Normal Wednesday: Improving Communication at Home
During Covid one half of the intellectual duo that host The Dark Horse podcast, Bret Weinstein, was on with Jordan Peterson.
Whatever you think about those individuals, and perhaps you agree with why, they have each faced enormous public scrutiny at multiple times over their careers, and that’s the significant part I want to point to at the moment.
In the conversation I was listening to, one asked the other how they survived it.
Being railed against on a massive scale, with death threats, (Bret at one point actually had people trying to hunt and harm him but he was protected by his students with whom he was extremely popular and dear), attacked with all sorts of slander and attempts on their livelihoods. And yet here they both were - having a conversation about it.
They both said they wouldn’t have survived intact if they didn’t weren’t so close to their families. Their immediate community was made of people that knew them well and they had honest relationships with. Their houses were in order, as Peterson might say.
This means they have people with which to confront the storm and seek shelter.
They had a basis of understanding carved by honest relating, and taking the risk of being known by other humans in all their flaws and evolution for a long time.
I’m thinking about all the people that have turned on their families rather than give up either the vulnerability to accept them or be seen themselves, especially if something goes against their belief. The risk of ego death is far too much for many of us that we will burn every relationship and human to the ground to preserve it.
Developing the skills to move forward to have community takes actual trying, experience, and hopefully some people to practice with.
Last night I had the second House Meeting where I’m living, with Roxanne and Jared and their baby and my dog. I have always wanted intentional communication in my home. The first time we had this meeting I was a nervous wreck, in full-on fear of all sorts of things and terrified of my potential to lose another home. I could barely imagine a meeting like this that wouldn’t just revolve around all the things I was doing wrong and I entered it with the air of someone being sent to the principal’s office, and who cared about being “in trouble.” My home with Robert was very critical. It was in some ways a recreation of the way I felt around my dad.
But here I was able to share my fears without being rejected or cut off or feel a steep emotional drop-off from the other people. The experience made me chip a few layers off my ice block, so that by the second meeting I actually felt excited to get together.
We created and communicated and I got a new level of experience in intentional communication inside my present home, different from doing this sort of thing in a workshop with people. Boots on the fucking ground.
For those of you that are interested in creating some intentional, “risky” conversations with your households in order to build strong integrity that can withstand whatever cyclones may come, I wanted to share a few ideas that helped make this one a successful stone on the path.
Part of my initial nervousness was because I wasn’t sure we had the same goals. When it’s not clear or spelled out that we want to get along it’s a different set of circumstances. I feel this way with my dad a lot, or with any less explicit relationships (“I want to be friends.”) that I have.
In any relationship it’s helpful to identify at least something you both/all want. Maybe it’s concrete, maybe it’s a way of being or something more ethereal, but it’s worth trying to connect over some common desire for the relationship. Why are we here? Why are we even talking to each other. We wanted a peaceful, cooperative, respectful house that held what people genuinely wanted in high value and tried to meet those needs.
One idea I’ve seen is for couples and families to add an extra place at the meeting table for Love as its own entity. You might put a pillow or a teddy bear as a physical object, present to hold the energy and a visible physical reminder of a shared desire of the group. Then, amidst any arguing or concern, you could turn to consider what Love would say or want in the situation. If there is a third-party energy to consider at your meeting, this could be a good idea for you to invite it in. For a house meeting, this might be something to represent the House outside of our individual preferences.
Perhaps you’re already feeling squeamish at this hippie bullshit, and may I congratulate you for firmly entering the necessary staging area that precursors all new travelers in the pursuit of intimacy - Level Corny. For some reason, every single thing that brings us closer to one another starts out feeling Corny AF, uncomfortable, and emotional. Congratulations lol. Feel the feelings, laugh, or cry if that’s how you react, tell the other people to just hold space and let you be, and try to move on when you can actually play with the idea, “What the hell would love say in this situation?”
Roxanne really set the stage for us. She:
Asked for a predetermined time and day we all discussed and agreed to.
This gave me a few days to have it swirling in my head and time to journal out what mattered to me to say, as well as make suggestions about what structure would be helpful to me. More on that later.
The evening of she boiled a big pot of cinnamon and orange tea, lit a candle, and set down a circular tapestry on the ground and placed the candle and flowers in the center for a sense of ritual and intention.
Knowing that we were all meeting and had the common goal to meet made it feel easy and natural for me to clean up the kitchen and living room after dinner while they put the baby to bed. Common goals create a bit of self-organization in service to those goals.
She told us we would be starting in a couple of minutes, which gave us time to be in our own spaces, begin to become more present, and move our bodies (or at least I did).
She brought paper and pens for all of us and asked us each to write down something we saw as a strength of our own, then something we saw as a strength for each of the other two people there. I had specifically asked ahead of time if we could start on a positive note because that’s really helpful to me to know it will be baked in before any potential criticism.
She suggested we do a timed listening (Listen Up) session so everyone felt heard. We discussed and agreed to a set time of 5 minutes each to speak uninterrupted and ended up using prompts that I came up with as the structure:
Something that I love…
Something that worries me sometimes…
I would like to know…
Something I would like…
Overall…
If we didn’t make it through the entire prompt in the allotted time it was fine. We ended by asking questions or reflecting on things we heard the other people say and then sharing what the strengths were we had written down before intentionally closing the meeting.
What do you think?
Do you think any of these ideas would be helpful to you, or do they get some sparks flowing around the kind of communication and conversations you’d like to start having with your crew?
I love this stuff, desire it greatly, and am still not finding it easy yet. But I am seeing and feeling more clarity and promise as I get to practice with other good people. I was surprised and delighted at some of the answers I got to my curiosity….”Something I would like to know is how to best express my love for you all when I feel like I’m overflowing with the desire to give, but don’t always know the ways in which you would want to receive.” I definitely recommend discussing that idea.