I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.
Interpretation
Sharing personal stories can be uncomfortable, but it can lead to deeper connections with others.
In this quote, Brandon Stanton emphasizes the transformative power of storytelling, particularly the sharing of personal experiences. While revealing one's life may create discomfort, the value derived from articulating these experiences into relatable stories fosters connections and understanding among individuals, ultimately outweighing the initial unease of vulnerability.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational talk about the importance of openness in relationships.
When you are interviewing refugees, each person you talk to has a different story that could come from a horror movie. So many people talk about seeing their families get murdered before their eyes. Then I go to Central Park, and people are talking about their third divorce and paying tuition.
Wherever I go, I just try to show normal life. If the work helps to dispel stereotypes, it's because I seek not to portray the extremities of a place, but the vast majority of people who are quite normal and are having normal life experiences.
I always say that my favorite people to interview are the people who are at the beginning and the ends of their lives because they have two alternate perspectives of the world, and neither of them are less profound.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
Somebody's willingness to let me photograph them, and willingness to tell me a story, has nothing to do with the words I say. It all has to do with the energy I'm giving off, which hopefully is very genuine, very interested energy. It's just two people having a conversation in the street. I think that's where genuine content comes from.
The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression. As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.
Passive aggressors who are adept at this will have trained themselves to remain calm, while you get irritated and emotional.
It's amazing that people still feel, 'Oh my gosh, it's a black guy.' We've been here for a long time; let's get used to it. Let's get used to other cultures.
You know someone is your favorite person when you've done a day of press, listened to yourself ad nauseam, listened to them tell every story, and when it ends, it's like, 'Are we going to eat something?'
His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.
I ran away from home when I was a senior in high school, and it came out of all the conflicts that happen between parents and their children who can't communicate.
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