty sick from the stress or the food, and don’t want to venture out. I feel grateful that I was able to tell my ex-girlfriend what happened AND my father what happened, which really shocked me — I often worry that he will get more worried. I even told some local Ethiopian women that I had met on Tinder — what a weird way to start an interaction with someone, I thought. And yet, somehow I didn’t feel relief. My head was spinning, my stomach was queasy, and I didn’t know if I was low-grade hyperventilating on all of this.

I start reading about politicians and how difficult it must be for them to deal with all of the emotional attacks in their life, I start watching videos of American politicians berate each other, and I try to get some rest.

For some reason, I start thinking about how I damaged the relationship with myself. That while I was angry at the guy for leading me down the path, I was really angry at myself for letting myself go down that path. I was aware of the suspicious feelings I had along the way, I just didn’t honor them. I put myself into danger, in a foreign land, and now telling this to my family may cause them even more harm. How could I be so stupid? My Emotional Self-Defense techniques didn’t work with the guy — I tried to be open about my fear and discomfort and he didn’t seem to care. Do I care so much about these techniques that I’m willing to put myself into obvious danger?

Something clicks. When I try to repair relationships with someone else, instead of forgiving them, I apologize to them. Before I went to bed last night, I practiced how I would apologize to the guy who brought me there — I didn’t want to lose faith in Ethiopians, I wanted to trust they were good people. I envisioned meeting him on the street today and was going to say that I felt really guilty for not living up to my side of the deal and for assuming that he had ill intentions. That I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for me to attack his credibility and to call him a liar. That I was sorry.

Suddenly I think, “Why not apologize to myself?”

Using the three steps, which have helped me so much in reconciling with others, I begin.

1) “I feel really guilty that I put you into danger last night. I was excited to learn about the local culture and wanted to go with the flow and I didn’t realize how much I was ignoring you.”
2) “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. Perhaps angry that I didn’t listen to you, terrified for your life, abandoned.”
3) “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

At this point, tears come to my eyes, as you see in exhibit A. I can’t remember the last time that I apologized to myself. It feels so foreign and yet so freeing.

After lying there for a few minutes, I think about writing a post talking about self-apology instead of self-forgiveness. I think about whether to put it on Instagram or Medium or what, how to frame the photo, etc. I relax for a second and then the second phase comes.

“I forgive you. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me.”

At that point, I just start to bawl, hence exhibit B — I even have tears in my eyes right now as I type those words. I can’t remember if I have ever forgiven myself. At that moment, I realize that forgiving ourselves is also important.

A few moments later, I just lie there. It feels as if years of pain and suffering just vanished — exhibit C. My body relaxes into the bed as I feel as if I were back on the same team with myself. I can’t express in words how that feels. I think I have lived many years being my own worst enemy and to reunite feels so free and so reassuring. I feel my anger for the guy last night disappear. I feel my stress evaporate. I feel as if I were back in my own body, my own soul. I feel so grateful that this happened and I want to share the story and the tools with you.

Try apologizing to yourself

I’m sure many of us have heard how important it is to forgive ourselves. I know I’m not the only person who believes that they are their own worst enemy — it may be a thread throughout humanity. I also imagine that, you, just like me, have never really understood how to forgive someone or why we should do it, let alone forgive ourselves. From what I have experienced, forgiveness is the reuniting of our broken relationships. It brings us from feeling that we are many to feeling as if we were one. I believe it begins with apology. To express our pain for the pain we have caused. To show that we see them as a human. To apologize for not protecting them.

As much as I have seen this work when I’ve apologized to other people, today I learned that it can work when I apologize to myself. I wanted to share with you how I use three steps to apologize to myself so that maybe you can try it as well.

Three steps to apologize to myself

Step 1) Truth
Step 2) Fair play
Step 3) Love

Step 1 — tell the truth about how I’m actually feeling. In this case, I express the guilt or other pain that I feel for what I did to cause pain to myself. Some examples:

⁃ “I feel guilty that I put you into such a dangerous situation.”
⁃ “I feel so angry at myself for saying those things to you.”
⁃ “I feel ashamed that I wasn’t there for you.”

