My adult behaviour must have been shaped from my upbringing when younger; where there was love in our home but no expression. Whether it was nature or nurture, I grew into a person who was a bit of an introvert but I have learned something profound along the way. A lot of the time, I used to just stand on the side and observe people mostly making an idiot of themselves with shallow knowledge yet, I used to stay silent for fear of hurting their emotional availability to me or their joys. If you had met me 5 years out of medical college, I think you would have found me a pleasant enough guy, cheerful, but surely inhibited — somebody who was not easy to connect to. In truth, I was a practiced escape artist. If you revealed some vulnerable intimacy to me like any talk on sex, I was good at moving always discretely to make meaningful eye contact with your shoes and then excusing myself to go home as relatives were expected.
Life has a way of tenderizing you, though. Becoming a husband and then a father was an emotional revolution, of course. Later, I absorbed my share of the normal blows that any adult suffers - broken promises, personal failures, financial vulnerability and everything that comes with getting older. The ensuing sense of my own frailty as well as the shock of cancer detection was good for me, introducing me to deeper, repressed parts of myself. I learned that living in a detached way is a withdrawal from life, an estrangement not just from other people but also from yourself. I am no exceptional person, but I am an observant grower. I do have the ability to look at my shortcomings and then try to better myself by learning from the better ones to prod myself into becoming a more fully developed person.
Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well: being curious about other people; disagreeing without poisoning relationships; revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.
In any conversation, most people shoot the breeze for a while, before they descend and get immersed on to any one topic which is dissected threadbare and sometimes, as a postmortem. The tone of such discussions is always buoyant, full of comedic bits, at times good-natured teasing and at others reflecting hollowness. It is a fizzy soft drink feeling, fun and weird and straightforward enough to make lifelong friends or even enemies. It has made me listen to other people differently. But those who sprinkle warmth, humour and weird thinking with their repartee leave a significant impact. I did not care how long I had to go silent as I just wanted to keep listening and laughing along. And before I knew, with my years of voracious reading and hilarious experiences, I was drawn into conversations as an active participant. What makes a conversation interesting to take part is the same as what makes one interesting to listen to! My favourite conversations with friends, the ones in which I feel most connected, are sprawling, agenda free, even repetitive. They go on for hours and often fail to reach a coherent conclusion. But they have a key ingredient in common that I love: connection to suggest close presence, even after the conversation is long over.
People want to connect but I see the results in the social clumsiness that I encounter too frequently. I estimate that only 30% of the people in the world are good question askers. The rest are nice people, but they just do not ask. I think it is because they have not been taught to and so do not display basic curiosity about others. Above almost any other need, human beings as social animals long to have another person look into their faces with love and acceptance. The issue is that we lack practical knowledge about how to give one another the attention we crave. Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance on how to perform the most important activities of life.
People are not as clear as they think they are, and we’re not as good at listening as we think we are. Being a loud listener by continually responding to comments with encouraging affirmations, with “Oh, really,” “aha” and “yes” makes me better accepted. By asking: How did you come to believe that, I have learnt that it gets people talking about the folks and experiences that shaped their values. The quality of any conversation directly depends on the quality of the questions. Kids are phenomenal at asking big, direct questions. As adults, we get more inhibited with our questions, if we even ask them at all, we are generally too cautious. People are always much more revealing and personal when they are telling stories and people are dying to tell their stories but very often, no one has ever asked about them. Naturally, the conversation gets warmer and more fun.
People don’t go into enough detail when they tell a story and so, turn them into a narrator without trying to be a stopper. If somebody tells you he is having trouble with his teenager, don’t turn around and say: “I know exactly what you mean. I’m having incredible problems with my own child.” You may think you’re trying to build a shared connection, but what you are really doing is shifting attention back to yourself.
Asking people where they grew up when meeting for the first time inevitable gets people to be are at their best when talking about their childhoods. That gets them talking about their families and ethnic backgrounds. I once asked a group of doctors, “What’s one favourite unimportant thing about you?” I learned that a very impressive academic I know has a fixation on trashy reality TV. And there, after a hearty laughter, we established trust with each other. It is great to ask such crazy questions, ones that lift people out of their daily defence strategies and help them see themselves as one of us. One great ice breaker has been - If you died today, what would you regret not doing?
Intentionally or not, lots of people walk into conversations carrying a lot of elite baggage embedded in systems that disrespect them or keep them down. At times, it is political and there is often criticism, blame and disagreement in such conversations. The temptation to get defensive will be there but it’s best to resist this temptation. The first tip to any such conversation across difference or inequality is to stand in other people’s standpoint and fully understand how the world looks to them.
In any conversation, respect is like air. When it’s present nobody notices it, and when it’s absent it’s all anybody can think about. My view of wisdom has changed over the years and I think tha the wise person’s essential gift is tender receptivity. Note that every conversation takes place on 2 levels. The official conversation is represented by the words we are saying on whatever topic we are talking about. The actual conversations occur amid the ebb and flow of emotions that get transmitted as we talk. With every comment, respect or disrespect will be exhibited, making one feel a little safer or a little more threatened. The essential moral skill in such situations is being considerate to others in the complex circumstances of everyday life rather than just be right. This art of fluid conversation, I wanted to learn initially for:
1. Utilitarian reasons - If I’m going to work as a clinician, I don’t just want to be a superficial diagnostician and therapy guy. I must understand my patients more deeply — to know whether he or his family is in any crisis, can he handle uncertainty with comfort or is he of a self-centered nature or generous to people around?
2. Moral reasons, too - If I can shine empowerment and positive attention on others, I can help them to blossom with least medication and fewer visits. If I see potential in their children, the family may come to see the hidden potential in them. True understanding is one of the most generous gifts any of us can give to another.
3. Reasons of congenial community survival - We have evolved over time to live with groups of people like ourselves. Now we live in wonderfully diverse societies, but our social skills are inadequate for the divisions that exist.
If we let fear and a sense of threat grip our conversation, then very quickly our motivations will deteriorate. We won’t talk to understand but to pummel. Everything we say afterward will be injurious and hurtful and will make repairing the relationship in the future harder. If, on the other hand, I show persistent curiosity about your viewpoint, I show respect. And as the authors of “Crucial Conversations” observe, in the best conversations, whether they are between you and your mom on a marathon phone call or at a professional discussion, everyone is listening closely. They are curious about each other, asking is he reacting authentically or speaking just be heard. They are allowing the conversation to happen without muscling it toward any predetermined outcome but yes, they are all observing. What is important to learn and adopt is - If we are going to accompany someone well in the journey of a conversation, we need to abandon the perfection or efficiency mind-set. We need to take our time and simply delight in another person’s way of being. I hope conversations teach people not only how to understand others but also, how to make them feel respected, valued and understood.
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