We Need Places to be Human
We’re living in a world where suffering can reach us instantly. Before breakfast, we can witness a bombing across the world, a dying child, political violence, a natural disaster, and someone’s personal tragedy. Anxiety, straight to the dome. It’s unnatural, yet societally expected.
This week, as I checked in on the world, I was confused by the uproar over Macklemore being asked to leave Ed Sheeran’s tour, and I had to analyze it myself. I am not above changing my opinion or stance when new information challenges my current perspective. I humbly integrate and grow. I adore Ed Sheeran; that’s no secret. I have supported him for many years, and I find deep meaning in the way he writes his music, engages with other artists from various cultures, and I’m continually captivated by his ability to bring seemingly opposing styles, techniques, and ideas together in unity to create something beautiful and resonant with millions of people. I went to my first Ed concert in 2025, where he surprised the entire audience and brought Macklemore to the stage to perform a few songs together. This was met with resounding excitement, and the energy became even more elevated than it already was. That concert reminded me of the power of music, community, and collective healing. It genuinely shifted something in me, reminding me of my favorite childhood experiences, the happy memories amidst the painful ones. I went back to see Ed’s show again this year, and for a few hours I felt like I had transcended into another space and time; one where I wasn’t being bombarded by adult problems and worries. Thousands of people, different ages, cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs, were singing and dancing and experiencing together. Loving music together. Being human together.
That space, that energy, that joy matters. They were both sold-out shows; the experiences speak for themselves. Anyone who has even been to an Ed Sheeran concert knows that that man bares his soul on stage. He talks about his personal life, his stressors, his mistakes and accomplishments, his passions, his learning and experiences from traveling and collaborating with so many wonderful artists. Ed makes it personal, and with that combination of openness and his music, he makes every single person in that audience feel related in some way.
The biggest thing that bothers me about everyone pointing the finger solely at Ed is that the facts of this situation are more complicated than that. Ed has stated that removing Macklemore was the promoter’s decision, not his; and the Messina Touring Group has confirmed that multiple upcoming venues told the promoter they would not allow their concerts to proceed with Macklemore on the lineup. Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium, has publicly confirmed his opposition to Macklemore performing there, citing what he characterizes as Macklemore’s history of antisemitic rhetoric and hate speech, while Macklemore rejects that characterization and distinguishes criticism of Israel from criticism of Jewish people. Other advocacy groups objected to his remarks as well. Macklemore himself acknowledged that Ed had been placed in an incredibly difficult position. Whatever we think we know about how everyone involved responded, reducing this entire situation to “Ed Sheeran supporting violence” is factually inaccurate and leaves out a significant part of what actually happened.
Separate from the dispute over Macklemore’s words, another part of his performance concerns me as a developmental psychologist: imagery depicting destruction in Gaza was displayed during “Hind’s Hall.” Whatever an adult thinks about the political message itself is separate from the developmental question I’m raising here. I believe the setting and audience matter when disturbing imagery is presented unexpectedly, particularly in a concert environment attended by children and adolescents. This vulnerable population does not deserve to be subjected to that material in that space, nor in that way.
There is a time and place for difficult conversations and advocacy. There is also a time and a place for children to be children, and for people to experience joy without being confronted with images or messages they weren’t prepared to encounter. This issue reminded me of what my first concert (Pat Benatar ~ 1996) taught me: that music, creativity, and expression could change me personally, but it could also bring people together. It showed me that a crowd of completely different people could come together around one shared love. I still believe that the concert space is a special space that brings humans together.
As someone who experienced many childhood disruptions, violent environments, and opposing value systems within a family unit, my current primary focus is on protecting all children and supporting their healthy development. As a developmental psychologist, I view this through the lens of my field. Long before children understand the content of our words, they are responsive to the emotional environment around them: to tone, facial expressions, tension, and the affect of their caregivers. What I might personally call “energy” as our first language, developmental psychology describes in more specific terms: children are extraordinarily sensitive to the emotional cues around them.
Children do not process graphic violence, death, and human suffering the way adults do. Their ability to contextualize what they are seeing, understand its political and geographical distance, and regulate the fear or distress it creates develops over time. Difficult realities absolutely can, and should, be discussed with children in developmentally appropriate ways, with trusted adults who can provide context, answer questions, and help them process what they feel. But unexpected exposure to disturbing material in a space a child reasonably experiences as entertainment is NOT the same thing as education. Children deserve both truth and developmental protection. Those things are NOT mutually exclusive.