Step 2 — tell myself how I imagine I might be feeling. In this case, I focus on the pain that I may have caused myself. Some examples:

⁃ “I imagine you might be feeling terrified and alone.”
⁃ “I imagine you might be feeling reluctant to speak with me right now.”
⁃ “I imagine you might be confused at why I’m having this conversation with you.”

Step 3 — say one thing to connect with love. In this case, I say that I’m sorry.

⁃ “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
⁃ “I’m sorry. You deserve better.”
⁃ “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

Three steps to then forgive myself

After this, I can repeat the three steps but from a forgiving side.

Step 1) “I’m really glad you had this conversation with me. I’m still angry at what you did, and I feel grateful that you can be so open with me.”
Step 2) “I imagine you might be feeling really nervous right now, as to what I will say. I don’t know what’s going on with you right now.”
Step 3) “I just want to say that I forgive you. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me.”

Instead of a response of a three-step forgiveness, I could give a response of a three-step apology. What I’ve seen in my life is that typically when one side apologizes, the other side is likely to apologize as well.

Practice, not perfect

If we’re being deeply honest in the three steps, then it feels real. I noticed when I tried this for another thing that I did to myself, it didn’t feel as genuine. Perhaps I wasn’t really angry with myself about that or feeling guilty for it, or something. This is not about having the right answer, but more than anything is about exploring how we can better reconcile with ourselves and with others. The goal is to practice, not to perfect.

I’m proud that I had the courage to post this story and the skills to pay attention to it while it happened and the wherewithal to take photos. I hope this story or this framework helps you, and if either of them do, please let me know — I’d be honored to hear your stories.

You can find me here on Medium, on jimkleiber.com, on email (hello [at] jimkleiber [dot] com), Twitter (jimkleiber), Instagram (heyjimkleiber), YouTube, or somewhere else on the internets or in person.

And if you liked this article, you may like a video I posted in 2013 called “iFeelio…alone,” but warning, it’s more intense.

This past weekend, I participated in SF’s Reverse Hackathon run by HackMentalHealth. I had been very excited to attend as I had an idea how to humanize the web: verified users.

History of verified users

Back in the day, Myspace was a land full of pseudonyms. Facebook came along and said that people had to use their real names. Not only did they say that, they enforced it. To get a Facebook account in the early days, you needed to have an email address assigned by an Ivy League university. The universities already had a vetting system, and Facebook leveraged it. When you interacted with someone on Facebook in those days, you knew it was who they said they were, because, it wasn’t so easy to cheat the system.

The former CEO of MySpace said that this is why Facebook actually beat them out: “Facebook’s killer feature was that it replicated the real world by forcing people to use their real names, whereas MySpace users used pseudonymous handles,” says Jones.

As Facebook grew, it relaxed this policy so it could grow faster. Not everyone attended a university that could verify an identity and attach it to an email and these people wanted to join Facebook. Nowadays, one can sign up to Facebook with just an email. Facebook tries to limit the number of fake accounts, yet the platform still has a tremendous amount of phony users.

How are the other companies in this space dealing with anonymity?

Twitter has no real name policy. One can create a semi-permanent pseudonymous handle, and an even less permanent pseudonymous name on top of it. The profile was restricted to a small photo, 140 characters, and a few links.

Google tried to have a real name policy and got a lot of negative flack for it —e.g., Google’s Real Names Policy Is Evil.

Reddit has pseudonyms and no real name policy, and 4chan is pretty much the opposite of a real name policy, where people don’t even have persistent pseudonyms. Both of these communities suffer from a significant amount of abusive and inappropriate content.

Disinformation and impersonation

With the US election in 2016, many of us became more aware of the prevalence of fake accounts and bots on some of our favorite platforms and how they impacted our lives. Hoaxes spread through YouTube. Twitter bots bullied celebrities and impersonated everyday humans. Comments sections were overridden with polarizing content, that upon closer inspection, were algorithmically generated.

Facebook, a pioneer of the real name policy, admitted in their Q1 2018 report that in that quarter alone, they removed 583 million fake accounts and 837 million for spam. If they have the 2.2 billion users they say they have, then that would be 26.5% of all users being fake, 38% for spam, and a combined total of 64.5% for the two causes. Now, that may be an exaggeration, and yet, without clear data from Facebook, we’re unsure how many people on Facebook are who they say they are.

