THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: WHY WE NEED TO TALK

In a world more connected than ever, why do we struggle so much to have real conversations? In this episode of Unsided, we dig deep into the reasons behind our reluctance to engage in meaningful discussions.

We confront the discomfort and fear that often keep us silent and explore the power of active listening and open-heartedness in bridging divides. By understanding our barriers, we can create spaces for honest dialogue that fosters genuine connection.

Join me as we unravel these complexities together. With curiosity and compassion, we can learn to embrace tough conversations, enrich our connection, and discover our shared humanity. 

Let's get into it. 

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:01

This is Unsided.

Speaker 1 0:02

Unsided. Unsided.

Speaker 2 0:04

Hey everybody, it's Kristofer. Welcome back to another episode of Unsided. I am always happy to be here in conversation with you. I'm always grateful for the time that you give to sit with me. And I've had so many different thoughts running through my head this week about what I would talk about next. Uh having been a minute. Having been a moment. I'm not going to edit that out. You know, I'm going to try something new. I'm really, really going to try not to over over-edit because one of the things that I have had on my mind is that I've not honored the spirit of this podcast and that I'm no longer honoring the spirit of the social media that I have on TikTok as well. Um because I've edited myself a lot. I've been curating myself so much. And that's not to say you're not getting the honest me. It's not to say that you're not getting to know me if you are so inclined to want to get to know me. It's not to say that, but you're not getting all of me. And part of that came up today in conversation with a friend of mine that I was having lunch with. And it somewhat had to do with what I wanted to talk about today, but it changed the direction for me pretty solidly because this person that I was having lunch with is a dear friend, someone I would consider a really dear friend that I care about and also a work colleague. And also someone who's smart enough to probably know exactly who I'm talking about when they hear this. So forgive me for using this as an example, but no identifying characteristics other than a dear friend. And we were we were having a conversation that went a little deeper than perhaps some conversations we've had before. And this is a person that I would say, you know, we both really appreciate good hard work. And when we first met, we were working, and so we were focused on the work and we did some really great work together, and some of it was easier than others, and we also are very emotionally invested in what we do, and we care very much about what we do, and we're also I think similar in the fact that we are selective with the intention, the real attention that we give to people. So earning a spot as a as you know, in a in a conversation like we had today is a privilege to me. And the conversation, even though I love conversation with pretty much anybody if it's respectful and open-hearted, uh, this conversation meant something even more to me. So we were going a little deeper than we had, and we were talking more about, like I mentioned, that I had a podcast for the first time, because I don't really publicize widely to people that I know that I have a podcast. I have my TikTok, which is, as we know, an algorithm that doesn't necessarily link you to people that you know. I don't allow it to look at my contacts, so I don't believe it's suggesting me to people. Um, and on Instagram, I only post little things in my stories about work. I don't post anything else on purpose. I think there's a little link to the podcast. But in any event, she didn't know that I have a podcast. And so I was explaining to her what the podcast is, you know, briefly, and that it's just my little corner of the world where I can explore things or have conversations with people who have different points of view or who maybe can expand my mind. And I was saying to her that I feel like I don't even get as real as I'd like to get on the podcast because I well, I edit myself because I am afraid of pushback. Now, I have some pretty valid reasons to be afraid of pushback. Uh one of them is that I have my husband is an immigrant and he only recently received his green card, and we're in a con it's a conditional green card. And, you know, whatever my beliefs about the current administration or anything like that, I whatever they are, I want to stay out of it because I'm not interested in blowback to my family personally. Also, we are queer. So there's that piece. And I have children to think about. And I suppose, you know, you might be listening to this and think that I still have a responsibility to speak out more about things like that. Or and and and and it's not just politics. There could be anything that has that is really uh divisive that I love to talk about one-on-one, that I that I dream of talking about on a podcast or uh, you know, in in some other format. That I love those conversations. They're, we must admit, tricky, if not dangerous conversations to have in the climate that we are in, uh, the punitive climate that we are in. And again, I'm not just talking politically, canceling people, questioning people, blowing up people's lives, standing in mass judgment, only to later realize that either we were wrong or it didn't matter, or it was none of our business. Certainly it was most always none of our business. So we were talking about the fact that, you know, this