Acuity

After nearly three years of working at a tech start up (Enzy), I have become friends with many Portuguese-speaking and Spanish-speaking corporate office cleaners. These cleaners typically arrive at the office after 6 or 7:00pm, and we chat while they clean and I work on homework or wrap up an urgent project for Enzy. Thanks to the time that I spent in Bolivia and Colombia, I am able to converse freely with them in their native language. Because the nature of our work is so different, we typically enjoy sharing details of our work or personal lives. These friendships have had a profound impact on my life.

Where I work in an environment where all employees were privileged enough to graduate high school and attend the university of their choice, many of these cleaners have only been in the United States for a few years and are trying to provide for their family by working one or two jobs, always in manual labor. During the day, they are typically working a construction or factory job, from which they usually commute directly to the offices to clean until late. Some start working at 7am and don’t finish until 2am. They all have powerful migration stories; one particular cleaner fled his home country after being tortured for two months straight until he was liberated by the military.

As you can imagine, I have gained new perspective on many things after having developed these relationships. For me, their experience has shed new light on principles like hard work, political policies on immigration, and philosophical subjects such as our incredible ability to take things for granted.

In this article, I’d like to highlight the power of staying proximate to problems that you aim to solve. I’ll refer to several experts, some personal experience, and a study done in Italy. I anticipate the applications to pertain not only to helping people in need, but also to getting the job that you want, becoming the person you want to become, and having the social circles that you hope to enjoy being a part of.

At the 2016 Carnegie Summit, Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, gave four points of instruction to people hoping to address grave issues in society. The first point was that was must remain “proximate” to suffering and understand the nuanced experiences of those who suffer from and experience inequality. He argued that “if you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.”

I can speak to the truthfulness of this statement as I look at my past. After one visit to a local food bank, I was so moved to help fight hunger that I initiated discussions at my high school to start a small food pantry. With support from the administration, students, and local families, we dedicated a small portion of the school to providing free meals to students who were in need. After several months, the ambition that I had to keep the pantry thriving had dwindled. I attribute this completely to my lack of proximity to the students who were suffering. In the words of Stevenson, “You cannot be an effective problem-solver from a distance. There are details and nuances to problems that you will miss unless you are close enough to observe those details.” Where I once was filled with a fire to help out people in need, I was now so absorbed in the day-to-day activities with friends and fellow students who didn’t appear to need the additional support of free meals.

A study authored primarily by Paola Sessa from the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Padova in Italy further backs up this concept. In the study, Sessa performed two experiments where participants were tasked with viewing pictures of faces of people who were either neutral or expressing pain. Neural empathic reactions of the participants were measured. The studies concluded that physical distance to the person in the photo influenced empathic response. Faces that were perceived as closer in physical distance triggered stronger empathy.

The study done in Italy aligns with the words of Stevenson; if you want to help to solve a problem, you must be close to it. You must be close to the people who are suffering, and you must engage with them. Perhaps more important is the realization that if you don’t feel motivated to help solve problems, it might be because you are too distant from them.

Interacting with the office cleaners has profoundly reshaped my perspective, igniting a fire inside me to help people who are new to the country and struggling to make ends meet. The experience has filled me with gratitude for the life that I lead and has heightened my awareness of the difficulties that people face in foreign lands, as well as the opportunities available in America. These experiences have shown me that solving problems becomes significantly easier when you are connected to the people who are enduring them. Most importantly, I am reminded that you cannot expect to feel motivated to solve problems unless you choose to stay close to the people who are affected by them.