Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “bend your ear” in particular: He’ll bend your ear talking about politics, I warn you.

My comments:

If you let him talk about politics, he’ll never stop, and you’ll be the one who gets bored.

That’s, basically, what letting him go on about politics means to you.

Literally, he’ll bend your ear.

Probably not. He won’t pull your ear towards him so that he can whisper or shout in your ear but that’s the right picture you want to form in your head.

That’s the image you want to have of people who are sometimes called ear benders, people who talk so much that they make you bend your ear, either willingly or unwillingly.

Willingly? Well, if someone is an authority on a certain subject and they’re charismatic, interesting and funny, you bend your ear towards them because you want to lap up every word, so to speak. You don’t want to miss anything. You never gets tired of listening to them.

Unwillingly? If it’s the opposite situation where you find yourself listening to someone who talks about something dull, such as politics, and talks about it for too long, then, of course, you would likely bend your head towards the opposite direction.

Or you’ll just your ears with your hands if you’ve really had enough.

In our example, “you” are more likely the unwilling listener. You are warned not to let him talk about politics – lest he won’t stop.
Lest he’ll bore you to death, as they say.

Or lest, as they also say, he’ll talk your ears off.

All right, here are media examples of bending someone’s ear, for good or bad:

1. When Rhymeir McKellar walks down the street, he thinks people see a young Black man with tattoos, braids and a backward ball cap and assume, there goes a threat.

But knowing McKellar is to know a teenager bursting with humor who is personable and polite. He’s a musician and athlete who will bend your ear about why he wants to go to college and study business, about how the hard things he’s been through don’t define him.

“I wish people would just get to know me,” said McKellar, 18, a rising senior at George Washington High School. “I’m funny, I’m helpful.”

McKellar and dozens of other Philadelphia School District students leaned into those feelings this week at Camp Akili, an experience organized around “healing-centered engagement,” a practice that aims to address community trauma and build stronger schools and communities.

The work is rooted in the research and practice of Shawn and Nedra Ginwright, who have spent the last 30 years steeped in youth development and social and emotional learning. Shawn Ginwright is a Harvard University education professor who believes that “young people in many cities in this country have so much untreated, unhealed trauma.”

Philadelphia’s school board earlier this year awarded Flourish Agenda, the Ginwrights’ nonprofit, an $885,000 contract to pay for the camp and for training for up to 250 district staff who work in the central office and at 16 schools. State grants are funding the contract, which runs through the 2023-24 school year.

It means that this week, 75 district youth ages 14 through 18 are spending time living on Philadelphia University’s East Falls campus, celebrating themselves and confronting the big issues that surround them: gun violence, depression, racism.

- Trauma surrounds Philly youth, Inquire.com, July 27, 2023.

2. The Celtics are at the top of their game. They led the NBA’s regular season with a 64-18 record, young stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum hit 10,000 career points and the team has been breaking records nonstop – and documenting it all is a 20-year-old with a vision for greatness.

Gage Duchon was a junior in high school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the former high school lacrosse star had to find something else to fill his time.

“I’ve been a big sports player my whole life and sports were a huge part of my life growing up,” Duchon said. “So I just started to teach myself how to edit videos and I did that with sports footage.”

But what began as a “quarantine hobby” has turned into much more.

Duchon started at Northeastern as a communication studies major in the N.U.in program, but when he got to campus, he set his sights on video production.

“I actually originally just bought a ticket to a [Northeastern] men’s basketball game and brought my camera in the stands with a friend and shot game,” Duchon said. “I found someone to email at Northeastern who did video stuff … and then it kind of just built a relationship with them and I started to make stuff for the team and that got a lot stronger.”

All he wanted to do was shoot basketball, so he put his all into it. As a first-year student, Duchon went to Northeastern team practices, got to know some players and even traveled with the team to an away game.

By the time his second year rolled around, Duchon was looking for more. He wasn’t set to start his co-op preparation class until the spring, but his roommate was already on the hunt for a job, so Duchon took the opportunity to see what was on NUworks, Northeastern’s job-search database.

“When I was doing my co-op search, it was me and him sitting in a room in [International Village] and just to see what it looks like, I looked up ‘Bruins,’ ‘Red Sox,’ ‘Celtics,’” said Peter Ells, a third-year mechanical engineering major and Duchon’s roommate. “And then I said to him ‘Celtics only have one job, it’s this digital production, digital media production something,’ and he’s like, ‘Wait, that’s the exact job I want.’”

