One time I was with my friend Tommy, and we got half-way through a conversation about something or about nothing and in my mind I got this eerie sense of Dejavu. But not fake or mystical dejavu, it was real. In this moment, I was telling Tommy a story over again that we had already talked about only a few days before. What an embarrassment. I hate to bore people, or someone with the same story twice. My mistake.
But you know what happened when I explained to him the problem? He said, “Yeah, you told me all this last Tuesday. I remember.”
“You remember? Then why didn’t you cut me off?”
Tommy said, “It’s about relationship.”
“Huh?”
“Conversation,” he said, “Conversation is less about information and more about relationship.”
He was right, in a way. Or at least the statement has been helpful to me lately. Living in South America and struggling to understand the words that people are saying to me, I try to remember what it meant to me to have a friend who listened.
When I listen, I know I won’t understand every word, but maybe I can get the main idea. And most importantly, I can form trusting relationships by showing that I care. Listening even late into the night when it costs me precious ounces of energy and brain cells that I’m trying to use just to remember which direction is up and to not forget my own name.
Today a lady sat next to me in my favorite coffee shop. We talked about something and nothing and I went my own way at the end of the conversation. She asked me for my name as I left. Why did she do that? Did she know or even think she might see me again? Probably not, because the only reason we talked was because her pizza to-go order was being prepared and I was the safe looking stranger with an open seat at my table.
My how we miss opportunities to ask questions and build connections. Social work calls it “Dignity and worth of the person,” but I call it… actually I don’t call it anything. I just believe it’s important to value people not as a means to an end as a sales man would do, but as the end in and of itself. Why else would she have asked for my name? I think it’s because relationship is more important than the information.
Later that day, thinking of her from the coffee shop/ pizza store, I went into the subway. There was a man there asking for money. Decidedly, I wanted to learn his name. With his daughter lying asleep in his lap I went to him and said, “Hi. What is your name?”
“Aylen,” he said.
“Ahh… y como se llama ella?” I said pointing to the girl.
“Oh no. Her name is Aylen,” he said.
A little flustered, I asked again…“And what is your name?” I repeated with emphasis on your so as to be more understood.
“Emanuel.”
2 pesos. 50 U.S. cents—Not a bad price to pay to learn pungently why I should listen. Emanuel is Hebrew for “God with us.”
