I had a former student reach out to me this morning. It is not unusual for me to get messages from young people I once taught, but this message started out, “I think he stole from your playbook.” I read the message and then looked at the article that was sent to me. Indeed, the information looked familiar. However, there was a bigger question on my mind after I read through all of this, “There’s a lesson here for this young person. How should I teach it?”
I worked with this young person at a high school I once taught at. I did some speaking in her NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) group and many health classes. In fact, the person she is referring to who “Stole from my playbook”, I spoke to students in his class often regarding mental illness. As I read through the article of this man she referred to and then saw clips from some of the talks he was now giving, yes, it did look a little familiar. The coping strategies, the presentation with telling his personal history, and so on. There were differences too but many things mirrored my own message on anxiety and depression, and he followed a similar format when I have given mental health talks, such as speaking of his personal journey and how to cope. I’ll admit, a couple of things took me back a bit, but isn’t there some fancy quote about copying someone that is supposed to be flattery? I’m sure I could find one if I tried hard enough. Apparently, the man even wants to write a book now. For some reason, my former student, a recent college graduate, took offense to this.
As I sat on my patio in the early morning hours, listening to the birds chirping and Iron and Wine whispering a few lyrics to me from a small speaker, I decided to teach a short lesson. I started my reply by saying, “One of the greatest things you can do in life is to learn to be happy for others.” I went on to acknowledge that I did see some similarities, and a couple of others have reached out in the past year since this gentleman started to speak about his own journey with mental health and tell me the same. Yet, my reply to this student was that we should be happy for him, not upset that he has “stolen” something from me. I do not own the market for speaking or writing about mental health. The self-help books are endless and many of us tell similar stories and use similar coping strategies. We are all a history book, written by our own stories, and it is what makes us up. Our experiences build a base for us and I would rather have someone share their experience and help others than hide it. Let’s look at the bigger picture. Another man is speaking about his experience with anxiety, and even though it looks familiar in many ways, it is still his individual experience and we need more people, not less, to speak about mental illness, especially men. When more stand up and tell their stories, it helps combat the stigmas that are out there. After telling her all of this I finished with, “When we learn to place our egos to the side and truly be happy for someone else’s accomplishments, we have grown into more compassionate human beings.”
As an educator, or as a writer and mental health advocate, you never know what questions you will wake up to that are lingering on your social media. You never know when you will teach another lesson, even in July at six in the morning while sipping coffee and getting ready to write.
She too is an early riser and already replied to my lesson, “I get it but I think he should at least acknowledge you because he did not start speaking about anxiety until he saw you do it.”
My thought was, “Should I teach another lesson on how it is not necessary to always be acknowledged, and especially to seek it?”
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