particular person does share bits and pieces on social media, but very little compared to what they used to, because they also have certain concerns about that. And even as I'm talking to you now, I'm I'm being as delicate as I can possibly be. Because while I was thinking about the fact that I edit myself a lot, I never wanted to have this podcast or have any sort of platform, whether it was back when I was blogging or or with TikTok or whatever it may be, or before I left Facebook in 2014, I left Facebook because I never wanted to have a piece of social media where I was fighting with people. And that's what was happening in 2014 for me, or around then. So I left. Maybe it was 2012, actually, because it was the presidential race, and I was anti-one of the candidates, and I got into a fight with my family, and I thought, you know what, I don't want to do this. And even now, as I'm on social media or I have my podcast, and I've been thinking about what does it mean to be someone like me who doesn't want to have a hook that draws you in, that's controversial or dramatic, who doesn't want to take a side necessarily because I like to explore all sides, which means that I can't fear monger. It means I can't rage bait. I can, I can if I ask questions and don't offer it as an exercise in curiosity. I suppose I could, you know, I I guess that's actually my fear, right? My fear is that I'm going to be, I'm going to be talking or sharing or in an interview. And myself or my guest, because I worry for them too, because a lot of them are in the public eye, that we will overstep somehow, say something that will be taken out of context, and we will get in trouble. Some kind of trouble. Now, I'm don't pretend to be unique in this, and actually I think the the issue is that it's now become part of the process of growing a following. It's become part of the process of uh just the whole cycle of social media and 24-hour news and media. How can I get you? Can I divide you? I mean, I've talked about this before. It's what we were talking about today at lunch. How can we divide people? Keep them divided. I feel like I could talk about this every podcast episode, and it wouldn't be enough. Because the most important thing that I can do for my children right now is to at least add my voice to the chorus that says we have to start talking about hard things, and we have to find a way to be unafraid to talk about hard things. Now it doesn't help when we exist in any sort of system, be it political or corporate or personal, where we know we will be punished, penalized, whatever, for having an opinion that doesn't support the power structure. I'm not trying to be vague with that. I'm trying to be, I mean, I'm not trying to be vague so that I don't say something. I'm trying, I'm being general because I believe that whatever the thing that you are raising your fist at the most, somebody else has something else, right? It's not all the same. Not everybody is raising their fist politic at the politics, believe it or not, of our country or our world. Not everybody is raising their fist at whatever corporate America is doing. People have different interests. People have people have very different and disparate interests and self-interests. My interest, having lived a couple of lives now, and having been heavily involved in religious organizations in corporate America, um, having married an immigrant, being queer myself, being a father, having been married and divorced, what I find is most appealing to me, and what I find wakes me up every day is curiosity, and curiosity leads to conversation, and conversations can sometimes be hard, but it is through those conversations that we grow. And right now, we are not talking to each other enough. Today, having the conversation that I had, we even both admitted to each other we don't get to do that very often because who can you trust entirely? But in general, those kind of conversations are hard to come by. And I don't mean to say that people don't want to have those conversations, but people are afraid. People are worried that maybe they are setting themselves up for something, for an argument, for the loss of a friendship or a family member. I mean, that part's really nuts to me. I, you know, I have people in my family who do not believe that my life is as valuable as their life because I'm queer. And and I mean that only as much as they love me, but they don't understand where I'm if I'm going to heaven or hell. Now, in order for that to really mean anything, you have to believe in heaven or hell. I do not in the in the way that they do. So it doesn't, that doesn't mean much to me, but to know that they're categorizing me differently, but with love, that could really upset me, I suppose. I could want to cut that that out of my life, but why? Why wouldn't I instead just want to talk more about it? That's interesting to me. Because they're still showing up. They're still sitting across the table from me. They're still showing up. They're still in the conversation with me. I had another example of this uh recently in my life. Uh, I've been going through such a long divorce that I actually had time to fall in love, get married again. Um, but the we bifurcated it, so the the actual, you know, marital status was taken care of a long time ago. But the financial piece just ended. And it ended because we went to court, and long story short, it became clear that the system was going to keep us going. And I had to go to my ex-wife and say, can we please work this out ourselves? And fortunately, she was willing to do that because she saw what was happening as well. And we walked the hall for hours, figuring out