Last week I wrote about a little boy at Reverie Coffeehouse who walked up to me holding a doll and said, "My baby." This is a continuation of that story.
A couple of weeks later I was in Freeport with my friend David, talking about Project Little You. Somewhere in there David said something that made me think differently. Identities are what put us in the boxes that keep us from living as our whole selves.
No one forces an identity on you. They get presented to you. By people, by culture, by your lived experience. You should be tough. You should not feel your emotions. We choose which ones we accept, and we often accept them out of fear of not belonging.
We ended our walk in front of the MET, a coffee and art house in Freeport. Then a guy walked up to us.
He said he was a Navy brat, and that moving all over as a kid gave him a high level of emotional intelligence. It is an identity he held very strongly.
The next thing out of his mouth was that he had just left his bunk bitch. She wasn't worth it, he said. She asked how she was supposed to get back, and he told her to take a bus.
He isn't the villain here. He walked up to two strangers because he wanted to talk to somebody. He meant both things he said, and he didn't seem to see how they rub against each other.
He had just turned sixty-seven. Two weeks earlier, a two-and-a-half-year old showed me his baby with pride. Two males sixty-five years apart.
I have a hard time believing that man was calling women bunk bitches when he was two-and-a-half. Something happened in between.
If this story made you curious, I’d be so grateful if you would take a look at our pre-pledge page.
https://www.heart-strong.org/project-little-you-pre-pledge
And if you think the world needs something like this, we’d love to have your support.
Read the full piece on Substack.
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
