WEre
I to compile a
list of questions
to ask an expert ie were I to compile a catalog of inquiries to put
in front of someone "in the know" in a particular field, and were I
to not know anything about the subject matter at hand, I would have
one kind of approach to compiling them. Along with that approach, I
would have a matching set of criteria for choosing which questions
to ask. And if I were to compile a
list of questions
to ask someone in the know in a particular field about which I
did know something of the subject matter, I would have
another kind of approach, along with a matching set of criteria for
choosing which questions to ask.
With you, I don't fit snugly into one or the other of those two
scenarios. With you they're not mutually exclusive. When we speak,
it's as if I've got one foot in both camps. It's as if
I know absolutely nothing about the subject matter at hand ...
and ... it's also as if I do know something about it
(ie I've got both going on at the same time). And regardless of how
much I know and / or how much I don't know when I speak with you,
forty years of
experimenting
has shown me that what works best around you is I speak, I listen,
and I ask as if I know nothing about the subject
matter at all ie as if I'm listening the material
for the first time
even if I've listened it many times before. To wit,
after
forty years of knowing
you,
I've gotten that listening like I've heard the material before,
even if I have, is a possibility killer.
That's because unlike ordinary conversations in which talking
merely imparts and trades information, these conversations are
extra-ordinary conversations in which our speaking and
listening (and my asking) brings forth who we really are.
That's actually a lot closer to the truth than it sounds: ordinary
conversations impart and trade information in talking;
extraordinary conversations bring forth who we really are in
speaking, listening, and asking. Listen: I don't want to say this
too loudly nor make too big a deal or too big a fuss out of it:
this is the holy grail: human beings have wanted this
for millennia, probably for as long as we've been living on the
planet.
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