how to move forward and to finalize it that day, and we did. Although the attorneys are still finding a way to keep the paperwork going. Um, that's another story. We managed to figure out how to solve it that day. Now, here's the important part. Did we immediately let go or like, you know, forget all of the hurt because it was a very contentious divorce? No, we did not. And we talked about the fact that we couldn't do that. We agreed to begin from a zero point. And I knew that the only way that we could move forward and find something worth rebuilding in any way, was to start from that zero point. Just not talking about the past right now, not trying to get too far into the future. Where are we in this moment? What is it that we need to lay our weapons down? What are the very basic things that we need? What makes us feel safe enough to set our weapons down and then move forward to try to figure things out? And our motivation, a big piece of our motivation was our peace of mind, also our children that we share. And I'd talk about this specific to this idea of having tough conversations and the fact that we're not talking, because that to me is just a smaller version of what's happening at at large in our world, in our communities. You know, it's happening in our families too. When you're in a conflict with someone, whether it's an individual or a group of people or an organization, when you're in conflict, it requires both parties to stop slinging mud from the past and making accusations about the future because of some kind of perceived wrong that had happened in the past or real wrong or whatever the case may be. You get what I'm saying. People have to set everything down and say, okay, I'm gonna forget who you were to me in the past. And I listen, you can put an extreme on this. So just be reasonable with me in your mind. And I'm sorry if your situation is so extreme that you can't actually apply this uh directly. But in most cases, you we do have the opportunity to stop fighting sins of the past and to stop taking this kind of defensive action because we're afraid something's gonna happen in the future. There are so many situations in the world that I see that mirror what happened with me in that courtroom that day. Or at least situations in the world that I see that could mirror what happened in that courtroom. There are so many people who are angry about things that happened long ago. And there are so many people who are angry about things that they think are going to happen to the future or that are being done to their future, and listen, cancel me if you want to. I'm not taking away all of the hurt that has been done to you or to me. I'm not negating that, but I'm saying that we do have a choice about what and why we continue to fight. And as far as I can tell, if my ex-wife and I had not stopped fighting, had really been intent upon getting justice for all of the perceived or real injustices that had been perpetrated upon us. If we had done that, our attorneys would have responded, they would have kept going. And it was hard to lay the weapons down because I believe in my mind there were many things that were done to me that were not okay. And in order to lay my weapons down, I had to look at her and I had to believe as well that she feels the same way, and I had to give space for that. And I know what that hurt feels like, but I know that we had and I had and she had the opportunity to stop that cycle and put the ego down. See, the ego is the hard part. That's why we don't have the tough conversations, aside from being afraid that we're gonna say the wrong thing. You also really have to put your ego down. That thing, you know, when when someone's talking to you, especially someone in your family or someone you love, because it's always them that are the hardest conversations, those are tough. But when someone's saying something and you know in your heart it's wrong, or they don't understand you, or how could they think that, and it just wells up inside of you and the rage grows? Well, somewhere they learned that. Somewhere they were taught that. Aren't you curious about why, where, and how? And even if you think you know the answer to that question, do you really? Have you really asked? Or have you just put the pieces together in your mind from what you know of this person and you've decided that that's who they are and who they must be? And by the way, the the generation before this generation that kind of represents that person, they did horrible things to me or my family or someone I loved or to a group that I care about. So they must be part of that. You know, it just goes on and on and on. The judgment that we throw upon people for things that have happened that they had nothing to do with. And you can assign whatever you think I'm talking about here. I I it's you're probably wrong because there are so many things that this could apply to. Because what is war? What is fighting? What is what what is any of that kind of tension? It's two people or two groups who have different ideologies, who expect something different, who feel that they've been wronged, who feel that they are owed something. And you could you could insert anything into that, on the largest level or the smallest level. I know for sure that the longer that you keep fighting the things that have happened to you or the people that you think have wronged you, the longer that you will remain in that place of fighting and tension and peace will be evasive. And also the more that we do it and the more that I'm seeing that we are doing that kind of behind our keyboards without even connecting to each other and having a chance to have real