One of the greatest blessings I have today is that friends often introduce me to their incredible friends. Two weeks ago, one of my good college friends introduced me to a friend he made down in LA. Sam. A brilliant aspiring fund manager. Cut her teeth with driving impact at non-profits. But above all else, her ability to host dinners with strangers caught my eye and ear. Since I’m a big fan of sharing my learnings from hosting brunches with strangers and social experiments. In a short span of a week, we became fast friends. Expectedly, I had to ask Sam how she brought strangers closer together at her dinners.
Last week we jumped on another call where she walked me through her process. “David, it’s easier to show you than to tell you. Are you open to being vulnerable?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your life philosophy.” She asked me what influenced the life purpose I have today. Over the next half an hour, we dove into the depths.
The first third was populated by a politician’s answer. I wasted zero calories jumping into my upbringing and why that has influenced the person I am today. Unwittingly then, but in hindsight clarity now, they were all narratives I’ve rehearsed before – intentionally and unintentionally. After all, they were the cookie cutter responses I’d give to cookie cutter questions most people asked.
Yet, after each of my narratives, there would be a brief pause. What lasted only mere seconds felt like eternity for me. In those moments, she was a woman of few words. Comfortable with silence, she would occasionally beckon, “Tell me more.” On the other hand, I was impatient to fill the void. The emptiness was unsettling. I felt like a circus monkey forced to perform and that the audience’s claps and laughs was the only representation of my self-worth. But that was all in my head.
“Tell me more.”
I filled the next third with stories I’ve told before but not in a while. A reminder to myself that I am more than the person who existed in just the last two years. That I’ve had 23 other years than I somehow left in the attic collecting dust. That I am not a function of my job title or the people I surround myself with currently. But rather the accretion of everything before as well. Where the first third was sharing the mold I now fit in, the second third of our conversation was sharing why seemingly disparate events and relationships in the past fit the mold I had just shared. In sum, I was still making sense of things.
“Tell me more.”
I was ill-equipped to deal with the last third. I was no longer armed with the stories I had rehearsed throughout the 25 years I’ve been alive. Analogously, I was someone who just learned what exponents and derivatives were. When my 5-year old cousin asked the fifth “why”, I didn’t have an answer for her. Not like I did with the first four.
In this case, she asked the third “why”. And I was already at a loss for words. I was lost between doubt and anxiety, between shock and curiosity. But it was in the last ten minutes when I finally dropped my guard. My guard where everything had to make sense. My guard against the fear of uncertainty, not just for the future, but for my past.
A few moments of silence passed. Once again, long, but not nearly as uncomfortable as in the beginning.
At the end of our conversation, she left me to wrestle with my own uncertainty. But with the offer to dive even deeper the next time. And I was left with my own turmoiled mind, unable to find the words outside of sweeping generalizations to express what I felt and how I felt it. While I was grasping for the Merriam-Webster to make sense of my inner entropy, she sent me the below wheel. Something she relies on, to this day, to keep her emotional vocabulary from atrophying. In being able to identify her emotions, she is better set to understand them.
As I’m writing this blogpost, her words “true vulnerability is messy” still ring in my head. And it’s in those moments we build trust and bond with each other. And also with ourselves.
The purpose of this exercise and with vulnerability is not to have more answers than questions. Bur rather more questions than answers. And the ability to ask more.
Cover photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash
*Retroactively added Sam’s name into the essay
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
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