This problem becomes more severe on Twitter. With no real name policy, short profiles, and short interactions, Twitter is ripe for fake accounts and bots. It has become such a challenge that there’s even a Lifehacker article about how to find out if there is a Twitter bot impersonating you.

So, why does this matter? An impersonation account could share things that you never would — porn sites, gambling schemes, racist statements, and more. Imagine that a Twitter account stole your identity, taking your photo, name, and exact profile text, and shared inappropriate links with the public internet. Imagine what would happen if you’re applying for a job and instead of seeing your real profile, the recruiters see this one. And the worst part is that you may never know that others saw the fake profile.

Been there, fixed that

This problem has already been fixed and it was already fixed by Twitter. In 2009, Tony La Russa, the former coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, sued Twitter over the accounts that were impersonating him and defaming him. As a result, Twitter created the famous blue check mark — Verified Profiles. If you were deemed an impersonation risk by Twitter, typically a celebrity or other public figure, then you could get your profile verified by Twitter verifying your identity. Instead of relying on a university to do this as Facebook did, Twitter decided to do it themselves.

Verified profiles soon spread to other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Quora, Instagram, Pinterest, and many others. Most seem to have an option these days.

How to get verified? Be famous.

Well, on most platforms, the process is not clear on who gets verified and how the verification happens. Some platforms even claim that you need 10,000 or 100,000 followers, which, ironically, may encourage users to get fake accounts to follow them, just so they can be verified.

You don’t have to be a celebrity to be verified (or impersonated)

Since impersonation is no longer for just the very famous (and probably never was), some platforms are offering verified profiles to us common folk. The dating app Bumble, in an effort to squash impersonations and bullying, introduced verified profiles in 2016.

Here’s how the verification process will work. Bumble will randomly show you one of 100 different poses — like someone taking a selfie while winking at the camera or holding up two fingers, etc. You then take a picture of yourself mimicking this pose to the company, and they make sure it matches up with the person in your profile pictures.

These pictures will be reviewed by a team of real people working in-house, and even though it sounds like a big workload the startup says they have the capacity to verify people “within minutes”.

Simple and effective.

Furthermore, there is a new company, Hooyu, who, for $5, will verify someone’s profile for you. It seems to be a straightforward process, where the user will receive a link to submit a photo of a government issued ID, a selfie through the app, and links to social media accounts. Then the people at Hooyu will verify the identity of the person and send the result to the company who requested the verification.

What should Twitter do?

Expand its verified profile option to all users. It could use Hooyu, a similar technology to Bumble, or it could create one in-house. This will give increased confidence to its users that they are interacting with real humans and it will give the public confidence that the person with this name actually said it.

It will also allow them to do this without even having to address the issue of bots directly. Many platforms have been fighting to get rid of bots, and I think it’s more challenging to do it this way. Imagine, there are 400 accounts of me on Twitter. Which one is the real me? You have to get rid of 399 to find the real me. OR, you could verify the real me, and then the other 399 don’t even matter. Heck, they could grow to be 999 and it still wouldn’t matter because you would know who I am.

In 2015, it was estimated that 0.05% of Twitter was verified. That means 99.95% was unverified. What if Twitter could shift that percentage? 10% verified / 90% unverified? 50% verified / 50% unverified? 80% verified / 20% unverified? They could get rid of their bot problem without having to even admit that they have a bot problem.

Oh, and perhaps they could make money doing this. Maybe they charge a flat fee of $10 to get a verified profile. Maybe they charge a subscription fee to have a verified profile and the option to only interact with verified profiles — i.e., only verified profiles can retweet you or mention you.

Goodbye ad fraud?

And that doesn’t even mention the advertising side of things. Right now, studies estimate that upwards of 30% of online advertising is fraudulent. In other words, $30 million out of every $100 million that advertisers spend may go to bots and other fraudulent accounts. By verifying more profiles, Twitter could differentiate themselves: the ads they serve go to real, verified humans.

Hello, numbers we can believe

What if by doing this, Twitter again starts a proliferation of verification across social platforms? How would this change things? YouTube could show how many unique human users have watched a video. Apple could display how many unique human users have downloaded an app. Facebook could tell investors how many unique human users are on their platform. And we can feel confident that people are who they say they are.

Thank you everyone who worked/volunteered with HackMentalHealth to put on this event. It gave me a platform to further develop and share an idea that had been brewing for so long in my soul. Thank you.

