Want Better Relationships? Stop Stealing Other’s Stories

Have you read the book, “The Art Of Racing In The Rain?” The book is narrated by Enzo, a dog whose owner dreams of becoming a racecar driver.

Enzo too dreams of being a racecar driver. He wants to be reincarnated as a human because then he would have thumbs and be able to grip a steering wheel (is going from a dog to a human a step down or up?).

At one point, Enzo explains that he would make a good human being because he listens. Since he can’t talk, he listens very well, never making a comment of his own.

Enzo’s advice to human beings is to “Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories."

By “steal their stories,” Enzo is suggesting something close to giving up the need to be right and to just listen without trying to change the other person, without giving an opinion and without offering advice (unless asked and perhaps not even then). In other words, listening without letting the desire to look good get in the way.

Some of the flavor of this is contained in an article Jennifer Boylan wrote for the New York Times on August 17^th, 2011 (“All My Old Haunts”).

Boylan writes about her father who, although deceased, would have had an answer to how to bridge the gap between Republicans and Democrats in the recent debt ceiling debate. If the goal is to reduce 4 billion dollars from the budget (a number Boylan uses in her article), he would have had the Republicans be responsible for 2 billion dollars of tax increases and the Democrats responsible for 2 billion dollars through cuts in services and entitlements.

As Boylan suggests her father would have said, “Only when you try to argue your opponents’ point of view does your own begin to make sense.”

Good advice. The next time you’re in a debate, imagine that you have to explain your opponent’s position to a stranger and do it so well that your opponent would agree you’ve been accurate in your explanation. 

This assumes, of course, that you’re not out to steal your opponent’s stories.

And finally, just to be sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously, scientists for the first time say that they have witnessed a black hole swallowing a distant star. The event took place about 3.9 billion years ago in a distant galaxy in the constellation Draco, but radiation from the blast has just reached earth.

Perhaps in the shadow of a star that died 3.9 billion years ago, we can let go of our need to be right.