Meara (00:01)
You know, I've been thinking about something lately, and the more I think about it, the more it really bothers me. What happened to us? Seriously. What has happened to our curiosity, wanting to know people, learning from them, and understanding how we live? I feel like we've gotten to a point where we just believe whatever we're told. We hear something about somebody or a country.
Or an entire culture, and that's it. We've already made up our mind. And we don't even know these people. We haven't sat down with them. We haven't asked them anything. We don't know how they grew up or what they've been through. And yet somehow we think we know. And I think about how much we're missing because of that.
And it actually makes me emotional because we're human beings. We're meant to connect with one another and we're super social creatures and we're meant to learn from each other. And somewhere along the way, I feel like we have completely lost that. Welcome back to the House of Noor. I'm Mira.
And today I want to talk about something that's been on my mind for a very long time. And honestly, it's a part of why I've started this in the first place. As most of you know, I previously had another podcast episode called Women Folk Revival. And now I have the House of Noor. And my vision has always been community and ⁓ bringing people together globally on a whole nother level, but
Now my vision has changed and moved into humanity itself. And honestly, it's part of why I've started this whole thing and decided to continue it. So my question is: have we forgotten how to be human? Now I want you to think back when you were a child. Teeny little child, not a care in the world, living at your parents or your family or wherever you were living. And
What you were doing. Do you remember how curious you were? How you wanted to know what everything was, how things worked, what what why people did certain things? I have raised seven children, still raising, and one of the most beautiful things about this is watching them grow and seeing that curiosity in them.
They are constantly exploring, they are constantly asking questions about everything, sometimes too many questions. That you're thinking, yeah, let me get just five minutes. But that's how they learn. And something else I noticed is just how naturally children connect with people. Of course, they notice differences, and they can learn prejudices just like everybody else.
But there's something beautiful about the openness that they can have before they're absorbed by so many of the assumptions and the fears around them.
They want to play, they want to learn, they want to discover, and they aren't just sitting there wondering what somebody's job title is or how much money they make or their parents make or you know, they're interested in the person that's just standing right there in front of them. And somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, something has changed.
We've started conforming. We started learning what society expects of us, what we're supposed to believe, who we're supposed to associate with, what success is supposed to look like. And instead of asking the questions for ourselves, we start accepting what we are told.
And that is where we begin losing something that is really important. Our curiosity. And when we lose our curiosity, we lose those opportunities to connect with one another because
How you can truly understand another person if you've already dec How can you truly understand another person if you've already decided who they are before you they've even opened their mouth? And I can tell you exactly why I've started questioning so many of the things we're taught to believe because something happened to me when I was traveling that really opened my eyes. Now, for years I heard people telling me not to travel to the Middle East.
My then fiance was living there and I was traveling by myself alone as a woman, right? And so there's all these warnings and these assumptions about what I would experience and how people would treat me. And then after traveling there, do you know what I experienced? Absolute hospitality. Like that southern hospitality here in the United States. They were just so welcoming and kind and making me feel comfortable and
I came away with a completely different understanding than the one I had been given. Now, that doesn't mean that every single place is safe or every experience is gonna be wonderful. Of course it's not, and we should still be mindful and informed. But it taught me something.
And that is sometimes we believe things simply because we've heard them over and over again, but we've never stopped to ask, is this actually true? I mean, like, have you even looked into this for yourself or spoken to somebody personally who lives there? And with that, think about how many opinions we form about those people that we've never met. And I'm not just talking Middle East. I'm I've but traveled to England, you know. ⁓
We're constantly going places, places here in the United States I know I definitely wouldn't travel to because of things that are not safe. But do your research.
You know, entire countries, cultures, communities, sometimes even our own neighborhoods, we hear something and suddenly that's what we believe. And then the story gets passed along to somebody else, and then before you know it, not not anyone remembers where it even originated from from. We just keep repeating it. And I think about how much we're missing because of this. How many wonderful people that we never got to know, or how many traditions we never discovered. You know, the knowledge we never received because we weren't willing to ask those questions.
