There is a Buddhist saying: To get to a different place, we have to take a different path. Sounds logical doesn’t it? Not really. Mark Twain once noted: America always does the right thing…after they’ve tried everything else.
Recently, the president of a major university called in the police, like so many other universities, as a way of responding to protesters who were encamped on their campus grounds. The police arrested and handcuffed the protesters and in some cases, shot them with rubber bullets using excessive physical force. All of which only further enraged the protesters who felt they were peacefully making their voices heard and standing up against the genocide of innocent women and children in Gaza.
It was later discovered that this very same university president was an anti-war protester against the Vietnam war when he was in college. The question then becomes: What did he learn from that experience? If he knew that everything would escalate, what would he have done anything differently? When asked these questions, he simply replied: “Well, it’s important that they talk.”
The core problem with talking, is not only how they choose to communicate with each other, but also are they willing to hear each other and if so, be willing to change? In retrospect, all of the responses to these protests could have all been approached in a much different way if they had chosen to communicate and relate to each other from a mindful approach of curiosity and empathy. By the way, almost all of the protests at these universities had taken my mindful facilitation trainings. Under duress, they reacted rather than respond. In my experience, when folks become reactive they are often defensive, and in those moments, it is important to ask: What are you defending? You, see, this place of curiosity is often overlooked and instead reactively replaced by attacking, being in denial, shaming or blaming when we are scared or afraid or feeling we are losing control. All of these reactions are what escalates most conflicts.
On the other end, most protests, like the Me, Too and Black Lives Matter movements, as well as the recent campus protests, all had these in common: they all wanted to be heard, to be believed, to be understood, to be valued and that change was possible. These are the foundations of a trusting and caring relationship. So, how do we get there? How do we respond differently?
Someone once wrote: We do not learn from experience, but rather by our willingness to experience. Thich Nhat Hahn wrote: Curiosity is the gateway to empathy.
Here are some mindful techniques coming from a place of curiosity and empathy:
- So what I hear you saying is… (this is called a reflection. It lets the speaker know that you’ve heard them; acknowledging what they’ve shared. Use their exact words. The objective here is give space for the speaker to share their story completely uninterrupted and unconditionally).
- Tell me more what you meant by…. (this lets the speaker know that you are curious and wanting to find out more in depth what they have experienced).
- What angered you about…? or What came up for you when…? (We often avoid this question for fear of the emotional intensity it might bring up. However, avoiding talking about the anguish and pain of what happened doesn’t make it safer, but rather more unsafe. It becomes safer, when we can express the anguish, rather than bottling it up. Anger doesn’t go away just because we don’t talk about it. It always goes somewhere or towards someone else).
- What hurt you about…? (It is my belief that anger is not a primary emotion, but rather that hurt is. When our hurt is unacknowledged and invalidated, it becomes anger. So the work is to be willing to hear the anger and the hurt that is underneath it. That requires patience and compassion.)
- What’s familiar ..? How did it affect you and how does it affect you today? (This question is the ‘past tense’ inquiry. It strives to understand what is familiar about what happened, as well how it affected you then and how it affects you today). This question is so appropriate given the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. By the way, this question is seldom asked, but is so relevant in understanding the context of one’s anguish and hurt.
- What do you need/want? (Try to use this one last. We often go straight to this question because of our need to solve or fix things. Remember, take the time to let the speaker share as much of their feelings, first).
All of the above inquiries were recently used successfully with two university campuses for two straight days as a way of helping Israelis and Palestinians come together In a peaceful and caring dialogue based on curiosity and empathy. If you are interested on how it was structured, please give our office a call or email us.
As Maya Angelou once wrote: I may not remember what you said or did,
but I will always remember how you made me feel.
