CHAPTER 4
Creating a Space to Connect
We are all united. The fate of the whole of humankind depends on our relationships with each other. Never have we been dependent one on the other to this extent. But we fail to understand it. Human beings have proved unable to become compassionate, to help each other. If we persist with this mind-set, which requires that we consider our neighbor as our number-one enemy, if we continue to incite revenge and hatred to pollute our world and our thinking, this will mean that we have learned nothing from the great masters, not from Jesus, not from Buddha, not from Moses. And if we do nothing to correct these Pavlovian reflexes, we shall be helpless when it comes to taking on the era when human beings will be striving ever more furiously to exploit, conquer, tyrannize. Grabbing as much as possible, with no concern for the aftermath. Living at the expense of those who have no way out, no resources … We must share with those who do not resemble us, for their difference is a source of enrichment. We must respect the uniqueness of others.
YEHUDI MENUHIN
Heads Together
As noted late in Chapter 2, the ability to formulate negotiable requests—and thus to create the space for connections between people—is directly related to our self-confidence. If we are sure inside ourselves that we can hear the other person’s disagreement, we don’t have to fear that we’ll have to sacrifice ourselves. I say “sure inside ourselves” because often we know this intellectually, but we haven’t integrated the fact into the emotional knowledge that we have of ourselves. We are then very fragile when it comes to differences of opinion and disinclined to welcome them with open arms.
With practice of this method, through intimate experience with it, we begin to trust that it’s not because we take an opportunity to express a need and a request that another person will simply give up their own need. We also begin to trust that it’s not because we allow another person to express their need, perhaps different from our own, that we’ll have to give up ours in order to meet theirs. We know that we’re going to strive to seek together a solution to meet the needs of both parties … or at least agree that we disagree.
We also know—and this is of paramount importance—that deep down our well-being will derive not so much from the solution to a problem as from the quality of the connection made possible by seeking that solution.
When we are operating on the mental or intellectual plane only, having no awareness of our needs, we tend to live our relationships in the following mode:
We exchange information or preconceived ideas: “Pass me the salt. Come get me at the station. What are we going to do over the weekend? Don’t forget the garbage cans …” In disputes, we argue about “who is wrong, who is right,” and often that settles matters. Not in any very nurturing way, but we manage. In a manner of speaking.
Unfortunately, we often happen to communicate as follows:
We miss each other; we overshoot each other! “In vain do I repeat myself a hundred times … He just doesn’t hear … I just don’t know what language to speak to him in.” We have the impression that we are being clear, emitting a message, but the message is not received. It’s as if the other person didn’t have the right antenna or was capturing other wavelengths. Conversely, we also often have the feeling that a message has been emitted by another (absence, silence, sulking, fits of anger, scoldings), but we don’t really have the right antennae to decipher it. Finally, we sometimes communicate like this:
Instead of meeting, we crash into each other. This is what leads us to the use of razor-sharp words—or even to aggression.
Facing the Façade
Looking at these drawings I included for your perusal, I was saying to myself that we stay so much on the surface of things—face to face, mask to mask. Then there came to mind an image that Anne Bourrit, one of the original NVC trainers I had the privilege of assisting regularly while I was training, utilized to get people to understand how to connect with their needs. The image is of a man being like a well; he can go down inside to seek what is alive in himself. Combining the image of the masks and the image of the well, another drawing came to my mind. Here I show three façades on the surface of the earth: one very modest, the tent; the other more elaborate, a small house; and the third highly elaborate, a tower, solid and imposing.
Remember the first chapter? When we judge, we see only a small part of another. We take the small part that we see, and we believe that we see the other person fully, then lock them up in that image. If we come back to the example of the boy with his orange hair in a crest and his piercings or the woman in her flashy car, we could symbolize the boy with the tepee, the woman with the tower, and caricature the exchange between them as red bullets being fired at each other in the form of criticism and prejudices:
“You filthy snob, give me your dough and your ride …”
“You dirty little punk, go and get dressed properly …”
Often, to avoid going overboard in this way, we keep a low profile, and we go for the harmless façade—the little house in the middle—not too small so as not to be crushed, nor too big so as not to be the target of projectiles, but we certainly don’t show ourselves to be exactly as we are. That would be scary. Here is the drawing that results from that:
Thus is the relationship when we stay in the mental mode, alienated from our feelings and needs, as well as from the feelings and needs of others.
