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Change the World: Compliments and Apologies

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Say “Thank You”

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Something goes right or something goes wrong. Someone says something about it. That something is a compliment or an apology. Oh. Compliments and apologies are so . . . um, er . . . direct. The words, the thoughts come straight at us. It’s almost natural to move out of the way.

“Oh that, it was nothing,” is not an unusual response.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Something goes right or something goes wrong. We need to say something. We try to apologize or give say how touched we were by an action, but the words come out wrong.

Apologies and compliments can feel unnatural, if no one has shown us how. Even when we mean to be gracious, we can deny or discount ourselves and the person on the other side of the conversation. From what I see, that’s what most often happens.

“This old thing?”

Whether giving or receiving, if head and heart are together and focused on the other person, we’ll get it right.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry, but that’s a rule to give by, not to live by — that’s only part of the story. Love also means telling a person how you feel and letting that person say what he or she needs to.

No matter how embarassing, love listens when people tell us how it feels to have made a hurtful mistake or to have received a kindness.

Sometimes I need to know that you’ve heard how sorry I am. It helps me heal.

Receiving or giving, it’s about listening. It’s about the other person. How could it not be and still be authentic? It’s not so hard to do. One simple thought changes everything. A real person meant what was just said. I need to show respect for that. That one thought can generate so many responses.

I’m sorry. I behaved badly. . . . I am so happy for you. . . . Wow! Thank you, I work hard, and that means a lot. . . . I hear you. . . . I understand.

It took me decades to realize that compliments and apologies weren’t about me. It only took minutes to find a new way of responding.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Knowing When Not to Listen

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Be the Teacher

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Listening. We all want to be heard. It’s often a gift to listen when someone needs to talk. But not always . . .

Sometimes we talk just to know that we’re here. Sometimes we rattle on without thinking about what we’re saying. Sometimes we talk to fill space or win favor. Sometimes we talk just to know we’re okay or to prove that we’re good enough.

I heard a parable about a teacher and a student. Sometimes I’m the teacher. Sometimes I’m not. It’s easy to be the student. I want to remember the story, so I pass it on.

On beautiful day centuries ago, a teacher was walking down a dirt road in the country, thinking teacherly thoughts.

A student, filled with excitement, ran up to the teacher saying, “Master, I have news you should know, important news, from the city.”

The teacher smiled at the student and slowed so the student could catch up and catch his breath. As they walked together, the teacher softly spoke.

“May I ask a few questions first?”

“Oh yes, of course, Teacher, yes,” the student gushed.

“This news you bring — does it tell a of a good deed?”

“Oh no, Teacher. Someone has done something wrong.”

“Do you know the person yourself?’

“No, Teacher. I don’t, but the person who told me does.”

“Do you know that the story is true?”

“My friend swears it is so.”

The teacher walked silently for a while so that the student might hear his own answers. When the teacher spoke again, it was almost a whisper.

“You wish to tell me bad news about someone you do not know about something you don’t know is true. This news is not important.”

The teacher asked three simple questions and knew whether to listen.

Those three questions make it easy to decide.

We can choose not to listen.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: If You Can’t Say Something Nice

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Forgive the Guy You Don’t Like

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One of the best things about growing up shy is that I became an observer. I watch people and the patterns in our behavior. Yeah, I watch myself too.

Sometimes we do this curious thing. It’s as if we have two dictionaries. One dictionary we use when we talk about people we love and people we think are good. The other we use when we talk about people who scare us, have hurt us, or for some reason we have decided are not good enough.

The first dictionary has the words forgiveness and compassion. The second does not. When we decide we don’t like someone enough, we pick up that second dictionary. We find words like righteous and noble and use them to talk about ourselves and our feelings. Our noble selves decide how other folks think, forgetting entirely that they are people who love their children too.

I think that’s why my mother said, “If you can’t say something nice . . . ”

It seems a small thing, but it’s not. Think of the difference it would make in a life if we lived by that rule.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Turn the You into We

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The Reverend’s Speech

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The difference I’m about to explain is so subtle I don’t know whether I can explain it well in a short bit of text. I’ve been working on this as a writing post, as a relationship post, and now finally, I’ve put it with the Change the World series. The story is about sensitivity to the way use words and how those words affect how we see the world, each other, and our place in it. That the reverend was speaking of changing the world is a coincidence that I hope won’t distract. . . .

