The heart of Mansfield

I scored tickets to Joe Rogan and friends at the Mothership on Tuesday for $50? 

I have seen Esther Perel and Laurie Santos, two people that have transformed my life, speaking right in front of me, in the flesh?

I saw Danny Brown and Ilana Glaser from two rows back? 

And I still have two and a half days left? Are you kidding me??

This is a magical place.  

My first draft of this blog made it sound like I had all the answers — surprise, I don’t. I just left a live recording of Mayim Bialik’s podcast and I’m not sure I even know what life is anymore…

Did you know that the US had a Poet Laureate? Me either. And she is amazing. I kicked off my conference with her talk and I couldn’t imagine a more inspiring start. It left me open-minded, ready to soak in all the wonder SXSW has to offer.    

So far I’ve attended sessions with NASA directors, psychotherapists, comedians, neuroscientists, actors, musicians, public officials, authors and I don’t even know what else.   

What do these things have in common?  They are all about connection. Everything is connected — Mayim just taught me that. 

And how does that relate to Mansfield? We are lacking connection; we desperately need connection. 

I went to a powerful talk titled Segregation by Design and Reconnecting Communities, and it really left me thinking.  

We all know Mansfield is the heart of Ohio, but what is at the heart of Mansfield? It is our people. We can’t make our city better without helping our people, without uniting as a whole.  

The arts unite us, comedy unites us. Trevor Noah (yeah, I saw him too) put it best when he said, “Comedy brings us together by shedding light on our harsh realities.” 

The first night here I went to a comedy show where a British comic made a joke that is a perfect analogy for Mansfield. He said that during the pandemic him and his family would spend a lot of time in nature, in the forest. 

He sounded it out, FOR-EST, and said, “I don’t know if you guys are familiar with those, where we have forests I think you have like, bullet fields?”

Yep, that’s right. We have bullet fields. You don’t get the nickname “Danger City” for nothing!  

I know our crime rates aren’t funny, but that is our harsh reality, at least for now.

So what’s the solution?

Sure cosmetic changes are nice, but that’s like slapping a band-aid on a bullet hole. What we really need is to get to the root cause, to change from the inside out.

The Ilana Glaser/Danny Brown session was titled How to Care in 2024. They spoke with Austin city elected officials on how to find hope in our current political landscape. 

Texas State Representative James Talarico put it this way: Cynicism is easy; it’s simple to say there’s no hope. It’s a cop out, an excuse for inaction. What’s hard is to find hope, and to keep it. 

Change is possible, and it is necessary. The best way for us to help our people is to help ourselves, to look at our situation from a new light, from a perspective of hope. 

I felt personally attacked, like he was speaking just to me.   

If it’s the arts that unite us, it’s politics that divide us. It is easy to get stuck in the thought that our voice doesn’t matter, that it’s all too corrupt to change. It’s pointless to vote because the people in charge are going to do whatever they want anyway, right?

That’s exactly how I’ve felt my whole life. I just voted for the first time not too long ago. I still hate politics, and while there is a very alarming amount of corruption, we do still have hope (at least on a local level).  

We can make small changes to protect our city and our people. To protect our schools and their funding. No real person actually understands all the political jargon used in legislation. At least I don’t, and you’re lying if you tell me you do. That’s discouraging — and it’s on purpose, but we can educate ourselves.

Ilana makes voter cheat sheets to break down the complicated words into real language that real people can understand. We need that; I need that. This takes the power away from the people making the laws and puts it back in the hands of the people they affect the most. 

So let your voice be heard, because Ilana Glaser and Danny Brown told us it’s important.  

But seriously, the power is in numbers, in the people. Our city will be great when we help our people be great.        

Time to turn bullet fields into forests.