Learning to live with other people

Sam Smith - Just had an interview with Capitol Hill Citizen that plans to run a story in several weeks. In preparation, I reread a number of stories about my past. One thing that struck me was how living and working with other people was so important. 

Here are a few of the things that I came up with, not as an activist role model but as an example of how experiences apparently unrelated to our chosen work can influence what we do and how we do it:

• I was one of six children and so learned at an early age that other people didn't always talk, think or act like me. 
• I went to a Quaker school in Philadelphia. Far from theological rigidity, the teachers at this school offered ways to react to things and people who didn't think like you, something you do a lot of as a reporter. At Germantown Friends School you learned that  success was not just a personal experience but one you shared with others. The goal was "SPICES" - or simplicity. peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship. As GFS put it, the school was "dedicated to reaching that of God in every person, Our mission is to seek truth challenge the intellect, honor differences, embrace the city, and nurture each student's mind, body and spirit." 
• These days I sometimes describe myself as a Seventh Day Agnostic in that I am happy to try to follow Christian principles without having to pray about them in church or assign them to a god. I learned this in part in the 1960s working with activist preachers. One study of Friends of the Britain Yearly Meeting found some 30% of its Quakers to be non-theistic, agnostic or atheist. 
• One of the best teachers I had at Germantown Friends School taught one of two high school anthropology courses then available in the country. I went on to major in anthropology at Harvard College  along with about a half dozen others. As recently as 2024 there were still only about a dozen anthro majors there. This fits well into a society which places so much emphasis on money, power, and success rather than what it means to be human and sharing a community. 
• I was third in command of a Coast Guard cutter and one of things I learned with that rank was seldom as important as cooperative service.  I consulted with lower ranked crew members and what mattered was the problems that needed to be solved, not rank. As Joseph Conrad put it, "Of all the living creatures on land and sea, it's ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences."
• For some four decades I played in bands, mostly on piano with vocals,  and while I would get my solos, the bulk of a band musician's time is spent helping others sound good.  I hardly even noticed this. As a role model for good group human existences, you can't do much  better than look into the life of a band musician.

Alll this is just one small example of  how someone finds  other people and other ways to think about life and do one's work.