Additionally, I spent several years working as a victim advocate, and one of the most important things that work taught me is that advocacy does not have one form. There is a time to speak loudly and publicly. There is a time for difficult conversations behind closed doors. There is a time to educate, organize, intervene, listen, build relationships, create resources, or simply hold a safe space. Effective advocacy requires understanding your audience, your environment, and what you are actually trying to accomplish, not just making the loudest possible statement.
Protest is one tool. It is not the only tool. And when someone has an enormous platform, their particular skills may allow them to contribute in entirely different ways. Every artist does not have an obligation to turn every stage into a political forum. We have long made room for beloved artists who intentionally choose not to make partisan politics central to their public platforms. Dolly Parton may be one of the clearest examples of this. For decades, she deliberately refused to disclose her partisan political beliefs, despite relentless attempts to get them out of her. She didn’t lack convictions, and she certainly didn’t lack impact. She poured her influence into philanthropy, childhood literacy, medical research, acceptance, music, and human connection. Even after her death, her sister Stella refused to reveal which political “side” Dolly belonged to. Dolly believed some things could remain hers…she clearly also believed some things could remain only hers.
And yet people across political, religious, cultural, and generational divides loved her. Maybe there’s something worth examining in that.
We have become so accustomed to demanding that public figures declare a side that we sometimes mistake public political declaration for moral action itself. But advocacy can be loud or quiet. It can be a protest, a conversation, a check, a book placed into a child’s hands, a relationship built between communities, or a space intentionally kept open so that people who disagree everywhere else can still stand beside one another.
We don’t have to agree with an artist’s choice to keep partisan politics outside their work to recognize that it is a choice, and that public political speech is not the only measure of whether someone contributes something meaningful to the world.
Have we lost our recognition of another’s humanity? Have we lost the understanding that creating spaces where people from different cultures, generations, religions, backgrounds, and beliefs can stand beside one another and experience something human together has tremendous value too? Sometimes advocacy is disruption. Sometimes it is dialogue. Sometimes it is creating the conditions in which people can actually hear one another. Sometimes it is creating a space where we can experience and remember love, joy, and human connection, away from the bombardment of negativity that we carry around on a computer in our pockets.
I’ve sat with these types of complexities for most of my life. A few years ago, I finally found a way to learn to hold these complexities. My studies in yoga taught me about the concept of pratipakṣa-bhāvanam: when the mind becomes consumed by thoughts and patterns that create harm or suffering, we intentionally cultivate their counterbalance. That does not mean denying suffering, looking away from injustice, or pretending terrible things aren’t happening. It means understanding that endlessly immersing ourselves in violence, fear, anger, and division does not automatically make us more compassionate or more effective advocates. We also have to intentionally cultivate peace, connection, beauty, compassion, joy, and our recognition of one another’s humanity.
Maybe that is part of the advocacy too. War divides human beings into sides. Politics divides humans into sides. Society divides humans even further. If we become so consumed by suffering that we no longer permit ourselves to cultivate joy, happiness, connection, or peace, then suffering has begun determining the boundaries of our own lives. We can care deeply without surrendering every space within ourselves to pain. Creating joy is one way to preserve our humanity. Create your own experiences. There is unlimited value in creating spaces where, for a few hours, those identities become secondary and thousands of strangers sing the same words together. We don’t need to choose between witnessing suffering and cultivating joy. We need the capacity to hold both. Sometimes the appropriate response is to confront what is broken. Sometimes it is to intentionally nurture what we hope still exists in its place.
We are living in a world where suffering can reach us instantly. Before breakfast, we can witness a bombing across the world, a dying child, political violence, a natural disaster, and someone’s personal tragedy - all through a screen we carry in our pockets. Our human nervous systems evolved long before instantaneous access to a continuous stream of suffering across the globe. We did not evolve carrying the weight of the entire world’s suffering in our pockets. Yet that is the information environment we now ask ourselves to navigate, and increasingly, that we ask our children to navigate as they enter the digital world at younger ages than previous generations did. Awareness matters. Bearing witness matters. But there is a difference between bearing witness and believing we must psychologically inhabit every tragedy, at every moment, in every space.
Part of learning to live in this unprecedented information environment is learning discernment: when to look, where to engage, how to advocate, and when to intentionally create counterbalance.
Give the interview. Write the article. Organize the protest. Raise the money. Make the donation. Use the platforms where adults can knowingly choose to enter difficult conversations.
And then let the concert be a concert.
Let a child sit on their parent’s shoulders and scream the lyrics to their favorite song. Let thousands of strangers dance beside people whose politics they don’t know. Let us experience three hours in which nobody has to establish which side they’re on before they’re allowed to belong.
We need places where we confront the suffering of being human.
And we desperately need places that remind us why humanity is worth fighting for.
