11 min read · 2,144 words
On Being Thankful
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, which is never a good idea.
The biggest problem with it, is that the more I talk to myself in my head, the weirder the thoughts get and the less I feel like I can explain what I’m thinking. So I’m going to be thankful for having this specific place to just dump my weirdo thoughts and see what everyone thinks about it!
I’m just doing this one post this week because of the thanksgiving of it all, and I’ll throw som thankfulness in here as well as “weird thoughts Scott’s been thinking”.
The impetus for “Scott is thinking weird things” was a thought I was having while just driving down the road. It boiled down to “I’m sitting here, leading a very full and sometimes difficult, but ultimately vibrant life…. and every single person I’m passing is having an equally full and vibrant experience”. And it made me think about how we actually picture and think of one another and how it’s really insane.
I mean, think about any interaction you’ve had with anyone, whether it’s someone you love deeply, or someone you just met, or someone you know you’ll never see again, or whatever. In that conversation, you’re likely having your own internal conversation while you’re also having an out loud conversation. And there’s always a gap in what you’re thinking and what you’re saying, because we’re complex beings and we don’t just start blurting out every single thing that’s going on in our heads.
But everyone is doing this all the time. We all have secret inner selves that are separate from the perceptions that people have of us. And then there’s also a ton of different perceptions of us based on the different relationships we’re having with people. Work people see me differently from family who see me differently from the people at Starbucks who see me differently from strangers on the street.
Which made me start thinking more about what empathy REALLY is because the definition is something like the ability to understand and explain the feelings of others.
The more I think about it, the more I think that both this is an impossible task, trying to actually be empathetic, and also that it’s the most important task we do every day. Which is a weird dichotomy! But this is why I’m thinking about it a lot…
In my life, I have a lot of people that are struggling in varying ways. And it’s hard to get someone to admit that they’re struggling, because it’s an admission of something that we see as a weakness. I need help to do xyz isn’t just about xyz, it’s about my own ability and competence and self worth, and there’s just so much we get wrapped up in when we realize that we can’t do something on our own.
But, it’s incredibly important for us to not just ask for help, but find ways to make it so that we’re the type of people that someone would want to ask for help from.
I’ve thought a LOT about how to be someone that people want to ask for help from. Because in my opinion, the best way to start asking for help, is to start seeing how you can help others. As you help others, and find ways to make it easier for them to ask you for help, the easier it becomes to then ask for help in return — because you know how you made them feel, you know how you felt providing that help… it just enables connections in your brain that allow you to ask for more because you are giving more!
And this is where I go back to my “it’s so weird that everyone else is having a similar interior experience to what I’m having” of it all. Because the first step to being a person people will come to for help is to understand that they are having a whole ass internal experience that you are completely unaware of. There’s always more beneath the surface, and none of us feel seen for it. Because we’re all putting on masks throughout our day.
Those masks might be for your friends, or your family, or for school, or work, or just for being out in public. I’ve made jokes about my ridiculous outfits, and that’s a mask too. It’s not a dishonest mask! But it’s a mask none the less! And seeing through someone’s mask is hard, but acknowledging the mask isn’t.
I’m not saying to talk to someone and go “oh hey work mask is on huh” because that’s a weird ass thing to say to someone lol. But if you listen really closely instead of just waiting for your turn to talk, you’ll get little inklings. Someone dropping a “I’m exhausted” or a “what a day”. Or it could be a “this is such a relief” or a “I’m really worried about this going well…”
I was having a conversation the other day and was trying to get someone to open up and so I started talking about a work proposal we were doing where if it worked it’d be really fantastic, but we also don’t have enough information to be certain we’re answering the mail correctly or not. And the response I got was “doesn’t that worry you?” And that was the in I needed — because no I wasn’t worried. I was very much in a “we’re going to try this out, and it’ll work or not work, but regardless we’ll learn something” mode. Which sometimes works, but sometimes means “I know this isn’t going to go well so I’m bracing” lol. But that wasn’t the important part, the important part was being vulnerable enough to say “no I’m not worried because of” and then give my reasons.
Then comes the really important part… you don’t get to just say what you’re thinking and suddenly people will open up. You have to then frame it back to them. So I then asked… what made you worried when I was describing my situation?
Because that’s where the real talk starts. If you can get someone to ask you a probing internal question, you’re getting room to ask your own question back after you answer.
