Sobbing on the Subway

On teaching yourself to see the world in a new way

The other day I had an intense experience on the subway, on my way to an appointment. I suppose that’s par for the course, intense experiences being a dime a dozen on the New York City subway system, but even with that in mind, this one stood out.

I was on the 4 train heading downtown. When I got on the train, there was a woman standing next to the end bars of the bench, in front of the doors on the opposite side of the train from the one I entered. She looked a little agitated, and I thought she was hitting her phone, but I mostly ignored it because it wasn’t my business and I didn’t want to make it my business. At the next stop, the person sitting on the bench next to this standing woman got off, so I sat down. As I sat there, I could hear her talking into her phone. I’m pretty sure she was sending voice memos via WhatsApp, since most people lose reception in the tunnels. For a moment I wasn’t sure if she was crying or laughing or both, and then very suddenly I knew she was crying.

You know the sobbing you do when it feels like someone has reached in and wrenched your heart from your chest? Some people call it ugly crying, but that’s an insufficient descriptor. The woman standing next to me began sobbing so powerfully, from such a deep and desperate place, that it could only have been the result of some kind of loss. In between sobs she tried to record additional voice memos but she kept breaking down. At one point I stood up and gently said, “Honey, do you want to sit down?” but she shook her head. She leaned heavily into the doors. For some reason, I had a packet of tissues in the bottom of my bag – a packet of tissues from Sweden, oddly, where I also did a lot of sobbing. I got them out but she was too deep in her misery for me to offer them.

People like to say that nothing phases New Yorkers. That New Yorkers mind their business, keep their eyes to themselves. New Yorkers are busy and brusque and will help you out by carrying your stroller up a flight of subway steps, then walk away, without even saying a word. People also say that there’s no better place to cry in public than New York City, in part because of all of this. Everyone’s done it, no one is going to bat an eye or even look at you.

But there is a difference between crying in public and sobbing from the depths of your soul. When this woman began sobbing, the energy in the car shifted. It was already quiet but you could feel things go still. Someone down the car turned off their music. The woman seated next to me kept looking over, at the crying woman and at me, but I could only shrug back at her. Across the way I could see people stealing glances. No one took out their phone to be horrible and film. We all sat there and listened to this woman’s heart break, over and over.

She got off at the same stop I did, just in front of me. I tapped her on the shoulder and handed her the little packet of tissues. She thanked me and then fled up the stairs in front of me, only to stop at the top, turn to the wall, and sob again. I walked away then, to make it to my appointment, but it took the entire walk for my own chest to unclench. I keep thinking about her, about whatever it was that so devastated her. But I also keep thinking about that subway car. How silent it got, and how we all sat there with her, unable to leave and unable to help, uncomfortable in the presence of such extreme, unfettered grief. And because we could go nowhere and do nothing, we had to witness it, hold it, let it be.

You could argue that no one else in the car was doing that. Maybe people were actually ignoring her, or didn’t notice or care. Maybe I’m projecting. But it didn’t feel that way. And I don’t want it to be that way. Because I think if more of us could get better at learning to sit, observe, not judge, and be okay with our own discomfort for a minute, then maybe the world could offer us all a little more grace.

*****

2009

Do you ever wonder why people seem so incapable of giving others grace? I think about it a lot. I have some theories (don’t I always), and I do think one of them is our resolute desire to avoid our own discomfort as much as possible. Being emotionally generous or compromising to make space for someone else is often uncomfortable.

There’s another part of it that I think comes first, before we can even start dealing with that type of discomfort. And that part is what I like to call “learning that those around us are, in fact, people too.”

This is something I know I’ve struggled with. It’s easy to forget that friends, family members, enemies, coworkers, strangers are all people. I don’t mean we think they’re not human (altho sometimes it’s easy to wonder). More I mean: They are individual people like us, each one the center of their own social networks, each one dealing with life and joy and pain. They aren’t extensions of us or defined solely by their relationships to us. Your mom, for example: Turns out she’s more than just your mom. She’s a whole person with a whole life, just like you.

I started to get an inkling of this decades ago, during my first turn as an advice columnist. But it wasn’t until I did my PhD that something fundamental started to shift. Now, I don’t have a lot of great memories of the years I spent doing my PhD. I mostly hated it and still sometimes wonder how I ever ended up doing it in the first place. But sometimes I think the universe had a plan for me, because if I hadn’t decided to get a PhD in sociology – despite never having taken a single sociology course in undergrad or in my first master’s degree program – I would never have learned how to conduct an ethnography. And ethnography fundamentally changed the way I look at and experience the world.