And it's not about cultures or countries alone. It's also about the expectations that we as humans have created for ourselves. We're taught that success means going to school and getting a good job and college and working that nine to five like robots until we retire, right? And listen, there's nothing wrong with having a career or wanting financial stability. I work 52 hours a week. We all have to make a living.
I'm a nurse. I understand working hard has responsibil and having responsibilities, you know, but somewhere along the way we have started confusing financial success with the value of a person. And we look at someone making $200,000 a year and think, wow, they've made it. And great, maybe they have, according to what success means to them.
But what about the person who doesn't make that kind of money? What about a homemaker or a farmer or a gravedigger? And they're li you know, are their lives any less valuable? Absolutely not. I don't see a CEO as being more human or more worthy or automatically more interesting than a gravedigger because they're both people. They both lived a life. They have both experienced things that
shape them into the person that they are. And I guarantee you if I sat down, if you sat down as well and listened, both would have something to teach you. Maybe one has more opportunities. Maybe one has traveled more or had more access to different kind of education, but that doesn't make one's person hu one person's humanity more important than the others. And I think we've allowed society to convince us otherwise.
One of these things I find so fascinating about people is just how differently we're all living.
You can travel from one country to another and discover a completely different way of preparing food, raising your family, caring for your household, ⁓ planting and growing things, or just approaching problems every day in life. Sometimes you don't even have to leave your own state. You can travel from a city to a town and find people doing things completely different. And I love that. I I've I've had the opportunity to travel to a few countries and those experiences have changed me.
Yeah. Visiting my husband's ⁓ homeland well, it it's not his homeland. He's from another country, but he was born and raised there. So I guess yes, it's his homeland. In particular, left me feeling humbled. I saw a way of life and a sense of hospitality that made me think about my own, and that's what
you know, learning from other people can do for you. It doesn't mean you have to go home and start living exactly like they do. I mean that's not the point. You know, you might learn how someone prepares a meal or how they grow a plant or cares for their family. And, you know, you take that knowledge and think, hmm, I wonder if I could do something like that. And then maybe you try it. Maybe you change it around. Not exactly how they're doing it, but your own way. Put a twist on it. Maybe it doesn't work for you at all and that's okay. But now you know something you didn't know before.
Now you have another idea, possibility, another way of looking at something, and this is how knowledge grows. This is how creativity happens, how traditions take place and survive. For generations, people learned from parents, grandparents, relatives, you know, and the people around them, and they watched and asked questions and they practiced. And people shared what they knew. We still have that opportunity today.
We still have that opportunity today. But we have to be willing to participate in it. And I'm gonna say something that might bother a few people. We're on our phones constantly. We're watching TV, we're scrolling all the time and consuming
Just constant loads of information all day. And then we sit there and we say, Well, I don't have time for anything else because I have to do this and then I have to do that, this, that, and the third. And I understand being busy, trust me, I do. But sometimes I think we need to put that phone down and get curious about actual people. Not just learn about humanity through a screen or a eye or someone else's
take on another person's life. I'm talking about actually sitting down with somebody, hearing them tell you about their childhood, watching someone make a dish that's been passed down through their generation and their family. Or sitting on their porch and listening to how different life was when they were growing up. These are opportunities I had through my career working in nursing homes that I loved. I took my time talking to the elders while passing meds.
Did I get in trouble? Couple times. Cause you're not supposed to take your time, right? Med med pass. You gotta be on top of it. Not in trouble like, you know, but you gotta move faster, trouble. But what I'm getting at is maybe you're s you know
It's just being in that moment and maybe standing in their kitchen or smelling the bread they're baking or doing something else while they're explaining to you how their grandmother had always made it a certain way. And you get to ask the questions. You get to be the one to hear the little stories that go along with it. And that's something that you cannot experience through a screen.
It's not. And it's an amazing feeling. And I'm not saying technology is bad. I use it too, quite a bit, actually. But it shouldn't replace getting to know the actual person. And we're still out there. There are still very good, genuine people who want to connect and share what they know and learn from you as well. Imagine what we could learn if.