I probably have talked about this before, but whatever I can be repetitive — because in the end, the lesson comes back to something I learned at Smith Barney, which is that most of the time, we’re not even conscious of our motives. Like I said earlier, we have those internal thoughts that we don’t share and those are for sure things that we’re keeping inside and using as justifications and excuses, but we’re not also always fully conscious of the fact that we’re listening to that internal dialogue. It’s just always been there, and it always will be. So we don’t question it.
But when someone externally asks you, it forces you to not just answer their question but confront the logic you’re using. That confrontation is where the great work of forming relationships happens, whether it’s a friendship, a coworker, a family member, whatever. I learned it at Smith Barney was during a workshop where the woman leading it would ask a broad question to someone in the audience, then when they answered she would sit there and consider it for a second then just say, “huh… why?”
The respondent would then give an explanation, and again, she’s consider it then ask “why”. She’d just keep going until you got to an answer that was actually revealing of some level of motivation or hidden meaning. And the lesson was, there’s always why’s behind everything we’re doing. We might not be actively thinking about them but they’re real.
Why am I writing this article? Because I was thinking about weird stuff. Interesting, why? Because I am personally realizing how hard every single person out there has it and want to be a part of the solution to making things better. Interesting, why? Because I have always believed that the only way to solve problems is to admit they’re there in the first place, so I want to write about how much I can see the problem and then also what I think we can do to solve it. Interesting…….. why? Because my mom was an English teacher and drilled “what would Atticus” do into my head, and made me more thoughtful and introspective, and then the way I learned to address it was by writing and/or talking because we talked everything to death when I was a kid and then I also spent entirely too much time thinking about writing and how to properly convey my thoughts.
There’s always another layer.
Empathy is really about discovering those layers, then remembering them, and thinking about how they could affect people in the long and short runs. Hearing that someone else loves golf, then being able to use golf metaphors in conversation with them to make it so you’re not just making a point but also making a relationship is an act of empathy. Seeing that someone has a Rubik’s cube on their desk then having a conversation about when they got obsessed with the cube gives you not just a fun topic to talk through but let’s someone drop the mask just a little to tell you about themselves.
And the list goes on. It’s why in my work background I have so much shit that people can look at. Because most people can make a connection with something in the background! And either they think “oh Scott is the lego guy!” or “the Star Wars guy!” or “the bright lights guy!” or whatever else they’re thinking, they’ve made a connection and even if we didn’t have a moment of hitting it off in the meeting, we have a conversation topic waiting for us, so you never have to feel weird when you reach out whether it’s for work or for a random topic, you have an ice breaker now!
Which is a part of the process of being a person that people will want to talk to and ask for help. Being authentically yourself is most of the battle. I love building Lego sets. I love bright colors. I love being just a little goofy. I love buying silly ass minor league baseball hats. But I also feel like a fraud for not building Lego as much as I was a few years ago. I also feel embarrassed that I’ve made bright colors a personality (and that it leads to all sorts of public conversations that I alternate between loving and hating depending on the minute lol). And I also get embarrassed that I just buy hats because I love the logos so I learn all about the team even if I’m never going to watch a game of theirs or follow them in any sort of way.
We’re all complicated and we’re all a mess of contradictions that don’t make sense to anyone outside of our brains… until we let people in. And the only way to get people to let you in, is to be open to letting others in first. And that means being authentically yourself, contradictions, flaws, mistakes, and all the negative things you think about yourself and all.
And that leads me to what I’m thankful for.
I’m thankful for all of you for reading. I’m thankful for having a job where I can feel like I’m valued and also make enough money to live. I’m thankful for my family, and specifically the ways that they all go way outside their comfort zone to be there for one another. I’m thankful for all my friends, the ones at work, the ones I used to work with, the ones that I have just made throughout my life that are there for me to talk about the stupid shit I’m thinking about whether it’s weird existential thoughts or something concrete like Lego or video games lol.
And I’m just thankful to be here, to have fingers to type, thoughts to put on this site, and the understanding that I, like every person on this planet, am a work in progress. And that progress is what’s important more so than the end results.
Finally, I’m thankful for the struggle for empathy. It’s never going to end. You’re never going to understand someone fully. But the more empathy that you have the more likely you’ll break through someone’s mask and every once in a while glimpse the version of them that they see and the version of them that could be.
And those moments are magical and worthy of being thankful, despite all of… gestures at everything in the world… this.
Happy Thanksgiving ya’ll.