Kindness Shown
Two of the most skillful listeners and truly kind humans I’ve ever worked with are Veronica and Lindsey, in conversation here at a holiday gathering.
With the arrival of the holiday season and a return to the rituals, traditions and warmth of gathering together with friends and family in the winter season, I’ve been reflecting ever more on the question of how, in a moment where conflicting vocabulary words, grammatical choices and endless acronyms are piling up all around us, becoming cultural landmines of misunderstanding—a gesture, a smile, a hug, a moment of simple human connection, and a truly curious question followed with great active listening—can become the action that does more good than words ever can.
The late Sue Henry, storied camp director at Camp DeSoto on Lookout Mountain in Alabama, used to say when I was a camper growing up in the summer that words are so powerful that we should only use them to “bless, heal and to prosper.” Unfortunately, her wisdom is not always followed in society these days.
“Words are so powerful that we should only use them to bless, to heal and to prosper.”
This week while reviewing the news headlines with my morning coffee I noticed an emerging thread of contentious cultural hot topics that appear to be on a post-election collision course just as we prepare to meet up for our annual office, school and community holiday parties. The question of transgendered athletes in sports, DEI program funding on college campuses and in corporate America, and many other volatile issues seem likely to pop up at these gatherings, whether intentionally or not, just in the natural course of being offline, in person and face to face for analog conversation.
What’s the ethi-quette of such a moment? How do I respond and…what to do?
Is avoiding a conversation if I start to hear language or words that feel emotionally threatening to me the way to go—making up an excuse that I need to go powder my nose in the restroom or, alternatively, that I’m thirsty and need to grab another cup of that delicious mystery pink punch or spiked eggnog? Or is it better to engage directly with my not-so-close office mate (the one I’ve mostly been zooming with these last four years!) or the parent of my child’s new third grade “best friend of the week,” both individuals who may be folks I don’t know well enough to talk with in what I would consider a “tier three” conversation (topics that touch on politics, religion, personal finances or health) without running the risk of serious misunderstanding? Is there an alternative middle ground between direct engagement where I state my views, arguing for what I deem is right and, alternatively, just running for the hills, dodging them altogether?
The answer, I believe, is yes.
A holiday gathering is a great opportunity to practice an ethi-quette of active listening and curiosity, paying special attention to gestures of kindness towards others, even when conversational topics may touch on contentious issues.
Starting with kindness when feeling emotionally stirred up by a topic allows us to settle down into a place where active listening is then possible. When I hear a statement (and I’ve heard this for sure in conversations lately) like “all DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programming is destroying America” it rings pretty similar to statements I’m also hearing these days like “without DEI programming, America is going back to the 1950’s.” These sorts of statements are absolutes. They are based on trying to prove a point, using rhetoric to win and to overcome the other person with an argument that I am right and they are wrong. But the point of being in community—of being a participating member of a workplace, a good neighbor, a supportive group of parents—is to be part of the Best Society—people who care. And necessarily, healthy groups have diverse opinions living within each organism that demand individual responsibility and personal agency to engage in healthy conflict.
“Healthy groups have diverse opinions living within each organism that demand individual responsibility and personal agency to engage in healthy conflict.”
A kindness I might consider when feeling stuck or uncomfortable in such a conversation would be to stop myself, slow down, take an intentional breath and focus my attention with a “one-pointed mind” (as Pattanjali, the author of the classical Indian sacred text, Yoga Sutras, suggests) on my conversation partner, stopping to really check in with my mind, asking myself if I can be curious in this person’s perspective enough to ask them a question. The starting place for this curiosity is kindness shown—my true intentions. Instead of running for the hills or arguing with them, I’m doing them the courtesy of wanting to hear what they have to say. There is a humility involved and a kind of modesty also in knowing that even though the person in front of me may look a certain way, actually—I’ve never walked in their shoes and I don’t really know based on their outer appearance what their life experience has been and what they think or believe.
I am a huge fan of open-ended questions. Every night at the family dinner table, my kids and I have always kept the ritual of asking a dinner question in order to get conversation going. Often the cook will initiate the question but sometimes another person at the table will start us off. There are a few rules to our dinner question ritual that we’ve developed over the years. The first one is that an open-ended question cannot have a right or wrong answer. The second is that those listening to someone answering the question may not correct their answers or critique the speaker—listeners can only ask a follow up question. And the third rule, based more on a desire to engage in creative discourse (not group think) is that no one is allowed to repeat someone else’s answer.
“I am a huge fan of open-ended questions.”
A related dinner question to the aforementioned potential holiday party scenario might be, “what do you personally consider the point of DEI to be?” Another might be, “what is your personal experience working or studying within an organization that utilizes DEI trainings?” And yet another could be, “what is it about DEI that stirs up either passionate support, dismissive eye-rolling or feelings of annoyance in you?” After asking such a direct question, my job is to be an open-minded, curious listener—actively paying attention and awake to being in the moment, not distracted by my own thoughts, my own agenda or my own desire to finish the other person’s sentence by prejudging what I think they are trying to say. I have found, after years of working as a professional mediator, a dialogue facilitator and most recently, as a student of hospital chaplaincy at Harvard, that active listening (or “witnessing”) without trying to control the speaker’s words, police their thoughts or finesse the outcome of what they are trying to say, leads me to a much richer and more surprising understanding of those who I previously thought I understood.
The option to avoid talking about hot topics is of course traditionally socially appropriate as well but in our day and age, becoming less of an option unless we cloister ourselves off into social bubbles with only those who think like us and agree with us (a move that I would argue leads to intellectual stagnation inside of an echo chamber of self-affirming conversational circles). The social norms that have allowed such openness and intimacy in sharing about our private lives and personal experience in digital spaces are now leading to a kind of awkwardness, I’ve noticed, in attempting to match that intimacy in analog conversation offline. We are all in need of a lot of practice right now.
For me, there’s nothing in the world that beats an engaging, face to face conversation and the learning and growth possible when I’m open to listening.
If a topic arises and I’m just not up for being a great listener in the moment, instead of behaving with avoidance, I might say to someone, “I’m curious to know more about you and what you think but I’m not feeling like I’m able to be a great listener right now at this party. Perhaps we could chat about that another time over a coffee when there’s less going on and I can focus more.” This response puts the emphasis on me and my ability to listen rather than criticizing another person for being wrong.
And I would recommend that following such a comment with a sincere smile, a warm pat on the arm or some other gesture of authentic kindness is a great way to make that subtle conversational shift. “May I grab you a drink?” becomes an alternative, transition question that gestures to your conversation partner that you are still interested in building towards relationship with them, signaling that even if you’re not up for entering into that tier three conversation at the moment, you’re not judging them or trying to be rude.
Kindness towards ourselves and towards others is possible even in these tricky moments of cultural and political unease. Just remember that taking care with our gestures of kindness goes a long way. In doing so we can slow down to ensure that our words are really being spoken intentionally to “bless, heal and to prosper.”
Yours truly,