And especially you, Stephen Cognetta. At one point in the hack, you asked me how I was feeling and I said that I was struggling — I wanted to work with the cool people on my team and yet I felt guilty for trying to force them to go with the idea in which I so firmly believed. You told me that it was OK for me to work by myself and my day turned around from there. I’m grateful that you have put so much energy into this and you were there for me when I needed help. Thank you.

Original slides below:

Why Twitter Should Verify More Users: Towards a More Human Web. was originally published in HackMentalHealth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What do people mean when they shout justice? Do they want the person who did the killing to be killed, an eye for an eye? Do they want the person who did the killing to be thrown in prison for life and lock away the key? Do they want the person who did the killing to go to court to be judged for his/her behavior and then punished if guilty?

I believe that vengeance killing, excommunication, or harsh punishment only perpetuates the cycle of moral violence. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “someone has got to have the courage to dim their lights.”

We feel pain at the loss of these humans. They were our friends, brothers, fathers, daughters, elders, and distant relatives. They were people who looked like many of us. It hurts to have them gone.

And yet, if we respond by judging the other person, we infect them with our pain. The individual who did the killing will hurt, whether from death, alienation, or humiliation. The friends, brothers, fathers, daughters, elders, and distant relatives of that person will hurt as well. So may the people who look like them.

I believe that what we need is to process our pain. To feel our sadness. To grieve the losses of the people that we held dearly. To grieve the losses of how things used to be. To grieve the losses of the trust that we had in ourselves to protect those we loved.

I believe that when we ask for justice, we ask for the other person to feel the pain that we are feeling and I believe that this vengeance will keep us trapped in an endless cycle of suffering. I believe that the way out is through allowing ourselves to feel the pain so that we can get back to the joy of living. And then we spread joy to the world, instead of pain.

And yet, for some reason, this latest snippet of “locker room” conversation may be the final straw. Why? Because I believe that to many it shows how Trump does not regard women as fully human beings.

I want to step back and ask, do we believe that Trump regards any person as fully human being? He has not shown tremendous respect for immigrants, for Mexicans, for Syrians, for Democrats, for fellow Republicans, for a lot of people.

Yet, in this process of vetting Donald Trump, I think we’re also forgetting about his humanity. I don’t say this to excuse his behaviors in the least. I believe what he has said and done has hurt a huge number of people and I feel deep pain when I think about some of the accusations he has made against other people.

I think many people think that he is pure evil — I disagree. I think he’s a human being that doesn’t know what he’s doing…just like all us other human beings. A few years back, a friend said to me that she was tired of giving other people evil genius credit — I agree.

I wonder how this election would be if we treated the candidates as human beings, not machines that need to be 100% perfect all the time.

I wonder how our society would be if we could admit that we were human, made mistakes, and really don’t know what we were doing.

I wonder how Donald Trump would be if he allowed himself to be the fully flawed human that we all are.

However, when watching the television return of Jon Stewart during the Republic National Convention, I began to notice that the left often uses the exact same tactics. As much as I love watching Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver, they frequently name call their opponents. Jon Stewart showed a photo of Sean Hannity and pretended to not recall his name, thus naming him “Lumpy.” Stephen Colbert, on numerous occasions, has labeled Bill O’Reilly as “Papa Bear.” John Oliver seems to have a new nickname each week for Trump and for other people that he believes is doing something ludicrous.

I am not against people scrutinizing behaviors and how those behaviors lead to suffering in others. What I don’t understand is why we often take that scrutiny beyond the behavior and anchor it to the worth of the human being.

What if we name called the behaviors instead of the people? If we can’t get past the name calling maybe we could at least redirect it.

I strongly believe that we all, including the people mentioned above, wish we could discuss these issues while maintaining respect for each other.

(The original title was “Words to avoid if you want white people to talk about race,” and after introspection and a suggestion from a friend on Facebook, I’ve decided to change that title to reflect less about telling you how to behave with me and more about revealing to you the underlying emotions triggered when I hear certain words)

I study intercultural communication. In every culture, there are words that have strong emotional reactions. Certain swear words and cuss words can trigger these emotions very quickly and derail otherwise productive conversations. Slurs can end conversations even before the words finish leaving the tongue.