We started taking time for those conversations again. It really does take a village. Let me pull myself together. Now you're probably wondering what all of this has to do with simple living. Because I'm over here talking about humanity and this podcast. This is a podcast, you know, where we're usually discussing things like homemaking and gardening and learning and traditional skills and whatnot. But to me, these are not separate. These
things simple living is about so much more than what we're doing it's about how we live with other people and I want to clear something up simple living does not mean moving slow at least not in my house I'm constantly moving I still have five kids at home and I'm you know raising them homeschooling working taking care of our home trying new things and there's always days where I feel like I haven't stopped moving from the moment I got out of bed. So when somebody says simple living it's all about is all about slowing everything down. I
Think, well, that's lovely, but that's not always realistic for everybody. You know, I have to raise kids, I have responsibilities, and I don't want to put life on hold. So for me, simple living means being intentional about the life that I'm building. It's about making those connections with those special people, being able to learn, willing to learn, and sharing what I know. And it's taking the time ⁓ to give somebody else something, whether it's knowledge, help, encouragement, or
Just a listening ear. It's being present enough to recognize that there is something valuable happening right in front of me. And sometimes simple living actually means finding a better, more efficient way of doing something. And maybe somebody has a method that saves me an hour. Wonderful.
Now, I have an extra hour to spend with my children or doing something that I enjoy, right? I'm not interested in making life harder just so I can say I'm living more intentional. I want to learn what makes sense for my family and my life today. And one of the most valuable things that I have learned from other people isn't even a practical skill. It's how to be more humble, how to be more understanding, how to give people grace when they need it. Because we don't always know what somebody else.
Was going through, and that kind of learning is just as important as knowing how to bake bread or growing vegetables or something by hand. Maybe even more important. And all of this is actually why I started the House of Noor, but the idea didn't begin here, it started with something I was doing long before this podcast existed, as I said. So
Before the House of Noor, I had another podcast with my partner called Women Folk Revival, and we spent about six months talking about reconnecting the ways of living that felt closer to our creator and how he had intended for us to live. And that meant a lot to me. But
I just kept envisioning something bigger and bigger. Not bigger in the sense of becoming famous or building some enormous platform, but in terms of connection, something that could reach across country and cultures and something that could bring people together because I kept coming back to the same thought. We've lost so much of what once connected us, sharing what we know, learning from one another, telling stories and being there when someone needs us. And I started thinking about what it would look like to create a
A place where those things could happen again. And that's where the House of Noor kind of started. I wanted a place where we could explore home, family, traditional skills, natural living, creativity, faith, and the ordinary moments that make up our lives. But I also wanted something that went beyond my own experiences because I don't know everything, not even close. I'm learning as I go, and some of the best conversations happen when we stop pretending.
we all have the answers. That's why I want to talk with people from all walks of life. A homemaker, a nurse, business owner, owner, writer. What have they learned from the difficult parts of life? The traditions that they've carried into adulthood? What was their childhood like?
What brings them happiness? And I don't want these to feel like interviews. I want them to feel like we're two friends sitting around a kitchen table having a conversation. And I wanna be just as open to learn from somebody else as I hope that they'll be from me because this isn't about somebody's popularity and it's not about how many followers they have.
It's not about their job title or whether they've achieved some particular level of success. It's just about being human. And I would love for the House of Noor to grow into a village beyond borders. I mean, imagine women from different countries sharing what they have learned. One woman might teach another how her family preserves food. Somebody else might share a tradition passed down from her grandmother. Another woman might have experience building a business or navigating motherhood or finding her way through a difficult
season of life. And they all have a place at the table. Not because they think alike, but because how we all live alike. Not because we all how we all live alike, but because we recognize there's something that we all can take from one another and learn. And that's what I mean when I say we need a village again. And that's the kind of place I hope the House of Noor can become. A place to belong.
So how do we get back to that? How do we become curious again? I think it starts with asking questions. Real questions. Not questions to prove somebody wrong. Not questions we've already decided what the answer is gonna be in our own head. Not questions because you know
Not just not those not those questions that goes backwards. We wanna ask questions because we genuinely want to understand and then we open our ears and we listen.
