Why is it important to try to open up to other people's experiences?

Recently, once again, I was disappointed and shocked. It is often said that because of the way news is constantly presented to us as shocking, we became numb to shock, but I don't have that impression, neither for myself nor for the people that surround me. I even manage to stay shocked by completely expected outcomes, probably because I can never foresee the total absence of empathy that I encounter again and again as soon as I leave my bubble. I thought that after the horror at the beginning of May this year, we became at least a little more sensitive (I'm sure some people did), but that doesn't seem to be the case in general. I think some people have even become angrier and more destructive, which is devastating.

What shocked me, and is important for this text, is the murder of a trans girl, Noa Milivojev, in Belgrade. In addition to the murder itself, I was shocked by the reaction of a part of the public to this terrible event and their complete lack of empathy. The absence of empathy represents the inability to understand and emotionally and/or rationally process other people’s experiences. It directly indicates a problem with limited perception and reduced emotional capacities. If we are unable to think and feel anything outside of what is directly close to us and what directly affects us, we remain shallow beings who are not capable of feeling life at full capacity.

Let's face it ‒ no one who does not have a certain experience can’t fully understand it, they can only assume and listen to the person with that experience. Men can't fully understand women, and vice versa, straight people can't understand gay people, rich people can't understand poor people, and so on. And yet, by listening and observing, we can try to bring to the surface parts of our experience that may be close to someone else's and, by doing so, try to understand others better. The experience of rejection, for example, can help us understand, at least to some extent, how the other person who has been rejected feels. We especially have an obligation, a human obligation, to try to understand others if we are those who are in a better position. We don't have to spin information, play the Jordan Peterson game, and do similar stuff, we actually KNOW when we're in a better position than others. The question is whether we want to admit it.

In this exchange in which we are honest and ready to listen, the other person opens up to us and we open up to them.

I admit that I can cry at certain marketing campaigns. Especially to those that I feel are deeply connected to a reality that does not change in the direction I hope it would change. For some reason, it's even more poignant for me when these campaigns come from far away, from a country whose culture is seemingly very different from ours, and then I find painful similarities. I recently came across one such campaign.

FCB Chicago and FCB India created the Unbox Me campaign for UNAIDS to raise awareness about the status of trans people in India. The trans community in India is exposed to violence and about 70% of young trans people end up on the streets before the age of 15, without money or the opportunity to get an education. They often rely on sex work to survive, which makes them 34 times more likely to contract HIV. These people are exposed to a situation where society closes and excludes them from a young age.

The Unbox Me campaign is directly related to Indian culture and therefore easily communicates with people and encourages self-reflection in those who are open to self-reflect. The insight from which FCB creatives started when creating the campaign is the following: children in India often have metal boxes in which they pack their favorite things. Let's say it's their little treasure, the objects they care about the most, their little heart. The campaign includes different trans people who open up to the audience and show what they kept in their boxes as children, hidden from the people around them. Inside the boxes were dolls, lipsticks or jewelry stolen from a female family member, razors, and pictures of superheroes—all the opposite of what society imposes as toys on boys or girls.

These boxes, along with short messages left by their owners, were opened by influencers on their channels to encourage conversation and understanding. The campaign was implemented without a media budget and achieved a reach of over 13.9 million. The campaign is already being used in 57 Indian schools to inform parents and children about these issues and to help people develop empathy and a better understanding of different perspectives and experiences.

The best part of this campaign is that it lets people who have been marked by a certain experience talk about it. Looking from the outside, we can only guess. And this text is a guess. I can be sad, I can be shaken, and I can understand better the more I listen. But at the end of the day, our role is not to pretend to know everything, but to let people with a certain experience speak for themselves. Or at least we can share what they said so that someone else can hear them too.

Source: https://www.fcb.com/work/unbox-me

Author of the text: Natalija Jovanović, Senior Content Manager