“How are you?”
“Fine.”
Two of the biggest and most commonly spread lies our culture has ever engaged in?
Because that is the gut panic question we ask when we bump into someone in a public space that we weren’t expecting to see, right? Oh, whoops, there you are, um, “How are you?”
Followed by the typical response of “fine,” which is almost never true, because when is anyone ever fine? But because we know the question is a knee-jerk response, we automatically follow it up with the culturally acceptable and expected, “I’m fine, thanks.”
You know how I know this to be true? Because I went through a phase of answering that question honestly, every time someone asked me. So I would be standing in a shopping centre, talking to someone I hadn’t seen for two years and when they popped out the “How are you?” I responded with, “You know what? Things are actually quite tough at the moment. I’m struggling to find a place to stay and my…”
(Eyes widening, panic setting in, how do I escape this?)
MOVE FROM SUPERFICIAL
The truth is that most people have been programmed to talk about things that don’t really matter. Get together with friends at a braai and a conversation typically will go to one of three things: Movies (or these days, TV series), sport, or food. Those are topics that don’t require any kind of emotional investment and so they are easy ones to default to.
My first step away from this was to stop asking people what they did (another default question we go to when we meet someone new: What do you do?) and to start asking, “What are you passionate about?” This question often throws people a little at the beginning, but once they think about it and answer, it gives you a much greater idea of who they really are and typically makes conversation head to a much deeper and more satisfying place.
Then my wife tbV (the beautiful Val) and myself took it a step further and started hosting what we called Deep Dive Conversation Dinners. We picked a topic such as race, money, simple living, or food choices, and we invited a bunch of people we knew had an opinion on them (not the same opinion). We collected peoples’ phones at the door in our phone basket and we shared a meal together. Then we embarked on a four-hour-plus-conversation on the topic we had invited people to engage with.
I EXTEND THE INVITATION TO YOU
That’s pretty much it – I could go into more specifics in terms of explaining that we typically started with a question that gave people a space to introduce themselves and tell a bit of their story relating to the theme, but most of the conversations took a life of their own.
For us the key is being intentional. Groups of people coming together will likely revert to the default settings of sport, movies, and food. But if you come expecting to dive into a particular topic for a decent amount of time then that expectation will likely produce a significant result.
Another big focus for us was providing a safe space, but not necessarily one that would be comfortable, pain-free, not awkward, and so on. Especially with the race conversations things got a little heated from time to time. And that is okay. And good. Also our aim was not that everyone would leave thinking the same thing and agreeing with everyone else. The purpose of the evening is to get people to think, to have their ideas and perspectives challenged and to hear stories from a different context.
Imagine what our world might start to look like if more and more diverse groups of people sit together, break bread with one another, and commit to diving deeply into some of the issues and obstacles we face.
When will you host yours? And please return here and tell us about it when you do because we would love to hear how it goes.