I felt deeply uncomfortable with the person sitting next to me.
He didn’t have my back.
We depended on each other, and he’d made promises to me that he wasn’t keeping.
We were engaged in a risky activity: watching the Nutcracker.
The problem was that his mask wasn’t covering his nose.
I miss the before times. In 2019, I would have offered this man a pleasant holiday greeting, smiled at him, and maybe shook his hand.
Now, sitting next to his naked nose, I had to decide what to do. Do I say something, express my needs, and ask him to meet them? Do I ignore him?
Despite the fact that my job is essentially to have and facilitate conversations with people, I still find situations like this deeply challenging.
I think a lot of us do.
Mostly, we’re not trained to have conversations about our needs. Many of us are taught to swallow our desires, to bury them deep down. As kids, the adults around us are authority figures, most of whom have their own agendas that drive ours.
We’re told to be quiet.
To sit still.
To take a break.
So we learn to meet others’ needs; it’s an important life skill.
Later on, some of us learn to advocate for ourselves, to fight for what we want by being clever, negotiating, or ignoring others’ wants.
In consulting and coaching, we talk a lot about the skill of contracting. What can I offer you? What do I want from you? What do you want from me, and what can you offer?
Done well, the process reveals hidden assumptions and creates clarity. Implicit wants become explicit, and the whole system does better.
The last two years have demanded more contracting from us all.
I went for a walk with a friend recently (a retired consultant) and we contracted about how close we stood together.
During my son’s ski trip last week, I asked a fellow parent if I could take my mask off on the open-air ski lift.
And, with the man in the Nutcracker, I asked if he wouldn’t mind putting his mask over his nose.
(“It makes it hard for me to breathe.”)
We both reshuffled seats to be a bit farther apart and I tried not to think about it.
But it was uncomfortable.
It felt like a big deal to go to a big, public event as Omicron started to break in Seattle, and how, even though I knew going to any event involved a degree of risk, I wished he were following the rules.
I will keep trying to grow my awareness of how I feel and speak up from a place of truth and empathy.
In this case, I wish I had been able to tell him how afraid I felt.
Because, deep down, I’d like to believe that we all want to take care of each other.
I believe that, if we had a bit more skill, we’d be able to see others more clearly and allow ourselves to be seen.
So I will continue to practice.
What about you? How have you found yourself contracting with others? Email me at [email protected] and let me know.
I can’t wait to hear from you.
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