Seek to understand, then to be understood

This phrase popped into my mind this week as I met with two dear friends for breakfast on Wednesday. We meet every other week to share our lives, encourage each other, and remind each other of certain truths. One of my friends was updating us on a difficult situation that had arisen over the holidays, and was a little nervous to talk to the person about it, afraid of coming off as judgmental.

I think one of my professors last semester said "Seek to understand, then to be understood." Or maybe it was a guest speaker for our urban education cohort, or maybe in one our readings, or maybe from a colleague. Regardless, it has stuck with me as a beautiful piece of advice that can be applied to almost any relationship.

I think it also fits with my last post and how we don't know how to approach people who are sick. Our default mode is to give some sort of advice. Maybe it's because we live in a culture that LOVES to give advice. Oprah has build a whole industry around her advice. Thousands of recent college graduates are hired every year to work at consulting firms. Their job, for 2-3 years, is to give advise to companies. No magazine, talk show, radio station, newspaper is complete without an advice column or segment. We love the sound of our own voices sharing our wisdom. And we start to equate helping people with giving advice.

But if we jump into giving advice or sharing our opinion without first seeking to understand the other person, we risk trivializing their situation and their pain. We risk feeling superior.

Seeking to understand takes a level of humility that we don't see modeled in our culture very often. We have to work hard at being humble, to realize that we are not at the center of the universe. Here's the thing: when we stop to hear what the other person has to say before we say anything, we may just find that they are the ones that can teach us something.