I am a white man who deeply believes we need to engage in dialogue about the consistently inhumane behaviors that are happening to African Americans in our country. I have read many blog posts coming from white Americans and black Americans and others as well regarding the urgent need for this conversation.

One of the hardest parts about having such an emotionally-charged conversation is that you don’t know which words will trigger the other person or will trigger yourself. You could be going along, having a very insightful exchange, and all of a sudden, the word you say completely shuts off the other person. You see their face fill with disgust and hurt and they instantly stop talking. Other times, you’ll be cruising along, and then the other person nonchalantly drops a word that fills you with rage. You feel energy rush to your fists, your brain starts firing, and you breathe unabated fire into their face.

One of my deepest fears in having any conversation like this is that I will say the wrong thing. That I will utter a phrase that for me, doesn’t evoke strong emotions, but for the other person, will send them to a place of deep hurt, anger, etc. I don’t want to cause that pain, so I dance around the conversation. I feel confident that I’m not the only person who feels this way.

On the converse, the following is a list of words that I hear in conversations about race that instantly trigger me and discourage (i.e., remove the courage from) me to have these conversations.

I’m not telling you that you can’t use these words in conversation. Heck, I get triggered by lots of words and find it valuable when these words reveal underlying emotional associations I hadn’t explored in a while. I’m telling you these things just to show you some of the challenges I personally face when trying to engage in a conversation I find urgent and difficult.

“racist”: I hear this word and I get defensive. I get angry. I get retaliatory. I feel shame and fear that I will be called this word by someone who is not white and that my life and career will be ruined. It is an absolute term — you, or a system, is either this or you are not. There are no shades of gray. It is probably one of the most debilitating words that I can hear as a white person.

“White Supremacy”: I hear this phrase and feel very condescending towards the person who used it. I don’t try to feel this way, it just happens. I think it’s because I don’t think I, as a white person, actually feel superior to people of other races, maybe on the surface, but not deep down. I think I feel lots of inferiority towards other races. Also, I hear this phrase and start to attack the worth of people who look like me — if there truly are people who believe this, then they are evil people. When I believe that other people who look like me are evil, I start to question whether I am evil. Then I swallow myself with shame and don’t want to continue.

“Whiteness”: I hear this word and feel confused and somewhat annoyed. It is never a word I have used to describe my social grouping, and somehow seems forced on me from the outside, as I think most racial categories are. It also seems nebulous and sometimes used as a euphemism for the r-word mentioned above.

“White Privilege”: I hear this phrase and feel frustrated because I think about how often I have denied my own suffering because of how much privilege I’m supposed to have. How I have downgraded the value of my suffering, placing it below the suffering of everybody else. How my tears don’t really count because “things could be worse.” I hear this phrase and think about how mere moments after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Robin Williams, one of the whitest and most privileged people on the planet, committed suicide. I want to shout that there are many areas in which I don’t have privilege, where I don’t feel confident, and where I struggle. I fear that if I express this suffering, then someone will mock me for having fake struggles and then I’ll never trust my hurt.

The conversation I want to have is about the feelings, the emotions that are evoked in racial interactions. Where we explore our suppressed suffering to see how it is driving us to project pain onto others. Where we allow ourselves to feel emotions, “positive” and “negative” ones, so that we process the emotion instead of projecting it. Where we dig deep into the challenges of our own humanity so that we can see others’ humanity as well. I desperately want to have this conversation. I fear how much pain we will feel if we don’t. I hope for all the freedom we will feel if we do.

What words trigger you so deeply that you disengage from conversations about racial interactions?

“I am Darren Wilson,” proclaim white people.

The situation in Ferguson is not about Ferguson. It is not about Michael Brown. It is not about Darren Wilson.

It is about us.

It is about our identities. It is about who we are as a people. It is about our goodness as human beings.

When the media says Michael Brown was a thug, many black people are offended, as if the media were calling them thugs, and to call someone a thug is to deeply attack one’s character, one’s goodness.

When the protestors call Darren Wilson a racist pig, many white people are offended, as if the protestors were calling them racist pigs, and to call someone a racist pig is to deeply attack one’s character, one’s goodness.

I believe that what happened in Ferguson was a travesty. I believe that Michael Brown was a good person. I also believe that Darren Wilson is a good person. Again, I believe that what happened was a travesty.

