If You Only Knew Me

Late one night I happened to be flipping channels and came across a show on MTV.   It’s called “If You Only Knew Me”.  The show picks a different high school each week and takes the students through a one day Challenge Day program.  It starts out with everyone playing fun games, but by the end of the show everyone has shared a deep part of themselves.

I started DVRing the show and every time I watch it, I end up in tears.  Here you have a group of youth that start out with their basic labels (prep, jock, emo, nerd, lesbian).  But as they do different activities, each person shares something about themselves (i.e. they are homeless, they hate to look at themselves in the mirror, they’ve contemplated suicide, they feel all alone)  It’s an amazing transformation to see these teens realize how many things they have in common with each other.  They realize that although someone else’s life seems “perfect” he/she has his/her own struggles.  It was often the students with the biggest personalities that had the most to reveal.

It was also an important message for each person to understand that they are not alone.  The person that thought about committing suicide realized that many others had felt at their all time low.  The athletes sometimes broke down crying because all their life they never felt good enough in their parents’ eye.

I don’t cry often, but this show has a tremendous effect on me.  I think it would be pretty cool if adults could do the same type of activities.  So often we judge people by the neighborhood they live in, the crowd they hang around, the church they attend or even the men/women they’ve dated.   We stick our noses up at others and assume the gossip we hear is truth.  But, if we “really knew each other” we could see that we’ve all had our struggles.  Some reach back to childhood, while others have their own personal struggles today.  How often have you talked about someone or posted something on Facebook about them without evening taking time to realize what type of emotional toll it could take on that person?  We need to quit judging each other and instead offer each other a shoulder to cry on or a listening ear.    There’s no time to start like today (and while you’re at it, check out the show!)

M.Y.  October 2010