"Choose a problem that's worth your time.
World hunger
is worth your time. Making a million dollars isn't."
... Sandra "Sandy" Bernasek (1951 - 2018),
Landmark Forum
Leader,
quoted by the Pittsburgh City Paper
"The more original the thinking, the richer will be what is unthought
in it. The unthought is the greatest gift that thinking can bestow."
...
Martin
Heidegger,
What Is Called Thinking?
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more
things change, the more they stay the same)."
... Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
This essay,
Conversations That Matter (And Those That Don't),
is the companion piece to
What kinds of conversations matter? What kinds don't? What are
"conversations that matter"? At first hearing, it may sound like
they're conversations about concerns that matter to us in life. And
they are. That much is self-evident. In this conversation
however, it's but a trivial distinction. Obviously
conversations that matter are about concerns that matter to us. But I
assert that's only a part of it. And it may not even be the salient
part.
In this essay I'd like to explore (take a deeper cut at) what makes
conversations matter (over and beyond that they're about concerns that
matter to us) by asking "What really makes conversations
that matter matter?" (my doubled "matter" is intentional -
it's not a typo).
It's only in passing ie it's only secondary that conversations that
matter are about concerns that matter to us. Really it is. Primarily,
the possibility of conversations that matter is that having them will
make a difference in / transform the concerns that matter
to us. Yet when we tell the truth about this
unflinchingly,
it's clear that by this definition, we've been having a plethora of
conversations about concerns that matter to us which
decades
later, we all know haven't made much of a difference at
all (for clear, incontrovertible evidence of this all too
disparaging fact, just turn on the
morning news
- any network / any channel will do).
We wish things will change. They don't. We hope for change. It hasn't
worked. We
pray
for change. That hasn't worked either. And the thing is (much to the
chagrin of good people everywhere) we haven't yet fully gotten that
this approach is
futile:
change doesn't make any difference! "Plus ça
change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the
more they stay the same)" says Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in his
famous
aphorism.
Try this on for size: conversations that matter matter / make a
difference inasmuch as they tease out the context for who we're
being in the matter of our concerns. What makes conversations that
matter matter, is discovered more in the context they tease out, than
it is in their content ie than it is in the concerns which matter to us
that they're about.
<aside>
Werner's
work's reason for being ie its raison d'etre is it's
committed
to teasing out the context for who we're being in the matter of our
concerns.
<un-aside>
Talking About, As Distinct From What Makes A Difference
In an older paradigm for conversations that matter (which is to say in
an untransformed view of conversations that matter) we heard gifted
speakers, skilled orators proposing solutions to concerns both societal
and personal. We referred to what they were doing as "talking about" as
in an announcement like "So-and-so will be talking about (concern).".
In this older paradigm, we were left with knowing the concerns, and
knowing what needs to be done to address those concerns. And yet
inexplicably, weren't left empowered to make any difference in the
concerns.
That's because the older "gifted speaker" paradigm doesn't make any
difference. Here's what makes a difference: instead of "talking
about" as in "So-and-so will be talking about (concern)", try on
"teasing out" for size, as in "So-and-so will be teasing out the
context for who we're being in the matter of (concern).". Look:
"talking about" doesn't make any difference; "teasing out" makes a
difference ("talking about" differentiates content; "teasing out"
masters context).
Sooner or later we'll all get to the unavoidable if not inconvenient
truth regarding our conversations about concerns that matter to us,
which is this: conversations which merely talk about our concerns
out of context ie which talk about our concerns without
teasing out the context for who we're being in the matter of our
concerns, don't make any difference - whereas conversations which tease
out the context for who we're being in the matter of our concerns, make
a difference. Conversations matter when they're in the latter
category.
What makes conversations that matter matter, is not just whether or not
they talk about our concerns, but whether or not they tease out the
context for our concerns - which is to say whether or not they tease
out who we're being in the matter of our concerns. And it's not that
conversations that matter should or shouldn't directly address the
concerns that matter to us. It's that without teasing out the context
for who we're being in the matter of the concerns that matter to us,
they don't make any real difference.
Knowing the facts of our concerns, no matter how dire, is never
powerful enough to make a difference. It's knowing the facts of our
concerns, plus the
presence
of the context for who we're being in the matter of the concerns that
matter to us, that makes a difference. Arguably it's only
the
presence
of the context for who we're being in the matter of the concerns that
matter to us, that's ever made any real difference at all. Knowing by
itself isn't enough. For example, we all say we intend to lose weight.
We all know all the facts of how to do it. Yet how many of us actually
will? How many well-intentioned resolutions to lose weight will be
unaccomplished?
Conversations that matter address macro-concerns like
world hunger,
climate change, global warming, pandemics, inflation etc etc. But any
time the context for who we're being is teased out in a conversation
(even among as few as two people) about the concerns that matter to us
which we deal with in our day-to-day lives, it's a conversation that's
experienced as one that matters ie as one that makes a difference.
A conversation about the concerns we deal with in our
day-to-day lives, won't make as much of a difference / doesn't matter
as much as the same conversation about the same concerns in which the
context for who we're being in the matter of our concerns is teased
out. Re-iterating: what makes a difference in conversations that matter
is discovered more in the context they tease out than it is in the
concerns they're about ie than it is in their content. Saying this yet
another way, conversations that matter matter / make a difference by
teasing out the context for who we're being in the matter of our
concerns. It's the
access
to their
source of empowerment.
In the matter of what matters in conversations that
matter, it's
their context
that matters. It's
the context that's
decisive.
If it's
presenced
in our conversations ie if we tease it out in our conversations, they
matter and they make a difference - no matter what the concerns are
that they're about. If it's not, they don't.
<aside>
Werner's
programs,
in teasing out the context for who we're being in the matter of our
concerns, are the quintessential conversations that matter.