How are we going to talk about this?
By Walter Boomsma
207 343-1842
Communications Director
“I left my leash in the car,” explained a recent guest at a gathering. I sensed a kindred spirit. The leash he was referring to was, of course, his smartphone. (I think someone had asked for the latest weather report, and he explained that he couldn’t provide that information.)
His announcement did, however, serve as a spark igniting an interesting conversation regarding addiction. Since we’d met for the first time, we’d found a common ground—we are both working in addiction counseling at the university level. We ended up having an energetic and engaging chat about the spiritual aspects of addiction.
Later the same evening, I had a slightly different conversation with a fourteen-year-old working on a school paper regarding the Electoral College. I delved into her thinking, genuinely and gently curious. The first time, she said, “I don’t have my facts with me…” I teased, “Why worry about the facts?” She laughed and expressed some of her thoughts. If she had her smartphone with her, I didn’t notice. At least she didn’t immediately reach for it to access her facts.
This article is not the beginning of an anti-smartphone crusade. It’s a column on communication.
The commonality between those two conversations was they both were an exploration of thinking, not a discussion of facts. In the first, neither of us cared much about the current weather forecast, but we were interested in what we allow to control us as we journey through life. In the second, we were willing to explore a political topic from both the head and the heart, and the conversation drifted from whether or not the Electoral College was a good thing to the importance of considering both sides of a question. I suspected I knew why she thought the Electoral College should be eliminated, but I still wanted to hear her reasons and understand her thinking. Unlike a text or social media post, actual conversation creates opportunities for engagement. Engagement is fundamentally different from arguing. (Social media gurus know that a post creating controversy tends to get the most clicks because we are reacting instead of probing. The context (how) of dialog becomes very different.)
Join me in a time travel machine. Imagine sitting in a Grange Hall 100 years ago, enjoying a potluck supper. What’s the conversation like? I doubt we’ll hear anyone say, “Oh, darn, I left my phone in the buggy.” We may not hear anyone complaining about all the political advertising. But someone might mention that there are more and more cars on the roads these days. (In 1925, there were 115,229 cars and 23,794 trucks on the roads in Maine.[1] One interesting bit of trivia is that painting lines on roads first caught on in 1926, inspired by someone watching a leaky milk truck make its way down a road. I digress, only to note that might have been a conversation at a Grange supper. Later, under “new business” during the meeting, someone may have suggested a resolution petitioning the government to consider developing a protocol to standardize line painting…
Communication is about content (what we talk about) and context (how we talk about it). I’m only kidding a little when I speculate that we might consider giving the Gatekeeper an added responsibility to monitor the content and context of communication at Grange events. I have attended Grange suppers and meetings where the content has been almost exclusively complaining—sometimes loudly and specifically. Sadly, sometimes there are guests (non-members) present.
“Traffic is horrible—there are too many cars and trucks on the road, and it’s getting out of control.”
“Yeah, my horse got spooked when a big truck passed us on a hill going too fast.”
“I’d never own one of those car things. They’re too expensive and too noisy.”
“I passed one stuck in a mudhole. Thought about pulling him out but decided he deserved it.”
Did the invitation to the meeting say, “Here’s your chance to complain about cars and traffic! The person who has the biggest and best complaint wins a framed certificate of accomplishment!”
Or maybe one person shifts the context from complaining to positive action. “I was following a milk truck leaking the other day and noticed it left a white line on the road. That got me to thinking maybe we could…”
[1] For an interesting history of Maine Roads, read A History of Maine Roads 1600-1970. https://digitalmaine.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=mdot_docs
► FACT: By the time the calendar year 2023 ends, the Maine State Grange Website will have had over 8,000 visits.