In case you are not familiar with ethnography, a quick primer: Ethnography is the study of people in their own environment. Or, if not in their own personal environment, in a natural environment – as in, not a lab study or in an artificial setting. It usually involves a lot of observation and in-depth interviewing. In sociology, the intent isn’t to understand a specific individual, it’s to understand behaviors and patterns of groups of people. It’s a major qualitative research method in the social sciences. So if you were doing your dissertation project, you could (as I did) do an ethnography of doctors in specific clinical settings and observe the transition from paper records to electronic health records.

Obviously, when an ethnographer goes into a setting to observe, they often change the setting or the behaviors of the people they’re observing. So a researcher has to taken that into account. I mean, think about it: If you were going about your business at work, and I was sitting there in the corner watching you with a notepad, you’d probably feel a bit self-conscious. It might change your natural rhythms and behaviors. But over time, if I sat there long enough and you got used to me, you’d slowly forget I was there or what I was doing, and you’d fall back into whatever patterns I’d originally disrupted. And I would keep observing and taking notes, and eventually I would have a pretty good understanding of your behavior in that setting.

Pretty interesting. But life-changing?

In the ethnography seminar I took, the first exercise was to go sit somewhere in public, observe what and who we saw, and take notes. I went to the mall (shoutout South Coast Plaza) and sat in a cafe near a central area. We brought our notes back to the seminar for the professors to critique it. The first thing we learned was that we were all glossing. Glossing is a sort of verbal concealment through assumption or bias. For example, let’s say my notes said, “A couple in their 30s walks. The man is Asian and the woman is white.” That’s glossing. Why? Because I don’t know any of this for sure. All I can say in my notes is what I observe. And what I actually observe is: “Two people walk by holding hands. They look like they may be in their 30s, based both on dress and physical appearance [and the more specific clues the better!]]. The man appears [to this observer, who may or may not have internal biases] to be Asian, the woman appears to be white.” So rather than insert myself and my assumptions into the observations, I’m trying to report back as objectively as possible what I see.

Of course pure objectivity is impossible. I’m a human being, observing from my perspective, with my own toolkit that’s been built up over years. So that’s another thing ethnography taught me: No matter who you are or what you’re studying, there will be biases. As a researcher you have to stay vigilant. Be aware of your biases. Check them when you can. Be honest about them so they don’t affect your subjects or impact your analysis. And question them whenever possible.

I took these two learnings with me into the world. I started to observe the people around me differently. Rather than gloss and make assumptions, I tried to look at them with more objectivity. Or if I was quick to judgment, I’d stop myself and ask why I thought that way. Where did that idea come from? Was it fair? How did I know if it was true or not? Could I shift that assumption? What kinds of inputs would I need to gain a new perspective or change a bias I've gained over time?

2009

Let me be honest with you: This is not a comfortable practice. It is sometimes very unpleasant, because it requires being honest with yourself and sitting with what may be a pretty ugly realization. It’s easier to keep on with the assumptions than to remind myself, over and over again, I have developed some unfair and sometimes quite ugly biases. We all have. We’ve absorbed ideas, lessons, imagery. We’ve bought into simple narratives and never thought to question them. No one gets to avoid this. Everyone has work to do.

But even if these biases and assumptions aren’t my fault, they are my responsibility. So I have to work to change them with intentional, personal practice. And that practice is something I don’t think I could have created for myself without becoming an ethnographer.

One of the things I find particularly loathsome about our current social media-driven moment is that everything is so public. Not every good deed needs to be trumpeted. Not every opinion needs to be expressed where people who don’t know you can read it. And you can quietly, privately learn how to be a better person.

(Yes, I see the irony of saying that as I am writing this, I am also part of the problem.)

*****

Let’s go back to the woman on the subway. I didn’t describe her to you, so how did you imagine her? What did she look like and sound like? What language was she speaking? What was she wearing? Did the image of her change as she became more upset?

Objectively, or as objectively as possible: She was a woman of average height. Shorter than I am, and I’m about 5’8”. She wasn’t slim. She wore tight skinny jeans, a tight pink top tucked in, and sneakers. Her hair was up, sculpted and braided, she wore a lot of makeup, and she had long fake glittery nails. Her skin was a light brown. She spoke Spanish, when she could get the words out. I don’t know how old she was, but I would guess she was in her 30s.

Subjectively: She looked like someone who could probably hold her own. Her life probably hadn’t been privileged, probably not always easy, but she’s making it work and she still has fun. Not someone who gave the appearance of having grown up with a lot of money. She looked like a lot of other women in this city: A little bit tough, a little bit careworn, staying strong and keeping shit together. Some people (depending on neighborhood and perspective) might have looked at her and described her as a little trashy. Certainly not stylish or chic or cool.