When you shame someone for their behavior, you push them away instead of bringing them closer. You further ingrain the divide that exists. You rob them of their humanity.

Instead, when we focus on the act, not the actors, we can reconcile. We can release our guilt. We can release our rage.

When we remove the shame and realize that what made us afraid, hurt, angry, or confused was the thing that happened, not who made the thing happen, we can work with the other side to build a better world.

Imagine how this situation would be different if white people thought all black people were good people and black people thought all white people were good people.

Imagine how this situation would be different if we collectively mourned the death of a good man at the hands of a good man.

Imagine how this situation would be different if white people defended the goodness of black people and black people defended the goodness of white people and we all defended the goodness of ourselves.

Verbally labeling an emotion is much like applying a digital technology (language) to an analog signal (emotion and emotional experience).

An analog signal is a continuous signal with infinite resolution. A digital signal is a discontinuous signal, with finite resolution.

Language is an abstraction of reality–it uses a variety of discrete symbols to represent a variety of analog stimuli. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, and I imagine that’s because it would take thousands of words to describe the intricacy of such a picture. Each word can capture certain nuances, but even a thousand words cannot capture every single essence.

So if language insufficiently captures our world, why should we value it? Human beings take shortcuts all the time to better understand the world around us. The amount of information that our senses capture every second is absurd and we couldn’t possibly handle it all without processing.

To capture external events, nowadays we can take a picture and try to convey a (small) portion of that sensory information directly to someone else. However, with internal events (feelings), this is still outside of photographic reach.

Many scientific studies and business endeavors aim to label our internal, emotional states, but many of them try to do so quantitatively. For example, how happy are you on a scale from 1-10? In this moment, how angry are you on a scale of 1-7? I don’t know about you, but I struggle to accurately put a number on my state of happiness.

Other efforts emphasize that humans only have six basic emotions, which are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. However, others argue that we don’t have basic emotions.

Regardless of whether we only feel six basic emotions or not, we have a plethora of words to differentiate feelings. Furthermore, some languages have words that describe certain states while other languages completely lack those words (e.g., Schadenfreude).

Language has evolved to be the best approximation that we humans have for understanding the internal experience of another human. In English, how many words are there to illustrate the different shades of happiness? Of anger? Of surprise? Too many for me to count.

Nonverbal communication (e.g., tone, body language, facial expression) is a powerful tool for conveying our internal states. However, in a society where we communicate so frequently through distance mediums (e.g., email, text messages, status messages), we have to rely more and more on the power of verbal language to transfer our meaning.

It is ironic that in a world with so much digital technology, we disregard the power of the oldest digital technology available to humans: language.

Recently, I posted about Breathless, and how such a beautiful film can have an emotional impact on a culture. Today I’ll talk about how emotions and breathing are inextricably linked.

According to Wordnik, breathless is defined as:

marked by the suspension of regular breathing, as from tension or excitement: a breathless audience.

Needless to say, I was left breathless.

However, at the same time, I was still breathing.

Breathing and emotions are strongly connected. Whether you need scientific evidence, religious evidence, Broadway evidence, or your own evidence, there’s very little denying it.

Want to change your emotional state? Change your breathing. Want to recognize your emotional state? Pay attention to how you are breathing.

Simple. But takes practice. Lots of practice.

Have you seen any of the Bourne series? If you have not — slight spoiler alert.

In the first movie, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne is trained to be an automatic assassin. So why does he go on this rampage fighting against his assassin identity to find out who he really is?

If you remember, when Bourne encounters the African dictator he was supposed to off, he unintentionally gazes into the eyes of the man’s young daughter and then snaps out of his focus, and nearly dies as a result.

My hunch about why he is on such a focused mission is that he is searching for his humanity. After years of being an assassin acting on autopilot, he no longer wants to be shut off from his feelings, from living in the world. He goes to great lengths to protect his new love and also to persuade fellow assassins to awaken to the reality of their humanity.

Bourne is clearly the protagonist in the films, but who is the antagonist? It appears to be everyone behind the effort to mold humans into machines with a sole purpose of killing.

So why do we find this series of movies so compelling?

For me, it’s because society wants us to be robots, whereas we want to be humans. And to be a human means to feel. To have emotions. To empathize. To have values. To care.

The title needs slight revision: Jason Bourne = human, not robot.