A friend of mine gave me a book about story telling called The Science of Story Telling by Will Storr. To tell you the truth I seldom read everything that’s given to me, but I did find one observation offered early in the book to be very interesting.
Some research suggests strangers read another’s thought and feelings with an accuracy of just twenty per cent. Friends and lovers? A mere thirty-five per cent. Our errors about what others are thinking are a major cause of human drama. As we move through life, wrongly predicting what people are thinking and how they’ll react when we try to control them, we haplessly trigger feuds and fights and misunderstandings that fire devastating spirals of unexpected change into our social worlds.
Ponder that for a moment.
We humans are quite good at drawing conclusions with very little evidence to back up our beliefs. It happens every day when we go with our gut. We know some stuff and think we know a plethora of other things. We take what we know for sure, add in what we think we know, look for others that agree with us and then start pontificating. It causes trouble with couples, in families, the workplace, social gatherings, and world affairs. No one is immune. When we take a stand with limited information, even with the best of intentions, we make mistakes in relationships. Some are easy to repair, and others last forever.
I was talking with a new friend a couple of weeks ago. He too has lost his wife and is having a difficult time dealing with her absence. During our banter he asked how many years I had been married.
“Fifty-one years and sixteen days.”
He followed that with, “How old were you when you got married?”
“Twenty-four.”
“What’s the biggest difference between twenty-four-year-old Bob and today?”
I had to think about that for a minute. I avoided the obvious fatter, wrinkled and gray and said, “I’m a better listener now.” And then I offered up, “I think that’s because of the path my career took. I was a middle school teacher, elementary school principal and ultimately a school superintendent. Each job required me to listen more.”
What I didn’t say, but have thought about since, is this. When I was teaching most of my output was planned. I knew what path I wanted my students to take and directed them that way. As a principal I had the opportunity to help more people grow: my students, their parents and members of my staff. As superintendent the list grew: the community members, surrounding districts, individuals from both the state and federal levels. I couldn’t know everything, so I listened more and did a lot of sorting and selecting.
One of my school board members noted that I held a lot of things “close to the vest.” I think that helped me in my professional life, but perhaps not in my personal. People in my district trusted me. They knew I had their best interest at heart even when they didn’t like what I said or the direction I thought we should take. They knew I had thought it through before speaking.
I did the same thing with Ruth and in the end didn’t say a lot of things I wish I had. Loss is an unforgiving teacher.
I’m very lucky to have the family I have. My three kids and their spouses are each very different. They hold valued positions in the workplace, and all have differing points of view. When they speak it’s from their heart and their study of the issues they face, not the planned jargon that others wish them to share. Most often they think before they take action. They sort and select and sometimes make mistakes like their dad.
No one says, “Just because I said.” I think that’s why they may be beating the odds and exceeding the friends and lovers thirty-five per cent.
TBC