If I am honest with you, I also think some people might have wondered, before she started sobbing, if she was the kind of person who was about to go off on some stranger for the slightest provocation. Whose agitation would spill over and become a problem for others in the subway car. The city is always intense, but lately it’s felt more so, especially on the subway. When you see someone hitting a phone and yelling into it, you wonder if some shit’s about to go down. And maybe you would wonder this especially because of how she looked and how she was dressed.

If I am really honest with you, I was a little uncertain and concerned when I first saw her. That was my automatic response, my little lizard brain at work, based on a combination of experience, self-preservation, and whatever weird biases I have developed over the years. I don’t fault myself for that. Brains have to make snap judgments. That’s how we survive. We look at a situation, assess it as quickly as possible, and then we move on to the next one. This is why when anyone says, “Oh I’m not judgmental” I want to call bullshit. Yes you are. Everyone is! We have to be! Otherwise we’d never survive.

The problem isn’t that humans judge. The problem is when we let our snap judgment be our only judgment. When we don’t question or complicate that initial assessment, try and shift it and improve it whenever we can. When we gloss over what we see and let our assumptions dictate our response to another human being.

2009

*****

So how do you change it? This is where my training comes in. As always, awareness is a good first step. Get curious about your initial thoughts. Don’t berate yourself for them or immediately try to stuff them down, just be aware they’re happening, and explore them. Like: A group of teenagers is walking toward you on the sidewalk. What’s your first thought when you see them? Why do you think that? How would you know it’s true? Where do you think that thought came from? Would you think that if they were a different gender, a different ethnicity, of an obviously different socioeconomic background?

The second step is not, as many seem to think, constantly expressing guilt. The internet is full of that sort of thing, people flogging themselves in the comments or trying to prove they’re one of the good ones now or, even worse, trying to step in as a savior in some sort of misguided attempt to alleviate guilt. And I know everyone thinks I’m talking only about white people but I regret to inform you that white people are not the only ones afflicted with the human condition. We all do this, in different ways and at different times.

The second step is to keep that curiosity moving. Okay, so you saw that group of teenage girls coming toward you on the sidewalk and your first thought was “uh oh, mean girls, I better watch my step.” Now start to explore where that idea came from. How did you develop that bias? What seems to trigger it? Is it rational or logical? Did someone tell you about it and you never thought to question it? Did you learn it from watching someone else or from having a bad personal experience?

The third step is training yourself to observe the world in a new way. When you see that pack of teenage girls, let your brain have its first primal thought. Then stop, question the thought, and observe as objectively as possible. What do you actually see in front of you? What are you looking at, when you clear away your assumptions? What and who do you see when you and your biases are not the focus, but instead the person or people outside of your own little self?

The fourth step is to expand your observations and begin to recalibrate what is “normal” to you. How often do you pay attention to people who are different from you? Even in a crowded, diverse city: How often do you really see these people? Look at them as people, with entire lives and a whole interior world inside them? How often do you see people who are different from you as individuals, rather than as parts of some monolith you’ve assigned them to based on whatever immediate set of characteristics your snap judgment assigns?

Use the tools at your disposal. If you live in a city, do this in the park or on the subway. If you live somewhere smaller or less diverse, use your your social media feeds. Follow people from different cultures and backgrounds, different ethnicities and religions and genders and sexualities. Observe. Listen. Be quiet and unobtrusive. Don’t ask them to teach or explain things to you. Don’t comment and participate. You’re gathering observational data and processing it for yourself, not conducting interviews or inserting yourself into the scene. Watch people be whoever they are, doing the things they want or have to do, just like you. You will start to see things that defy stereotypes and biases you did not even realize were in your brain. You’ll think things that you never imagined that you, a good person, could never think.

You will not always like all these people and what they do. You might even discover that you have some biases you don’t want to change, or that you should perhaps be more careful about people you previously thought were a-ok. But you will do a few hugely important things:

• You will learn how to better check your biases

• You will learn how to see people a little more objectively, rather than only through your own subjective lens

• You will learn how to center yourself a little less

None of this is easy. It is incredibly uncomfortable at times. No one wants to suddenly realize they’ve been harboring a horrible bias, whether racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise. We are all products of our cultures and environments. Whatever they taught us we can teach ourselves to unlearn. Even if it’s only a little. If we can change it, we can maybe find it in ourselves to see those around us as they people they are. We can work to give someone else that extra second, that grace to be human. Then we can start to work on how to get better at that, too.

Maybe you think people can’t change, but I do.

Lx