top of page

The why behind "Under the Same Sky"


Today is my 16th birthday - the most teen of the teen years - the “Sweet 16.” As I enter this new chapter of my life and navigate my junior year in high school, I’ve been grappling with big questions: Who do I want to be? What is important to me? Perhaps it’s my love of music and cinema. Maybe it's my advocacy for mental health and my desire to take care of myself and others. Perhaps it’s my ability to empathize with others and understand what they might be going through. Or maybe it’s my admiration of the world around me and my passion for understanding new cultures. No matter what, I know that there is so much out in the world that I care about and so much out there to explore.

As I mentioned earlier, I love movies where human emotions and stories come alive on the big screen. As a movie lover, I live by film phrases. Last year, I watched Charlotte Wells’s debut film Aftersun, which is a beautiful portrayal of a young daughter and her emotionally estranged father. There’s one quote that particularly sticks out to me. The daughter turns to her father and says, “I think it’s nice that we see the same sky.”

No matter how far apart or how close together people may be, the sky they see is the same. The idea of “Connecting Under the Same Sky” is just that: despite the many issues in the world that divide us, we all live on the same Earth and we can all see the same sky. Cultural differences and geographical barriers may diverge us, but they don’t have to tear us apart. Rather, we can find ways to relate to one another while embracing the beauty in our differences. I believe that there's so much that we can learn from one another, whether about a specific culture or about individuals’ personal experiences. I hope to communicate with people from all around the world, not only because I hope to learn something valuable from them, but because I want my readers and interviewees to have access to people they never thought possible. Few people have the means to travel thousands of miles to learn about a country or a culture, so this platform serves as a virtual community for people to gain the power of cultural exchange from the comfort of their laptop or phone.

It’s important to me for this project to take place outside of school. For many people my age, especially juniors, school is a place of stress and competition. Lately, it’s been difficult to find moments of connectedness. This project is something that fills me with drive and motivation, outside of academic pressure. It also allows me to explore a realm of interests that I am passionate about and care about. Since I have so many interests and passions, I plan to split my interviews by topics, including mental health, film analysis, music appreciation, and the path former athletes take. I am calling these topics “constellations” because I believe that people are the stars living under the same sky, so the constellations are the connections and bonds that we can create with each other. By relating to people globally on the same issues and forming these constellations, we can both empathize with them and learn more about what the issues may look like in their cultures.

The first “constellation” will involve mental health awareness and advocacy. I have struggled with my mental health for the past few years, from anxiety to depression to PTSD. Mental health is such a crucial topic for individuals all around the world and is also treated differently depending on specific cultures. I aim to create a safe, destigmatized space, where changemakers in this field from across the globe can speak to their own issues, the cultural barriers they may have faced, and the work they’ve done to make mental health care more accepted. I hope that both the readers and my interviewees can find each other on my site and reach out to one another for support or guidance, as well as to help provide resources and information.

After all, we’ll all be under the same sky.

0 comments

Comments


Scarlett Writes

Bringing "Under the Same Sky"

Get my articles in your inbox

Thanks for submitting!

Scarlett Writes

email me at 

scarlettwrites19@gmail.com

instagram

@scarlettwritesofficial

© 2023 by Scarlett Smithen

bottom of page