100 Voices

A hundred different voices.

I heard that line in one of my songs this morning, and for some reason it just stopped me.

A hundred different voices.

That’s what this thing has really been about.

I started out thinking I was going to interview 100 people.

Simple enough.

Get a camera. Go out into Greensboro. Find complete strangers. Ask them some questions. Find out what people are thinking. Maybe learn something about America.

But somewhere along the way, something happened that I wasn’t expecting.

My world started getting bigger.

I’m 69 years old.

And by the time you’re 69, you’ve developed a world.

You’ve got your places.

Your people.

Your routines.

Your restaurants.

Your neighborhood.

Your beliefs.

You know where you’re comfortable.

And without even realizing it, you can start living inside this little invisible bubble.

Not because you’re a bad person.

Because you’re human.

We like what’s familiar.

And then I started walking outside of mine.

I started approaching strangers.

People I would normally walk right past.

People who looked nothing like me.

People half my age.

People from different backgrounds.

Different races.

Different religions.

Different sexual orientations.

Different politics.

Different everything.

And I started asking questions.

And then I went to the Pride festival.

Now there’s another world.

People celebrating who they are.

People dressed differently.

Living differently.

Loving differently.

And instead of observing it from the outside, I walked into it.

I talked to people.

I interviewed them.

I listened.

And something incredibly simple started happening.

The unfamiliar became familiar.

That’s it.

That’s the magic trick.

You know what’s really easy?

Being suspicious of a group.

You know what’s much harder?

Being suspicious of Jennifer.

Because now you’ve met Jennifer.

You’ve talked to her.

You’ve heard about her family.

You’ve laughed together.

You’ve discovered she worries about the same damn things you worry about.

Suddenly she’s not “those people.”

She’s Jennifer.

That’s what these 100 voices have done to me.

They’ve taken categories and turned them into people.

And I’ve discovered something else.

We’re different.

We absolutely are.

And I don’t want to lose that.

I don’t want everybody thinking alike.

Dressing alike.

Voting alike.

Worshipping alike.

Loving alike.

Jesus, what a boring country that would be.

Three hundred forty million John Eagletons?

We’d make it about four days.

By Friday, everybody would be starting a political party.

But beneath all those differences, I kept hearing familiar things.

People want to be safe.

They want somewhere decent to live.

They want enough money to make it through the month.

They want healthcare.

They want opportunities.

They want their children to have a future.

They want love.

They want dignity.

They want somebody to give a damn about them.

They want to belong.

A hundred different voices.

But underneath them, there’s this recognizable human rhythm.

And here’s the part I really wasn’t expecting:

I think this project has changed me.

I thought I was going out to learn about everybody else.

Turns out I was learning how much of the world I wasn’t experiencing.

Think about that.

At 69 years old, I’m discovering new worlds in my own damn city.

I didn’t need a passport.

I didn’t need an airline ticket.

I didn’t need to go to Europe or Africa or Asia.

I needed to walk out my front door and talk to somebody I didn’t know.

That’s extraordinary to me.

Because we’re constantly being told that getting older means your world gets smaller.

You retire.

You slow down.

You settle in.

You know what you like.

You know what you don’t like.

Don’t rock the boat.

Bullshit.

My world is getting bigger.

At 69!

And the reason it’s getting bigger is because I’m deliberately walking into places where I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I’m talking to people I don’t know.

I’m listening to voices I’ve never heard.

I’m putting myself in situations that are outside my norm.

And sometimes it’s uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s awkward.

Sometimes somebody says no.

Sometimes somebody looks at me like:

“Why is this old guy with a camera walking toward me?”

Fair question.

But then somebody says yes.

And a door opens.

And behind that door is another human being.

Another story.

Another possibility.

That’s what I mean by a hundred different voices.

They’re not data points anymore.

They’re not interviews.

They’re people I met along the way.

And collectively they’ve taught me something I wish I’d figured out a long time ago:

Curiosity makes your world bigger.

Judgment makes it smaller.

Fear makes it smaller.

Staying comfortable makes it smaller.

But curiosity?

Curiosity opens doors.

“Who are you?”

“What do you think?”

“What’s your story?”

“What matters to you?”

Those might be some of the most powerful questions we can ask another human being.

And now I’m thinking:

Why stop at 100?

Not necessarily another hundred interviews.

I’m talking about the way I live.

Why would I ever go back to walking past people?

Why would I go back to assuming I know somebody because of what they look like?

Why would I stay inside my little comfortable world when I’ve just discovered this enormous one sitting right outside it?

That’s the gift these people gave me.

A hundred different voices opened up a thousand different possibilities.

And maybe that’s ultimately what this project is about.

Not politics.

Not left versus right.

Not proving that everybody agrees.

We don’t.

Maybe it’s something much simpler.

Get out of your bubble.

Go somewhere you normally wouldn’t go.

Meet somebody you normally wouldn’t meet.

Talk to somebody you normally wouldn’t talk to.

And don’t go there to teach them something.

Go there because they might teach you something.

Because I went looking for 100 strangers.

And somewhere along the way…

I stopped seeing strangers.

I started seeing people.

And at 69 years old, when I thought I’d already seen a pretty good chunk of what life had to offer…

my world got bigger.