Life is Improvisation

“life itself was an improvisation in which I was going to have to deal with what came to me and not think about what should have come.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

I have admired Alan Alda forever! To treat myself in the middle of this long, bleak January in lockdown I've just purchased his book (audio format and narrated by him) "If I Understood You Would I Have This Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating" This title makes me laugh out loud and is the quote I was going to use as I feel a lot of us have this "look" on our face now with the divisiveness in our society. From my perspective how society and communities work basically depend on communication. To come to any sort of peaceful coexistence going forward I think our communication skills need to move past the "should bes" and blame and into curiousity and discovery; with a genuine intention to learn as we listen to the stories that underlie our conflicting beliefs. 

People believe what they believe for a reason; maybe they've always been the underdog, or they are the power hungry leader, the competitive athlete, the wealthy elite, the educated or the uneducated, the oppressed and abused, or the bully and narcissist or ...etc. Through communication and listening as individuals maybe we can change the only thing we have power to change, our own beliefs. Basically it is not "them" that needs to change, it is "me", and each "me" that changes makes "them" a little less of a "them" and more of an "us". We are all part of the us, and if we eliminate "them" from our vocabulary that would be a really good start.

I think sometimes we don't realize that by making ourselves right in a conversation the result is the other person feels shut down, made wrong and becomes resentful. A conversation has to be respectful, we have had such a powerful example in politics of the shut down/I'm right you're wrong/you caused this mess kind of speaking that it has become normalized somehow and we are losing sight of the fact that we are all human and have our own stories that shape our views and the voices we silence are the ones that we need to listen to in order to move on.

Bonus Quotes from Alan Alda:

 

“The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.”
― Alan Alda

The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong.”
― Alan Alda