And I think that that's a part we're really struggling with here as humanity. Sometimes somebody speaking and instead of listening, we already preparing our response. We're deciding whether to agree or disagree. We're thinking about what we're gonna say next. But what if we just listened a little bit longer? What if we allowed somebody to finish telling their story? Maybe we'd begin to understand why they think the way they do. And maybe we'd discover that they've experienced.
Experienced that brought them to where they are today. And understanding doesn't mean you have to agree with everything that somebody says. I want to be clear about that. You can understand somebody's perspective and still have a completely different opinion. But at least now you're responding to the person, not as an assumption that you've made about them. And you don't have to travel across the world to begin either. You can start small. Maybe there's a neighbor.
that you've never really spoken to or someone you don't particularly care for. Now obviously I'm not telling anybody to put them in an unsafe situation. I would never do that. But if it's an appropriate and safe situation, then maybe try having a conversation. Somebody at work that you normally don't talk to, strike up a conversation. You'd be surprised.
Ask them something simple. Listen. Don't react right away. Just listen. And even if you're like, ⁓ god, I got myself stuck in this. I don't even want to listen. Listen anyway. What is it going to cost you? Maybe you'll find some common ground. Maybe it won't. And that's fine. But you might come.
A way with a better understanding of that person. And you might learn something about their experience that helps explain why they are the way they are. And I think that's valuable. I also think we have a responsibility to protect our curiosity and our children. Let them ask questions. Let them explore, let them discover different cultures and ways of living. And when they ask you something you don't know, you tell them.
Say, I don't know, let's find out together. There's nothing wrong not knowing. We're constantly, my kids asking me questions, ⁓ I don't know, let's find out. That's how we learn. We have to be mindful of the same things we say around them, though, that's for sure. If we're constantly judging other people and making assumptions or speaking negatively about someone we don't know or understand, what is it that we're putting into our children? We're teaching them to do the same thing. Instead, we can show them how to be curious, how to be helpful, ask the questions, learn from people whose lives are different.
And I especially want to speak to the women for a moment. I think we have such a unique opportunity to help bring people together. And I'm not talking about women ruling the world or having this power over men, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about the power of compassion, the ability to nurture relationships, to share knowledge, to care for our families and communities, and to make them better and make room for one another. We have so much to offer, and imagine what we could accomplish.
If we started using that love and willingness to not compete with one another, not to prove who's better, but to lift each other up. I really believe we could do amazing things. And you know, I keep coming back to that question that I asked at the beginning.
what happened to us because I don't believe we've lost the ability to connect. I r I truly don't. I think we've just gotten so caught up in everything else that we've just stopped making time for it. And I'm not saying everybody needs to go out and make thirty new friends. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being curious again. Ask somebody something. Learn about how they grew up. Find out why they do things the way they do and listen to them. You know, you might learn something that completely changes the way you think or
You might learn and something you can take home and try for yourself. This is the whole point. We're all different. We come from different countries, cultures, backgrounds, but we all come from the same creator. We all bleed the same. And everybody has something worth sharing. That's what I want the House of Noor to be. A place where we can actually get to know one another, learn from each other, and feel like we belong because I really truly believe we need a village again. And I think we can start bringing that back by doing something we forgot.
How to do just being curious about another human. So this week, try it, talk to somebody.
Ask them a question. Listen without already deciding what you think of them. And I'd love to hear what happens. Maybe you learned something about someone you never knew before. Maybe you had a conversation with somebody from a completely different background. Or maybe you just took the time to listen to someone you normally wouldn't. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach out to me through houseofnorr.co and share your experience. Because I don't want the House of Noor to be just me talking to you. I want us to learn from each other as well. And maybe that's where we begin answering.
The question I started with. Maybe we got distracted, maybe we stopped asking questions, maybe we just got so caught up in our own lives we forgot how much we've learned from people around us. But I don't think it's too late to change that. We just have to be willing to get curious again. Thank you for joining me today at the House of Noor. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love for you to leave a note or share this episode with a friend who might need a reminder of what connection feels like. You can always find more of our community at the house of.
of Nor.co. Until next time.