After consulting with his roommate’s co-op advisor, he was told he couldn’t apply yet, but that didn’t stop him. Duchon applied for the job – as a part-time intern rather than a co-op – and within a week, it was his.

“I think he knew he had to start at some point, but when he saw this opportunity pop up for the Celtics, he just decided to throw his hat in the ring,” said Scott Duchon, Duchon’s father.

For over a year now, Duchon has been a part-time video producer for the Boston Celtics. He goes to every home game, films everything from press conferences to warm-ups and edits videos for social media.

“I’m super grateful,” Duchon said. “I have to continue to take a step back and be like ‘Man, a year ago, this is all I ever wanted.’”

Duchon said he is currently on a leave of absence from his academics to focus on his career, but it wasn’t always that way. In getting a jumpstart on his career, the college student started the job with the Celtics while also taking classes full time and being a star of the Northeastern University club lacrosse team.

Now that he’s able to put his full time and effort into his passion, Duchon’s videos have gained major traction and recognition. His personal Instagram account has over 16,000 followers and tens of thousands of views on every video, and factoring in the Celtics’ social media, his reception reaches into the millions.

“I could never have imagined how much attention some things I would do just on a whim in a few hours, randomly doing it, would [get],” Duchon said.

All of what he does is self-taught. From editing techniques to music and sound design to finding the right lighting and angles, Duchon has become a leader of his craft from the comfort of his own bedroom, and his friends and family note his humility, commitment and point of view in getting him this far.

“He has some other people that I think he bends their ear as mentors, but he really just puts in the work himself,” Scott Duchon said, “And I think that’s part of the thing that drives him.”

- The star videographer behind a star team: how Northeastern student Gage Duchon made a name for himself with the Boston Celtics, HuntNewsNU.com, May 10, 2024.

3. The greatest lie leaders tell themselves is not a falsehood, but an insistence on looking the other way. They purposely choose to live in denial of what everyone knows and sees because it serves their self-interest to do so.

Leaders in denial discard feedback, eschew contrary data, and ignore what is in front of their faces. When everyone points to the sky, they remain focused on the ground. They repel any other view than the one they hold. And then they dig in, refusing to entertain any information that contradicts their position or opinion.

For leaders, denial is a method of self-protection from the truth. When the truth is too painful to accept, then avoidance seems like a logical path.

Sometimes, short-term denial can give a leader the time they need to rearrange their thinking and come to understand why everyone holds a different view. But usually, denial becomes so comfortable it replaces rational thought. Leaders who live in denial prefer not to know. They go on their merry way, denying any reality that is at odds with their view.

In so many historical instances, leaders are seen to ignore critical information, even when clearly informed of wrongs requiring action. In case after case, these leaders remained steadfast in their denial.

In many cases, people were hurt, abused, hazed, and suppressed because a leader believed not knowing was the least painful option. They willfully choose denial, justifying their ignorance by focusing their attention elsewhere.

The pride, arrogance, conceit, and status that give rise to denial usually pales in comparison to the simple idea of self-interest. Leaders who neglect their obligations to lead fail to confront a reality because it is often too uncomfortable or painful to acknowledge.

Too many leaders insist on living in denial to avoid the pain of being wrong, being exposed, or being less powerful than they desire. Or they believe accepting an alternate view will strip them of their influence and privilege.

If only they had come to grips with the reality earlier. Unfortunately, denial is a difficult force to break once it is embraced. Those closest to the leader must bend their ear and demand they at least examine the evidence others clearly see. Even then, the pain can be too much to bear. In extreme cases, denial then leads leaders to reject the people who confronted them and who they previously trusted the most.

Of all the reasons leaders lose their positions, legacies, and influence when others rip it away, denial is the prime culprit. Good leaders don’t live in denial about anything. Instead, they live in the fear they might let denial blind them to a reality they must act upon.

- The Dangers of a Leader in Denial, AdmiredLeadership.com, July 9, 2024.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網(wǎng)立場無關(guān)。歡迎大家討論學(xué)術(shù)問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發(fā)布一切違反國家現(xiàn)行法律法規(guī)的內(nèi)容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣）