Day 248: Mindy Cohen

June 5, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“I somehow by example teach that to my students – be different, be yourself, feel, have those emotions.  If it hurts, it hurts for a little while, but if you don’t take the chance you’ll never know if it doesn’t hurt and you have a wonderful experience.  It’s the wonderful experience and the hurt that makes us who we are.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Mindy, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Mindy Cohen: My name is Mindy Cohen.  I’m here in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I work at a small liberal arts college in the area.

Toni: Well Mindy, we’re happy to have you, and when you think of the word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?

Mindy: On one level, I think that I inspire the college students that I work with, and I think the reason I inspire them is one, I don’t fit in the box, and so they feel comfortable being themselves, too.  I encourage them to be creative.  I encourage them to be nonjudgmental.  I teach and I lead by example, and I allow mistakes.  I think mistakes are really important, and I think one of the messages I also give to them is that nothing is permanent.  And while that sometimes is scary, it’s very freeing.

I remember when I first realized that.  I was 19, and I moved out west to live in New Mexico, and it was like “Oh my God, now I’m going to spend my whole life here.  What if I don’t like it?” and then suddenly I said “Well, if I don’t like it, stupid, you can move.”   And I think for me that was somehow a really cathartic moment, realizing that if I don’t like something in my life I can always change it, and so I think that that’s really important.  A lot of people don’t know that and they stay with a job or a partner or something for their whole lives even though it makes them miserable, because they don’t realize that they don’t have to live miserably.

Toni: How does that inspiration occur?  What transaction do you have with the students?

Mindy: Well firstly I develop a really … I develop a relationship with most of my students that’s somewhere a cross between an authority figure, but a very mild authority figure, and someone who is an aunt or a big sister kind of person, somebody who doesn’t judge them but truly listens to them.  And I think once you truly listen to somebody and don’t spend time judging them, you’re actually gaining trust and starting to inspire them because they know they can be who they are.

Toni: How do you think that helps them to explore their own potential?

Mindy: Well I think … because they know that … I think that judgment is really the opposite of inspiration.  If you fear that other people are going to frown upon what you do or think that what you do is silly or foolish or dangerous, then the odds are pretty good you’re not going to take a chance whether it’s taking a new job, taking on a new project, moving, forming a partnership with other people, all of those kinds of things.  I think the most important thing that you can do to inspire somebody is truly listen to them and allow them to be who they are and not feel that they have to in some way please you.

Toni: Okay, so they’re taking accountability for their own actions and not worrying so much about, you know, “I have to be this way for you and that’s why I acted this way.  But more than that I have to be this way for me and I’ll follow my own mistakes.”

Mindy: Exactly.  I think they have to learn to feel secure in their own judgment of what they do so that it’s okay to … you know, somebody who’s studying I don’t know … I have a student, or I had a student, a wonderful young man, grew up in a very, very strict religious household, and he came to Albright, and he majored in history and economics and now he’s in law school.

But he also discovered that he loves stand-up comedy, and he’s been performing all over New York City, and just going in this direction that’s so totally out of his comfort box, but having a great time doing it.  He’s not looking really to make a career, but he’s looking to just enjoy and try something else, and I think that’s the most important thing, it just really is.

Dare to be different.  Dare to try something.  You know, dare to go out there and fall on your face and get up and laugh at yourself and do it again.

Toni: So Mindy, what inspires you?

Mindy: I’m very much a people person.  I enjoy making people happy on the one hand.  That really … I just … that gives me great pleasure, whether it’s because I did something to make them comfortable or I entertained them, or I taught them something, or I made a good cup of tea and I sat there and listened to them.  Those are the things that inspire me on the one hand.

On the other hand, I’m also somebody who needs a lot of quiet time.  I love to write, and I love to take an experience that I’ve had and then run with it in my mind and create something else.  I love writing short stories and taking small experiences.

I was in a bank one time in Miami, and there was a man in line in front of me, and he was not well dressed and he wasn’t very clean and he didn’t smell really great, and he tipped the teller.  And I got to talking with this man because I just thought that was so funny that he tipped her.  And he started telling me how he, you know, he was young, he was a boxer and he threw his life away because he, you know, rigged a fight to make an extra couple of bucks.  And it ruined his life and it ruined his career, and he was now a hobo who lived on the street in Miami.