All Wells End Well
I suggest continuing the drawing as follows, aware that every dwelling on this planet has to be in some proximity to water. So I dig a well under the façade of each one, and what do I observe? However different the façades may be, they are connected to the same water table through their wells.
Human beings are like the wells; if they go down inside themselves, they get connected to each other via the same water table. The same water keeps all human beings alive. The same needs are their lifelines. Indeed, whether we’re desert nomad or CEO of a multinational corporation, street sweeper in a forgotten district or famous politician, peasant farmer or show business icon, basically we have the same needs for identity, emotional and physical safety and security, and community, whether in a group, a tribe, or a family. We all have a need for sharing and connecting, for freedom and autonomy, for recognition and achievement. We all need to love and be loved, and so on.
As long as we remain on the surface, face to face, mask to mask, there is every probability we’ll maintain a language that separates and divides. If we wish to go down into our well and accompany another person in theirs, there is a great likelihood that we’ll find a language (water!) that unites us.
Taking the directions followed by the arrows in the well, when you look at the drawing on page 159, you’ll see that in order to connect effectively with another person, we have to go by way of ourselves. In order to meet another person in their well, we first of all have to go down into our own. This truly illustrates for me the fact that the path toward another necessarily goes through myself.
Dancing Gently Toward Each Other
Meeting is a movement, often slow and interior, from me to me and from me to another. The movement takes place in a space of freedom that we give ourselves, which is a fundamental criterion for connection: I now know, through my own personal experience, that without this space of liberty, there is no breathing, no movement, no “creative friction.”17
Here is a sketch that attempts to represent the movement of connection, which in Nonviolent Communication is like a dance. That is, we dance with ourselves and with the other person in order to connect. Remember, for example, the exchange between Terry and Andrea (see Chapter 1) regarding the restaurant versus the video.
| Terry | Andrea |
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This is a four-step dance, a thousand-step dance. Although taming is done through constraint and coercion, domestication is achieved through trust and freedom. In domestication, you dance the approach.
Cherishing a Relationship
Each of us regularly gives ourselves body care. We tend our hair, our beards, our clothes, our homes, as well as the whole range of machines and apparatuses that we use, from the coffee machine to the computer, not forgetting the lawnmower or the car. We do maintenance on all of these things for our own well-being and that of our families. And all the logistics are perfectly well-mastered and built into our routines. This is true to such an extent that we can with no difficulty postpone an appointment by claiming that the car is at the garage or that the computer has broken down. Also, without the slightest embarrassment, we can rearrange our entire schedule around a medical appointment (“Let’s postpone the meeting until next week because this week I’m having medical examinations”) or even an appointment with the hairdresser (“Oh, honey, we can’t meet this afternoon; I forgot my appointment with the hairdresser”). But how about this? “I’ll be absent next week; I’m doing the annual checkup on my relationship with myself” or “We have to postpone tomorrow’s meeting because I’m looking after a relationship that is precious to me” or “Sweetheart, we won’t be able to see each other this afternoon; I need to do some inner beauty work.”
What’s strange is that relationships, whether with ourselves or with other people, are expected to operate unassisted, without any fuel, with scarcely any maintenance! It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that they so often wear out, burn out, or break down. We don’t take care of them. We get more wrapped up with logistics than with closeness, as if closeness were taken for granted. We don’t go and look, we don’t want to know, for intimacy instills fear. It’s true that if we don’t know each other well, if we aren’t fully grounded, intimacy both with ourselves and others can instill fear—the fear of losing oneself, the fear of dissolving like a drop of water in the sea. Then we run off to do things, while connection is frequently consigned to the scrap heap.
