There are things we know about people because we can see them. Their age, perhaps. The way they dress. How they move through a room. Some differences are visible before a conversation has even begun. Knowing that something exists, however, is very different from knowing what it is like to live with it. We can …
There are things we know about people because we can see them. Their age, perhaps. The way they dress. How they move through a room. Some differences are visible before a conversation has even begun.
Knowing that something exists, however, is very different from knowing what it is like to live with it.
We can know someone for years and never ask.
Often this isn’t because we don’t care. We may worry that a question will be intrusive. We may think the person has probably been asked about it hundreds of times. Sometimes we reassure ourselves that if they wanted to talk about it, they would bring it up.
There is another possibility worth considering: perhaps they are waiting for somebody to make it safe to speak.
When reassurance closes the conversation
Listening becomes particularly difficult when someone tells us something painful.
Most of us want to help. We look for an explanation that might make the situation less painful. We point out that another person probably didn’t intend to hurt them. We offer a solution. We search for something positive to say.
The intention may be kind, but the effect can be quite different.
Steven Bouris described growing up with a facial birthmark and becoming accustomed to people noticing his difference. As a teenager, he discovered that his birthmark had been covered by a black square in a photograph of 720 people at his school. He didn’t speak about the experience for thirty years. ccb-steven-bouris
What eventually opened the conversation wasn’t somebody providing an explanation for what had happened.
A friend asked what his childhood had been like.
Steven’s immediate response was physical. He described his body freezing and wanting to shut down and run away. He also realised that nobody had asked about his personal experience in more than forty years. This time, he chose to answer. ccb-steven-bouris
The difference between asking and fixing
There is an important distinction here.
Being curious about another person’s experience doesn’t mean we need to understand it completely. It doesn’t mean we need to agree with every interpretation they have made of what happened. It certainly doesn’t mean we need to have the answer.
Sometimes the next thing required of us is simply another question.
What was that like?
How did that affect you?
What happened next?
Then we have to be willing to hear the answer.
Steven described his friend as giving him the space to speak without feeling sorry for him or trying to soothe him. When he later spoke with his parents, he was able to tell them what he needed: not for them to fix the experience, but to listen while he finally spoke about it. ccb-steven-bouris
That distinction reaches well beyond Steven’s story.
The stories we know from the outside
We all know people whose lives we understand largely from the outside.
We know somebody went through a divorce, lost a job, migrated to another country, became a parent, lives with a disability, cares for an ageing parent, belongs to a different faith, or has experienced something we haven’t.
We may know the facts.
We may even have known them while it was happening.
But have we ever asked what the experience was actually like for them?
There is risk in asking. The other person may not want to talk. They may give a short answer. They may tell us something we weren’t expecting.
Curiosity isn’t an entitlement to somebody else’s story. An invitation to speak must also leave room for them not to.
But silence can also be based on assumptions. We assume they’ll tell us if they want to. They assume we’re uncomfortable asking. Years can pass while both people politely avoid the conversation.
Brew the Change
This week’s Brew the Change gives us a way to test something different.
Think of someone whose story you know only from the outside. Invite them for a coffee. Then ask one question:
“What has that experience been like for you?”
When they answer, don’t fix, don’t compare, don’t reassure. Simply listen.
You never know what years of silence your curiosity might gently interrupt.
Perhaps the conversation lasts two minutes. Perhaps it lasts an hour. Perhaps the person doesn’t want to have it at all.
The invitation itself says something important:
I’m not assuming I know what this has been like for you.
And that can be a very different place from which to begin a conversation.
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