Loving Others: Practically Impractical in So Many Ways #1
learning the names and stories of others
Welcome to our series on loving others: Practically Impractical in So Many Ways, notes to myself as I take steps (the faith and hope-filled, clumsy and imperfect kind) in loving others in practical (and impractical) ways.
Learn the names and stories of others.
You cannot truly love your neighbor if you don’t know your neighbor, and you can’t truly know your neighbor until you know their name and story.
Honestly, showing up somewhere (anywhere) and having everybody know my name is slightly terrifying. One to three people at a time is more my speed.
I originally thought a Destiny’s Child Say My Name gif would be great here, but quickly came to the conclusion Walter White’s energy is at times a more accurate representation of mine.
Regardless of gif representation, most of us can agree that knowing someone’s name is the bare minimum first step towards really knowing them. So where does that leave someone like me: great at remembering faces (and the stories represented by those faces) but not so great at remembering names?
Fun fact: I’ve been a small group fitness instructor since 2015. (I came to fitness later in life - about a year or so before I became an instructor - and you can read more about all of that here and here.) I teach both virtual and in-person classes, and I’ve noticed a difference in my name recollection between the two formats.
Quite a few of my virtual class participants have been with me since the class started nearly two years ago. That means I’ve been seeing certain names flash across our weekly Zoom room for that amount of time, which also means I’ve become very familiar with most of those names. The virtual setting and class format aren’t really set up for knowing many of their faces or stories, but the names are there. When I notice they haven’t been around, I can offer them a warm “welcome back” by name upon their return. Seeing their names week after week has been enough for me to remember them without being super-intentional about doing it.
There’s an in-person class I’ve been teaching for about the same time as those virtual classes. An entirely different group of people, most of them have been with me since the beginning of that class, too.
Why can’t I remember their names? Like not even a little bit. I’ve seen their faces week after week for months, and maybe a couple of names have stuck in all that time.
When I think back to how we first met, it dawns on me: there was never a formal I-say-my-name-and-you-say-your-name introduction, which is usually what happens when you meet someone face-to-face for the first time. I normally introduce myself at the beginning of class, especially at a new venue or when I notice new participants in an existing class. Everyone knows my name, but their names have never been a part of how we interact with each other. No handy-dandy Zoom room name tags.
I’ve never used their names to speak to them, which means names haven’t been a part of our relationship, which means this is what happens when I search the memory banks for what name belongs to a certain face:
I know their stories, though. The widow, the one caring for a spouse who’s ill, and the one(s) caring for an aging parent(s). The recently retired, the soon-to-be retired, and the one who’s nowhere near retirement. Travel stories and work stories, tales about their kids and pets. Even if their names don’t come up on any search result, story after story comes to life as their faces flash in my mind.
I know their faces and their smiles, their pain and their struggles, but not their names. It bugs me not to know their names, almost as if my love for them is less sincere, less real.
So I’ll keep working on remembering more names from this class. I’ll also keep working on remembering that different isn’t necessarily worse or less than.
Maybe different can be a blessing, too.
The blessing of being seen and heard is no less of a blessing when the steps taken towards that end are the clumsy and imperfect kind.
Faith and hope live here, too.
Until next time,
Becky
boring facts
Speaking of learning people’s stories, I read this in a recent
email and thought it would be fun to try here:What is your boring fact?!?
Share in the comments. I’ll go first…
I have such a hard tie with names. When I was teaching high school I memorized the seating chart to help me remember names. Seeing names and saying them and then associating them with a face is how I can remember best. I totally get how you would remember Zoom names, I’d be the same way. It’s frustrating in informal settings like an exercise class to keep track of names even for me as a participant.
My boring fact: I brush my teeth before I drink my morning coffee, then rinse my mouth immediately after I've finished drinking it.