I have an architect friend18 who did intensive training in Nonviolent Communication in order to better understand his clients and, more particularly, help them to understand themselves better. Many of his clients are young couples building their houses or refurbishing them. Very often, quarrels occur while the work is going on. When the house at last is built, the couple is undone. So many young couples’ houses are up for sale almost as soon as they are completed. What happens? Logistics takes precedence over the relationship, organization over connection. Each party is so obsessed with their study, kitchen, carpet, or pastel colors that there’s no longer any study, kitchen, pastel colors … In fact, these couples might have seized on the opportunity to build their house in order to build their relationship, an opportunity to refurbish the house and refresh or renovate their togetherness. They tended to stick with their house, study, kitchen … project rather than with the other person. The project is empty and results in a “For Sale” sign in the front yard.
Here’s a true story that took place in Africa; a participant at a training session told it to me a few years ago. This man had worked for a European organization that did development project management in Africa. One of these projects was to install water pumps in a remote village. The organization had observed that the inhabitants had to walk a whole day to the river to wash their clothes and get their water supplies, then walk back a whole day to the village, of course on a regular basis. Indignant at this situation, the officials immediately allocated the necessary budget to dig wells in the village and install pumps so the inhabitants could get water easily. And the pumps were soon to be inaugurated, with great pomp and ceremony! A few months after the pumps came into operation, however, the organizers realized that the inhabitants had deliberately made the pumps unserviceable by pelting them with large rocks.
An inquiry was held. The inhabitants stated that they had deliberately chosen to do away with the comfort of the water pumps to regain the well-being of their unity. They had in fact observed that people were no longer talking to one another. They came out just to take a few jars of water at the pump and soon went home. Then, in the isolation of enclosures and walls, they developed the practice of gossiping about others rather than speaking to each other directly. Bad feelings began to take root, and quarrels and misunderstandings broke out, so the elders of the village decided to do away with the pumps and to reinstate the ritual journey to the river. They were aware that this trip would make it possible not only to do the laundry physically but also to wash the “family’s dirty laundry” as a family. The trip would make it possible not only to fetch the water necessary for the villagers’ needs but also facilitate the connections necessary to the quality of life.
The village once again had its natural talking place.
Talking Places
It seems to me a matter of urgency to set up more talking places—in businesses, schools, institutions, medical and hospital units, the nonprofit sector, government departments, and even in families!
I facilitate monthly talking groups in hospitals, in families and schools, as well as in youth support institutions. The institutions and people who call me in have all chosen to give priority to relationships in their field, and they cover the costs in terms of time, human resources, and budget. All of these groups are struck when they see to what extent misunderstandings can be clarified, ambiguities cleared, cold wars settled, and “unsaids” said, because a safe framework is proposed where each person knows that they will regularly be able to express their thoughts freely, even though clumsily at times, without being either judged or rejected. It’s also an opportunity for work groups or other gatherings of people to share their joys and enthusiasms. Such meetings can therefore make it possible to clean out anything that has been encumbering a relationship and stimulate what has been nurturing it.
Although I rejoice at the ever-growing numbers of initiatives that have this aim, I am still astounded to observe the impressive number of bodies, institutions, associations, government departments, and businesses that operate, often even in the area of human relations (schools, hospitals, youth aid institutions, etc.), that have no talking places or any interaction groupings. Imagine the energy and creativity lost in gossip, rumor, demotivation, and an undercurrent of rebellion! All that talent and vitality could develop so much more satisfactorily if a framework were put in place to ensure the maintenance of group relationships.
In addition to gossip, countless communities of so many kinds—administrative, commercial, religious, and family—are gnawed away from within by silences and the unspoken word, and this sometimes goes on for generations.
As “good boys and good girls,” many of us have learned to shut up, putting the unspoken word to one side like putting cheese in a cupboard. The problem with cheese in the cupboard is that in the end it makes the whole house stink. It isn’t “aside”; it’s all over the place!
It has been a long time since we walked to the river to fetch water as a community. But will we be able much longer to go on effectively producing care, education, assistance, trade, services, and industry if we fail to take the time to get to know and love ourselves, as well as one another? Are we not running the risk—all cared for, educated, assisted, clothed, fed, waited upon as we are—of dying of thirst and shriveling up with dried-out hearts?