about how our minds meet.
This week I met a blogger friend at an event in Chicago. We have a common geography. His thoughts live in places where my thoughts had once had a home, and he went to the same high school my brothers’ kids did. We are the same kind of shy, but I might have talked too much for him to notice.
He told me he tended not to mix at a gathering of strangers. I told him that I usually had the same response and how I found ways to get by. We talked about how meeting folks online was different.
Since that night, I’ve been thinking the bloggers i meet every day in my mind.
I used to be ponder and be relieved by how efficient it is online. I can listen in and if I didn’t fit, I can click away — no one is embarrassed; no painful small talk is required. It’s so much less stressful, so much more efficient, the way we meet and connect with folks of like-mind.
But that’s only the beginning.
We might move up into our heads thinking, as we do any other time. The larger difference comes when, rather than thinking, listening, and speaking simultaneously, we focus on taking thoughts in and moving thoughts out via the keyboard one direction at a time.
The thoughts we exchange are in smaller packages. People are shy about holding the comment box for too many paragraphs. It would be a feat to step on the words while we type. It’s nearly impossible not to attend to the ideas someone offers — we have to read what they write to know what we want to say. Besides, we understand that we have time after we read to compose a thoughtful response.
It’s a respectful way of communicating. No wonder we find our a meaningful conversation right away.
What if we brought that same approach to the listening and speaking we do in the real world, in real time?