I became his friend, and I would meet him a couple of times a week and buy him breakfast, and he was just … he was somebody who inspired me, because even though his story was sad, he was living precisely the way he wanted to.  He had an apartment.  He chose not to go there.  Maybe once a month he would go in and get his social security check and whatever he needed to do, but he preferred to live on the street.

Now that’s obviously not something I recommend to anybody, but I just found that that was amazing, and often we walk past the people like that.  We’re taught to scorn them and to be afraid of them, but when you start to see human beings as individuals that way, you might have a really pleasant experience and meet somebody who inspires you.

Toni: I call that the invisible obvious, an example of the invisible obvious.  There are people that are so invisible to us but yet so obviously could be gems.  They could be diamonds in the rough, and yet they’re invisible.  We don’t see them.

Mindy: Yeah.  I think that’s important.  I also … I just … I also think that we need to always push ourselves in directions that are different from where we normally would go.  I’ve had a lot of different careers because it’s more fun, and I’ve learned a lot more along the way.  I also like to move.  I don’t like to live in a house for 20 years.  I think it’s fun to move and shake things up and, you know, most people would really disagree, but I love packing things away and the finding them again as something brand new; you know, and all of these kinds of things just inspire.

Toni: So Mindy, how do you then continue to explore your own potential so that you can continue to help the people that are around you, inspire your students?  What happens within you to help you explore that potential?  What do you do?

Mindy: Within me – that’s very hard to say.  I think when I write, that sort of crystallizes … I’m not somebody who is very self-aware.  I don’t sit and analyze myself, and I don’t sit and think about things a lot.  I’m a doer.  I think it’s more important to do than to think, but I do use my writing as a kind of a tool to crystallize, to put into a form where I can actually sit and think about what it is that I’ve done or what it is that I’ve learned or what it is that I’ve given or just what it is.  Because if I don’t do that and write for myself, I think I lose the moment.

Toni: Is that important to be in that moment?

Mindy: Yes, absolutely.  Because I like change so much, you know, there’s a lot of emotions that go along with it.  You know, when you move … when I moved back to the United States after living abroad for 15 years, I just plunged into moving.  I jumped in with both feet and never considered the fact that I was leaving friends and family and most of my adult life at that point behind and starting totally brand new.  And I think when you do that you need to pay attention to who you are and what you’re doing afterwards — not while you’re doing it, because you’re too busy doing it — but afterwards you have to see what you did and how it affected you.  And I do that with my writing.

I don’t necessarily … I’m not a diary writer.  I love writing short stories, and they start usually from some reality of my own, and then it goes off into the fantastic.  But moving it into the fantastic is when I take it from being my own personal learning experience to my own little fantasy world.

Toni: And then how does that type of work for you when you’re doing that and you’re in that space to explore your own potential – do you think that spills over into the work you do with students?

Mindy: Absolutely.

Toni: How does that happen?

Mindy: I think with my students they look at … I’ve heard more than once on campus “Well you know, you’re different.”  Sometimes it’s said scornfully, sometimes it’s said with a little bit of a, you know, smirk, or a taste of tolerance, and I think everybody is different.  I think it’s very sad when you say to yourself “I want to be like everybody else,” and I give my students … I think I somehow by example teach that to my students – be different, be yourself, feel, have those emotions.  If it hurts, it hurts for a little while, but if you don’t take the chance you’ll never know if it doesn’t hurt and you have a wonderful experience.  It’s the wonderful experience and the hurt that makes us who we are.

I think traveling is very important.  I think you need to not only experience other cultures, but you have to experience yourself in the other culture.  I think history is very important and that we have to look at that in our lives — not history of wars and momentous occasions, but rather the day-to-day lives of the people who came before us, you know, the people in our families who helped to shape us, what shaped them and the ones before them.

I think we have to take … we have to look not only at our own little piece of the world, but we have to look at the whole world past and present.  We have to look at the beautiful and the ugly, and then we make that part of who we are.

Toni: Mindy, it really sounds to me that you are all about experiencing the experience, whether it’s a present experience or experience that has come before, and it sounds just from my perspective that that’s what you do currently, but that’s also what you encourage and lead by example of doing.  And for showing up today on The Get Inspired! Project and sharing your story has been wonderful, and we thank you.

Mindy: Thank you.

Toni: Take care Mindy, and thanks for doing the great work you’re doing with the students.

Mindy: Thanks so much.

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For more information about Mindy Cohen:  wxac.squarespace.com

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