Our Emotional Education

The high school I went to is quite well known for the academicians it produces. A very high number of students go on to Ivy League schools, and many on to specialized programs at other selective schools. To many, the esteemed University of Illinois is considered a “back up” or “safety” school when applying to college.

I was so drawn into this culture that when I met people as a college student, I would ask them what school they went to, and make an immediate judgment based off of that fact.

Over the past two years however, as I’ve regularly traveled all over the U.S., and been to Europe, I realized that it does not matter, one Iota, what school someone attends, nor their intellectual capacity – I can communicate and enjoy just about anyone.

That is, if they have a good Emotional Education.

At a high school like mine, I heard the term “IQ” (Intelligence quotient) a lot. I never heard anyone talk about the (in my opinion) far more important “EQ” (Emotional Quotient). That is more or less, a person’s ability to deal with other people.

I can connect with people on far more levels than their book smarts, or their specializations (music in my case as a conservatory student). We can see humor in the same things, talk about where we are from, where we want to go, and everything in between. People are people, and in that way we have had an incredible amount of similar experiences, no matter how different our lives might be.

There’s no need to create an “Us” and a “Them” most of the time.

And yet we all love to create those barriers. We love to categorize people- the hipsters, the bros, the valley girls, the hicks, the yuppies- You name it, and there’s a nickname and a whole slew of associations.

Now… what fired me up on this whole topic was an experience I had just this week. I lead a jazz big band with my twin brother called the Fatum Brothers’ Jazz Orchestra (I’ll throw a little shameless plug to www.fatumjazzorchestra.com seeing as we are recording our first record this weekend). We are comprised of college students from all over Chicago land. It’s a huge effort that I’m pretty damn proud to be making happen, somehow.

There is also another big band comprised of college and high school aged students that draw from all of Chicago land. Our bands use some of the same musicians, and we are all friends (or at least it is a matter of time until we are, in this profession of jazz music!)

Now, one of my good, good friends decided to characterize the differences in the relative “success” of the bands in an alarming and frustrating way. The FBJO played 15 dates in Chicago last summer, one over winter break, and this summer is playing live 5 times in Chicago, recording it’s first record of original music, and going on a two week tour of California. The other band played one show last summer (a big band battle with our band), and this summer is rehearsing regularly and performing often around Chicago.

My friend decided that the difference in relative “success” was a perfect example of “White Privilege” in America. For those unfamiliar, “White Privilege” is a common concept in the study of race, conceptualizing the “advantage” of being White in American society, versus the “disadvantage” of being black.

His choice to use us as an example for this concept initially shocked me because both the bands are comprised of mostly white kids from Chicago land, not the city. The other bandleader is black and from the south side of Chicago and extremely well respected by the jazz youth of this city for his fantastic connections to Chicago’s jazz scene.

I didn’t write this article on whether or not this concept applied to our situation (it absolutely doesn’t, and I will be willing to get into it in another post), but more remarkably the Emotional choice of my friend.

It’s a prime example where our Education can override our emotional education.

Why would a first instinct with respects to something like the Fatum Brother’s Jazz Orchestra be to create a divide?

As I’ve learned to work on my EQ, I’ve realized that my first reaction to describe our band would be to congratulate us for the amount of work we put into it ( by all its members), and the musical quality we produce. My brother and I built everything about the band from scratch- and all money to support it was self raised- getting financial advisors to work pro bono, and scratching for whatever help we could find.

Back to the IQ overriding the EQ. Flexing one’s brain and practicing intellectual concepts at the cost of alienating their friends rather than working with one another to help both bands to be successful is mind-boggling.

Fostering our Emotional Quotient and creating connections with others will inevitably prove to be much more worthwhile than diligently articulating our differences ever will, regardless of any truth (or lack there of) that our observations hold.

So in the word’s of the great Diana Ross, “Reach out and Touch Somebody’s hand, make this world a better world if you can!”

Kindly yours,

John Fonseca Fatum