I had a good conversation with someone this week that reminded me of an important truth for us all to remember. We cannot guess, or fake knowledge when it comes to understanding a person. In all ways, there is no short cut, understanding a person and honouring their uniqueness takes time and curiosity. It requires a strong sense of putting our own views and personal preferences aside and just be in the space of getting to know another person’s vantage point, experience, preferences, quirks and difficulties. In our conversation we talked about the word relax. For this person that is a heavy word that carries with it hard memories of interactions and physical limitations about relaxation. She just simply does not like the word and it causes an emotional reaction when someone, for all the right reasons, tells her to relax. I have been thinking about this a lot, this is the kind of thing that you can only find out about a person through discussion and conversation. The word relax in many ways is a completely neutral word that most of us would hear as a supportive reminder to take a deep breath, take a pause and recenter. Again, we cannot guess at what other people feel or like or experience. What does this look like in the everyday? We all mess this up sometimes, we don’t know enough and say something unwelcome. That is bound to happen and then we all have to take responsibility to tell others if something they have said or done has caused some discomfort in us. Once that is known, we all need to recommit adjusting what we say and do in order to not repeat the error. When we know something, we can do better. We all have a different web of experiences, difficulties, and memories, there is no gold standard. We can only find out how to bring out the best in each other by asking and watching what makes people uncomfortable and what causes others to light up.
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