At to my son’s college graduation in May, I listened deeply to the commencement speech. It took a lifetime to get to the moment — my son’s lifetime. I listened as he might. I listened as a parent who knew what his education cost. I listened as a writer who watched the audience from a wonderful vantage point. I listened as a blogger for words I might share in a Change the World post.

The well-known Reverend who gave the commencement address had two things going for him. He’s the editor of a national magazine, and he’s well practiced at inspirational speaking.

The message the reverend brought was well-written and deeply felt. It was meant, I think, to be about hope as an action. I heard him say these sentences.

Hope is not a word. Hope is choice.

I was engaged in where this would go. Yes, I thought.

Then he spoke of sad things in the world and how we accept and tolerate those situations because we believe that we cannot change them. He used the pronoun we.

Unfortunately, when he spoke of the future and changing what is framed it inside the wrong pronoun. He changed the pronoun to you. Forgive me as I paraphrase what he said. Please know that I’m being true to the message that came across.

You can choose not to tolerate . . .

You can choose not to accept . . .

I wondered what happened to we.

I couldn’t help but think of the graduates on this day they had looked forward for so many years. Maybe I’m overly sensitive. I could be too protective. But I think he could have had a more powerful inspirational impact had he considered the people he was trying to inspire.

You see, the reverend spoke from a podium high upon a stage. He was talking to graduates who sat in chairs listening as they had for most their school careers.

You can stop tolerating situations in which children don’t have enough to eat . . .

In that context, it was almost as if he had given them one more assignment dressed up in inspirational words. This time there would be no grade, no classroom or email support. The test would be the shape of the world.

If only, he had chosen the pronoun “we.”

We can stop tolerating situations in which children don’t have enough to eat. . .

The assignment would have become a shared cause.

The reverend could have changed the world, could have changed how those graduates saw their role, with just one word.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Start a New Job

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Change My Job with a Thought

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Ever hear someone talk about a brand new job? Whenever I do, it takes be back to those nice first day of school feelings.

Life seems light. The world is fresh. Even the kids that that we knew from last year start to look and act better. Everything is new beginnings — new desk, new paper, new pens, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. New jobs are like that.

I bring myself back from the new job fantasy by recalling how long it takes to get familiar in a new place. Every new job takes time to learn the culture, the people, and how to get things done when I need to. That’s a lot to give up once you’ve gotten there.

New beginnings are wonderful and fresh, but being around a while offers the relationships, credibility, and support of a familiar place. I want the values of both without lose the downside of each.

I wanted that enough that I figured out how to make it happen. The trick is to blend the old and the new together.

All it took was a change in the way that I see.

Today, I start a new job, doing the job that I did last week. I let go. I wipe the slate clean. I imagine that I inherited this busy desk from the busy person before me. It’s a good feeling to put that distance between now and Friday.

All of the tasks on this desk held no romance for the person who sat here on Friday. But the new me walks into this job looking at them as filled with promise and so exciting.

Thoughts of someone who isn’t delivering turn from an ongoing headache into the challenge and opportunity that a fresh mind sees. That situation has just become information the person previously in this job shared before leaving. It’s simply a fact on my radar that has no past feelings attached to it. The problem solver in me knows that I’m more than ready to smile into a new approach.

A clean slate is like the first day of school filled with new beginnings– new desk, new paper, new pen, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. I take a new look and my old job becomes new like that too.

The people I work with notice that I’ve got a new outlook and soon they have one too.

I’m taking a new job to work with me today. I can feel it already.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Get Some Perspective

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Selective Memory

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As we get to be adults, we have conversations about growing up. Often those conversations center around our parents and what they did wrong. . . . I often recall a college friend saying, “When does it stop being our parents fault?”

I don’t know whether my childhood was happy, I only remember specific memories — even those seem to be a story told from my own point of view . . . as I found out about this one.

I told my older, older brother about my son’s attitude as teenager. I said, “I never had the nerve to talk to my mother that way.”

My older, older bother laughed. He said, “Ah, your selective memory! When your niece was your son’s age, I heard her talk back to her mother . . . how often I thought ‘Oh that’s familiar.’ It was a replay of my little sister talking to my mother. Why do you think I say my daughter is so like her aunt?”

Now I look back and think,”Yeah, I was a brat just like every other 17-year-old kid. It’s the nature of 17-year-olds. Young lions do it to their parents too. It’s part of growing up and leaving home.”

Part of becoming who we are is getting events into perspective. I’ve always been a little slow at catching on, but when I did that day, I saw my son and myself in a new way.

The rest of that year was lighter for one 17-year-old and his mother.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss