[Image: “Broken Chair,” by Tom Waterhouse. (Found it on Flickr, of course, and use it here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) You can read the details of this piece’s history here, courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine.]
Back in 2006, writer Ann Patchett gave the commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College; the address is widely cited, although I had difficulty finding a transcript of it. I’d hoped to because this week, whiskey river offered us an excerpt from a 2008 book which grew out of the widely cited speech; I wanted to see the excerpt’s context. For what it’s worth, I eventually did find a transcript, here (at least for now)… but of course, the quoted excerpt appears only in the subsequent book and not the original. So, to save you the same rigmarole, what follows is the full paragraph.
Background: Patchett has just described an encounter she had with a Hare Krishna in an airport, decades ago. He’d said he didn’t want to “convert” her, just to talk, but she — a college student at the time, timid around strangers — was skeptical. Ultimately, she crewed up her courage and just… listened. And talked. Had an actual conversation with him
At the end of the account, she says (whiskey river‘s excerpt italicized):
The Hare Krishna didn’t convert me (though honestly, I don’t believe he had tried) but he did teach me something I should have known all along: people need to talk, and often a willingness to sit and listen is the greatest kindness one person can offer to another. One of the first lessons of childhood is to be wary of strangers, and while this is good counsel to guard against the world’s very small nefarious element, it also teaches us to block out the large majority of those who just have something on their mind they’d like to say. We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs. By the time we reach adulthood, many have perfected the art of isolation, of being careful, of not listening in the name of safety. But the truth is that we need to hear other people, all people, especially in those moments when we don’t know exactly where we’re going ourselves. When it comes to finding our way we’re better off taking in as much information from as many sources as possible. If someone told you he didn’t need to listen to other people anymore because frankly he had life all figured out, he had all the answers, every single one of them, and was crystal clear on every last question in the universe, what could you do with that person but shake your head in despair? Chances are, anyone who claims not to need the input of any other person on the planet is probably crazy. So if you were sure you didn’t have all the answers and were spending long afternoons asking yourself What now? wouldn’t it be even crazier not to listen to people or to make up your mind against them based on the most superficial bit of information, say a saffron robe, perhaps? For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.
(Ann Patchett [source])
The whole initial episode — Patchett sort of skulking around the edges of human interaction, blanching at a stranger’s approach — struck me if not exactly painfully familiar, then at least exquisitely so…
I generally explain away this asocial behavior by pointing to my hearing-aided ears and raising my eyebrows, like, See?: “I can’t hear you well enough to talk much. So I’d really prefer not to open myself up to conversation (i.e., to ongoing frustration)!”
Some truth lies there, of course, but it’s a bit of a bogus, masked truth. Under the mask, well, it’s not so much the simple physical fact of hearing impairment that keeps me out of interactions. It’s tiredness. I’m tired of guessing what people say, tired of apologizing for guessing wrong, tired of explaining all the nuances (e.g., boosting your volume doesn’t help if you still don’t speak clearly), tired of putting off onto other people the burden of helping me “get” what they’re saying (which, for many people, makes them want to apologize for not having picked up the burden voluntarily)…
Over the last year-and-a-half, I’ve found, I’ve gotten increasingly lazy about all this. Prime example: regardless which of us, I or The Missus, has made a hotel reservation, it’s just easier to let her handle the conversation with the desk clerk from the get-go; I lurk behind her, ready to hand over my credit card and driver’s license if necessary, while admiring the potted plants, checking out the snacks and beverages available to patrons, hunting down a luggage cart, or whatever. In the meantime, she makes small talk and asks about hotel amenities.
In truth, this does simplify our check-in. On the other hand, it also ensures that the desk clerk and I remain strangers to each other. If, as often happens, I later have to stop by myself at the front desk for something or other, we have no previous grounds for knowing each other, however slightly…
Next week, I’m heading up to New Jersey for a ten-day stay, by myself, to help parents and sibs with some family business. I find myself almost looking forward to even five minutes with airline counter staff, car-rental agents — that sort of thing. Who knows? Maybe when I get back to Florida I’ll be Mr. Congeniality! (Aside: don’t lay your bets just yet, haha.)
