What we think we know

I recently talked to my Mom about the truth of God and the way people fight over it. The main tenants of the faith of my upbringing are love and non-judgment. But we fight, constantly, about who does and doesn’t belong. We argue about ‘facts,’ one truth, one way, one reality. My Mom quotes 1 Corinthians 13:12: “for now we see through a glass darkly.”

This resonates with my core peacemaking value that people are the experts of their own lives. One of the assignments during the Insight Mediation course I took with Jacinta Gallant was to have a truly curious conversation. Put another way, a conversation where I didn’t fill in any blanks or offer any suggestions, but instead kept asking curious questions.

This was a couple of winters ago, when I still lived in the downstairs unit of the duplex my co-parent and I owned. We were trying a sort of ‘nesting.’ Spoiler alert: It did not go well. It did keep me connected to my stepkids, who sometimes came downstairs to avoid their little sister when she was upstairs with their Dad. One day my stepson (12 at the time) came down talking about the water bottle he wanted, that probably didn’t exist. Boy did he come to the right place. I have opinions on water bottles. 

And, I also had this assignment to do so I stuck to questions. This felt very difficult. He talked for a long time. I thought I had the perfect solution a few times. Then I’d bite my tongue and search my brain for a genuinely curious question instead of offering the obvious answer. Wild turns ensued. Every time, he’d think and then give me some other piece of information that ruled the previous suggestion out.

Until, he described exactly what he needed: something flat, because everything else in his bookbag is flat; holds a lot of water, because he doesn’t want to keep filling it up; obviously can’t leak. So I got him a water bladder with a hose and mouthpiece, like you’d take hiking. This was probably three recommendations down for me. I definitely could have cut that conversation in half and convinced him he needed an Owala water bottle, like my nurse friends use. 

Side benefit: he’d come downstairs a grump and he left lighter. He said he liked talking to me because I always agree with him. Did I agree with him? I hadn’t really thought about it. I simply accepted every statement as true and then asked a question about what he most wanted or most wanted to avoid. By the end I felt pretty good about the conversation too. We can’t really find out the truth when we’re attached to what we think we know.

Which opens a topic for another day: Why does it feel hard to let go of what we think we know?