Oh hey! It’s me, your host, back again with another “Who Is This Diva” blog post. Just a quick heads up before we dive in: the name I’m using for this week’s Diva isn’t her real name, since she wanted to keep things anonymous.
I hope you all enjoyed the last blog because I sure enjoyed writing it. I think there is something truly special about taking the time to ponder and revel in your thoughts before writing them out for the world to read.
Either which way, I’m glad you’ve found your way back here! I’m excited for this week’s blog because our Diva of the week is my good friend Maya.
Now, as we know, the premise of this blog is to share what I’ve learned through conversations with other people. Well, y’all are in luck because Maya and I have had hundreds and thousands of conversations since we met. But I’d like to start at the very beginning of our friendship because I find it silly.
Once upon a time, in the very same office where I met Kieran, a girl was sitting at a desk on the adjacent wall to mine. She was quiet, and I found her to be quite mysterious and intimidating. I was just a little guy, new to the office, and I was so nervous. Maya appeared to be the picture of confidence, just doing her work quietly and making an insane amount of sales compared to me—who made about one singular sale in my first four months of sales work.
After about four months of me being lowkey terrified to talk to her, we started working the exact same schedule when our classes switched for the semester. Now I was spending time with her every single day, but still knew absolutely nothing about her. Then one day—I have no idea what it was—but we just started talking and we just never stopped.
Maya is one of my inspirations in life. I would say I’m not often jealous of other people; rather, I just want to be more like them. Maya is one of those people to me. Besides the fact that I find her to be one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, her discipline is motivating to me. Now
I am imagining her reading this and not believing me or thinking that I’m exaggerating, but it is completely true. I certainly wouldn’t be as obsessed with the gym as I am without Maya keeping me accountable.
We spend a lot of time together at school, whether it’s in the office, on long walks on the treadmill, spilling tea, or going to eat food somewhere. (Many hours have been spent at the One Earth food court, let me tell ya!) Now, because we spend so much time together, we’ve gotten pretty close. This has given me a gift that is very special to me and has shaped the way I think about a lot of things.
Last year, I had the opportunity to take a class that was literally just called “Islam.” Now, I was ecstatic walking into that class until I saw that it was being taught by this super southern white dude in his 40s. However, to my surprise, he immediately began speaking in fluent Arabic and telling us stories about the years he spent living in Morocco and studying Middle Eastern culture. That surely convicted me of my immediate judgment of someone based simply on how they looked and sounded.
Anyway, perhaps a little background on me: I grew up in a conservative church, then later moved towards a more progressive one. Christianity has surrounded me my entire life, and I learned to take it as the default that one can be. Such a way of thinking can be dangerous for those who consider themselves Christian because it opens up the opportunity to follow blindly in something without ever actually trying to learn, grow, and form their own opinions.
When I got to college, I joined a campus ministry that genuinely changed my life in some amazing ways. I began forming my own faith and learning from all types of people. But funnily enough, something that brought me even further into my faith is my friendship with Maya and that class on Islam.
It’s safe to say that I knew about .01 percent of the most basic concepts of Islam as a faith practice before walking into that class, which I have to say was not the majority experience for the rest of the students. Most students in that class were Muslim and were taking it for an easy A—which is the same thing I did in the previous semester, taking a course on Modern Christianity because I thought I would already know everything (spoiler alert: I did not).
Anyway, my professor started talking about things I’d never heard of before and I was enthralled. I love religious studies from both an academic and personal sense. I think the historical interconnection between the Abrahamic religions is so often overlooked and definitely
underappreciated. As many people have posited before, perhaps if we all understood each other better, it’d be harder to tear rifts between us. Alas, I’ll get off my soapbox and finally tell you how Maya fits into this.
Maya grew up Muslim in the way I grew up Christian. That is to say, surrounded by it. Since I took this Islam class after Maya and I started getting closer, it gave me the opportunity to learn more about Islam from the perspective of someone like me. In class, we study religion from an academic perspective—studying the Quran and Hadith, the historical figures, and social movements centered on Islamic beliefs. But my favorite part about religious studies is understanding how faith is practiced by real people, every day. However, it can be a little interesting asking a random classmate what it looks like for them to pray, or how they view certain practices or social trends.
When I had taken that Modern Christianity class, I learned so many things about Christianity that I had never known and certainly didn’t put into practice in my everyday life. This is what I wanted to know about Islam as a faith. What does it look like to be a 20-year-old woman practicing religion every day of her life?
Well, the first day I turned to Maya and asked if I could ask her a question about it, she replied with something like, “Yes, but I’m not an expert, I might be wrong, this is just how I do it.” Such a simple thing, but something that I find to be so interesting. Over the next few months, Maya and I talked for hours about all the questions I had about Islam. She never said no to answering something and never made me feel stupid or like I was ignorant. I learned a lot from that Islam class, but I think I learned so much more from my conversations with Maya.
I’ve asked questions about how she prays and how she addresses God, about how our cultures view dating, marriage, and divorce, about what it’s been like to grow up as young women in this day and age, and about pretty much everything you could ever imagine. These conversations taught me a lot. I learned about myself and connected with my friend over the similarities in how we grew up and the connection we have to our faiths and traditions.
We all seem to approach life with the belief that we aren’t experts or that we don’t know enough about anything to speak on it or share our experiences. I’m here to tell you that we NEED to stop with this. I learned so much from my friend because she let me learn from her, and I want you to do the same. Ask people. Listen to them. And respond thoughtfully.
I think Maya has such a beautiful gift in her openness and honesty. She’s a friend that I’m incredibly grateful for and one that I hope to stay connected with forever. What a blessing to find a friend who challenges me and teaches me and teases me and lets me do the same in return!
Moral of the story, here’s what I’ve learned from my conversations with Maya:
One: Somebody hit the nail on the head with “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” because if I had never gotten over my initial feelings of intimidation, Maya and I would’ve never been friends, and I would be a very different person.
Two: Sometimes you just have to be the guy to ask the first awkward question because you never know when it might turn into a good conversation or an even better friendship.
Three: I think we all think “I’m not an expert, I might be wrong” about most things, but when you can let down that wall of fear as Maya did, you might reach people in a way you never expected.
Connecting with someone through genuine conversation is something we can no longer take for granted. I’d better see y’all out there talking to people and making friends after you read this.
I’ll see you at the next edition of “Who Is This Diva”!