The Ground Has Gotten Pretty Shallow in Places
As Thanksgiving fast approaches, it seems like a good time to talk about what we’re thankful for. No, don’t go away. I don’t want to talk about the usual things that we don’t need reminding about. I want to talk about something we do to be reminded of. Common ground.
Common ground means the place where you and I meet in our conversation, or our work, or our problem solving. It’s the place in the middle of a Venn diagram. It’s the place where, if we can’t find it, means we aren’t going to achieve much together.
With so many people yelling at one another in media channels these days, I’m worried that we’ll lose sight of the one concept that we really can’t do without, at least if we want to do good or make some progress. When we yell, we aren’t listening. When we aren’t listening, we don’t gain knowledge about the other person or the other side.
We talked about listening last week, and all we said there still goes, but I’d like to use a little different perspective and say that we need to listen before we can know another person and before we can ever hope to find a meeting place. That’s because common ground isn’t always obvious. In fact, it’s often hidden underneath a lot of words that have nothing to do with it at all.
Let’s say you and I start to talk and we exchange comments about the weather, our kids, and the movies we watched last night. We walk away thinking we “know” a lot about each other. I know how many kids you have, their ages, and where they go to school. I might also know what they like and don’t like. If you tell me what you think about the weather, I might know that you like it hot or would rather be snow boarding more than anything else. But, with all that, I don’t have any idea if you and I have a common place where we might share ideas about current events, climate change, or the school referendum.
I’m not suggesting for a minute that there is no value in friendly exchange, but I am positing that we might be missing out on a lot if we think we “know” another person because of those friendly exchanges. I’m worried that my students think that the hundreds of “friends” they have on social media are really friends. I’m worried that they think they can trust those hundreds with important or private ideas. I’m worried that they don’t realize the difference between having someone who knows them enough to be authentically supportive for the right reasons. I’m worried that they might not feel the energy, the confidence, and the assurance that comes from common ground, The energy and confidence required to make good decisions and solve difficult problems.
Again, we come to how important it is to be a model for our children. They need to see us working with others on hard problems or on committees dedicated to ideas we value. They need to see us really listening to them, and to the people close to us. They need to see us dig more deeply into ideas. All so our children grow up looking for that Common Ground.
