I’m a woman who feels deeply and thinks deeply. And I know I’m not the only one.

That’s who I seem to attract into The Joy Academy too. The feelers. The deep thinkers. The people who look at the world and ache sometimes.

The CEOs and HR leaders who book Joyworks! events are often those same heart-centred people too.

The ones who want more bring more humanity, connection, love and care into the spaces they lead.

The people who can feel overwhelming gratitude and overwhelming heartbreak in the very same day.

Yesterday, I saw a homeless man lying on the street.

His hand was injured with a dirty bandage. His bank card, his coins, cigarettes and lighter were scattered all over the pavement in front of him along with his sleeping bag and a poly bag with clothes and a can of Diet Coke.

While people just walked past him.

His head dropped in shame.

In fact, they walked around him. As he was in the middle of the street.

I couldn’t believe the level of not caring.

He was just out of hospital.

He broke his heart and asked me the day, then the month.

He told me his son had died four or six weeks ago. He told me he didn’t want to be here anymore.

He wanted to end it.

What was the point?

And looking around at everyone, just passing him by.

What really is the point?

A grown man in tears, head bowed on a West End street.

Every quick glance, not meeting him in the eye, then move on showed it.

He didn’t matter.

But it mattered to me.

It mattered to me when my mum thought she didn’t matter.

It mattered to me when my dad left us.

It mattered to me then, and it matters to me now.

It always matters to me.

That’s the thing about feeling deeply and thinking deeply.

It’s beautiful, but it can also take a toll on the heart.

We have to put our own oxygen mask on first.

Because if I’m honest, when he spoke about feeling hopeless, I recognised parts of myself in his words.

The thoughts he had, the “what’s the point?” thoughts, I’ve had them too.

Sometimes, I can feel just as lonely as that man.

And reflecting so much on it over these last two days, that’s why it hit me so hard.

It felt like he was speaking the words sitting in so many of our hearts right now.

What’s the point when there’s so much dehumanisation?

I think deep down I’m aching for a different kind of world.

A world where we greet each other the way they did at the ashram I once lived in, with a hand on the heart and a gentle nod.

A reminder that the person standing in front of you is worthy of dignity and respect.

I see the god in you. You see the god in me.

A world where we really look into each other’s eyes again.

A world where we know each other’s names, like in the song from Cheers.

A world where we shout a bit more about joy. Where we shout about the good in each other. Where we shout about how beautiful it is when the birds sing. Where we stop long enough to hear them.

A world where we take responsibility for our neighbours. Whether they’re our neighbours next door or sleeping on the street.

A world where we remember how lucky we are to be here at all.

How much the world needs our light.

How much we all need each other.

A world where everyone matters.

I wanted that different world when I started Joyworks! 18 years ago.

To help people laugh and remember each other again.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was to help me remember who I was again.

Because underneath all the job titles, politics, fear, exhaustion and masks, most people aren’t unlike me.

They long to feel seen, safe and closer to one another.

Sometimes, all it takes is one person believing in you or a transformative experience for everything to change.

I’ve seen it over and over again in my work.

I think about the young man from Polmont Young Offenders who was serving a life sentence. The other residents wouldn’t hold his hand because he was gay. Then, through the creative projects we did together, people started seeing something different in him. They saw his brilliance, his organisation, his leadership. He later came to work with me in Joyworks! and eventually started his own events company.

Or the wee boy I taught in primary school, who was badly bullied and covered in stress rashes. Nobody thought I should give him the lead role in the school show, because he was too shy. But I saw something in him. I knew Andrew would be brilliant.

And he was.

He came alive on that stage. Improvising. Making the audience laugh. Glowing.

His mum later wrote to me when I left the school, saying I’d given her wee boy back to her.

No, he gave it to himself by remembering who he was.

Or the CEO of a charity, who found herself crying during one of our events. I later heard she had stepped away from her role and become a poet.

Or the homeless man from the Theatre Nemo project, who stood proudly inside the City Chambers to a room full of leaders, reading a poem about how creativity and feeling like he finally belonged had helped him find his way home again.

I’ve seen what happens when someone is truly seen.

A dear friend of ours, Seth, who sadly lost his life to COVID, once said:

“The world would change if we just got to know one another.”

His words were echoing in my ears on the street as Frankie got into his Uber, with the kind Uber driver promising he’d get him into the homeless shelter.

Let’s look for the good.

Look out for one another.

Slow down.

See the promise and hope in each other's eyes.

And remember as my papa would always say “We are all Jock Tamson’s Bairns”.

You matter.

I matter.

We all matter.

Sharon x