Seek To Understand

Are you listening to me?

The other day in the lunchroom, teachers were discussing a  book they just started in their book club.  
“I hope it gets more exciting than making soup with her mother,” one complained.  
“Yeah, I think it’s kind of boring, ” the other replied.
When they revealed that they were reading Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (by Rhoda Janzen) I was shocked.
“I loved that book,” I gushed, “I thought it was amazing.”  

As we talked about the book I wondered if I enjoyed the book more because I was older and at a different place in my life and I tried to remember back to when I was 30 and spent more time having fun and doing stuff than reflecting about my purpose in life over soup.  We had a great discussion and laughed about our different perspectives.

If three pretty similar people can experience a book so differently, imagine a whole city reading the same book- thousands of different perspectives, opinions and interpretations of the same story.  Our library hero, Nancy Pearl, tried this project in 1998, a giant book club experiment, to see what would happen.  Pearl started, If All Seattle Reads the Same Book as a way to inspire the city of Seattle to pick up a book and read - actually to pick up the same book, The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks (now I can’t wait to read it!).  Her idea was to promote literacy and deepen the city’s appreciation of books, she is a librarian after all, but also to build community and to get people talking and connecting with each other.   

Pearl didn’t have any grand illusions of city wide harmony, she warned against expecting too much from the program: "Keep in mind that this is a library program, it's not an exercise in civics, it's not intended to have literature cure the racial divide. This is about a work of literature.”  Above all, she wanted people to have fun reading and talking about reading and maybe make some new friends along the way.

The program was a huge success - and has continued to grow and thrive each year.  The library now promotes the selected book with discussion groups, a film series, lectures and related arts programs that culminates in a visit from the author (who is interviewed on stage by Nancy Pearl)!  The idea caught on like wildfire and spread across the United States.  Now there are more than 400 “One City One Book” programs that bring people together over the pages of a book, maybe your city has one?

Besides being fun (not a bad goal in and of itself) why should we bother sharing and discussing our ideas about books - or about anything?
Steven Covey’s believes that in order to mature as a society people need to move from dependence to independence to interdependence.  Only when we work together can we achieve greatness and tackle big issues that threaten to destroy our planet/society.  And it’s true on a personal level as well - collaboration and cooperation always produces greater results than slogging it out on our own.

But to get to true interdependence there must a foundation of effective communication.  And to communicate you have to learn to listen.  Actively.  This is something that I could really use some help with...I am so guilty of thinking of my response or judging people’s ideas while they are talking.  I can’t wait to get my two cents in and point out how much I agree, or why they are wrong.  Instead, I should try to understand what they are saying, isn’t that actually the point of having a conversation?   Active listening requires focusing on building understand about what the other person is saying in order to fully grasp their perspective.  Covey points out that actively listening is so NOT the norm in our culture (people typically 0nly remember 25-50% of what they hear during a conversation).  To break this bad habit we have to deliberately change our behavior and seek to understand others.   

Once we really understand how someone feels, then maybe we can get a better understanding of where they are coming from, why they feel that way and how our experiences are similar or different.  Then maybe we can build relationships on mutual respect, instead of judgement and verbal attacks.  Imagine how different our culture would be if we were active listeners....hey, we could practice right now with a discussion about a great book!