conversation, the more it becomes nearly impossible for people to know how to have conversations. My almost 16-year-old and 14-year-old kids. I'm concerned for them and their peers. Do my best to teach my children how to communicate through emotions and tough conversations. We just I just had one the other day with my older one. I had to listen to her tell me, and I say I had to listen because my ego flared up. I had to listen to her talk to me about how much she hates men, but yet doesn't hate men. But it's terrible and horrible and awful to be a woman because men are terrible and horrible and awful. And I said, yes, men can be terrible and horrible and awful, and a lot, a lot, a lot of a lot of time they are. And we had to have a tough conversation because my ego kept getting punched, and and you know, because I I am a white man. I'm also queer, so I understand a little bit about being marginalized. I do quite a bit, but I'm also a white man. So my job, and then I'm a parent, so I need to listen even more. I need to really figure out how to be in this tough conversation and take the wax and listen to what she's saying. And the only way I could do that was to be curious about my kid. And to be curious about why I was having my ego flare up. I need to be curious about both of those things at the same time. When I was talking to my friend today, I need to be, I want to be curious about her. And I want to be curious about the way that I'm responding to things that she's saying. That's how I learn. That's how it's like literally fixes the wiring in my brain. And I don't think I'm unique. I think that's how we are built. It's why we tell stories to each other all the time. It's all we're doing is telling stories. Right now I'm telling you a story. The things you're thinking about every day, the conflicts you're trying to resolve, the thing, the whatever you're doing with your time, you're telling stories. And we tell these stories. And now our conversations that we used to have are being stopped and our thoughts are being hijacked by the 24-hour news cycle, by social media. The news cycle and social media could be used for positive, and in many times, in many ways are. But it if it's too positive, if it's not uh aggressive enough, if it doesn't grab you, it doesn't grab your attention, it doesn't hit your dopamine receptors, and you're and and then you don't m pay attention, and then the people who own it don't make money. We want to be connected. We want to talk. We think we're talking because we're texting and things like that. And I'll and by the way, that's all well and good. I'm actually not I'm not saying that's bad at all because it's still conversation, and sometimes I've had some really beautiful, wonderful conversations like that. But this kind of thought, this kind of conversation that we're having now, you know, and hopefully the conversations you have in your life where someone really like seems to be so different than you, hopefully you can get curious about them. I think it's really important too to talk about the fact that when I'm talking about having difficult conversations, I'm talking about being in conversation with other people that we want to find a way to live close to, in close proximity with, in peace with, in some sort of accepted understanding. We also, I think, have to talk about the fact that actually getting to a place where everybody, every grouping of people is 100% peaceful is probably a fantasy. Because there are inherently people who want to grab power and influence. And in order to do that, what do they need to do again? They need to keep us, they need to keep our thoughts hijacked and they need to keep us divided and separated. They need to take away our understanding of who we are. And how do we learn who we are? We learn who we are by being in conversation, by being connected to others, by stumbling and falling and then getting back up with the other's compassion and understanding. My husband and I, we probably know how to um argue better than anybody I've ever argued with in my life. And I'm not a person who likes a great deal of conflict. I'm not afraid to stand up for myself, but I don't like conflict generally. I mean, who does? I mean, I guess some people do, but I don't. And I have had to learn how to walk through really tough feelings, holding the two feelings at once of I love this person so much and I have no idea who this person is. And isn't that what we have to do in life in general? But I want to live with this person, so I'm gonna go extra far. Maybe there's a group of people around the world or in another state or another city that's not affecting you, that you don't have to live next to or around or integrated with. Why do you care? You don't have to be in a difficult conversation with them. You don't have to force that conversation upon them. You don't have to force them to be in a conversation with you by standing up and and telling you why they have the right to live the way they live where they live. If they're next door to you, if you guys want to exist next door to each other or not far away, then yes, there's compromise and challenge, uh, and challenges to overcome and difficult conversations that have to be had. That's your obligation. If different animals in the forest uh want to live together, they have to figure out a way to. Allow for the balance to happen. I mean that's a that's I don't mean that to to be a ridiculous cliche, but I'm thinking of the homeostasis that nature uh attains. Sometimes it falls off and then it corrects itself unless perhaps we interfere. We just we need to get really clear about when we need to have the difficult conversations, and I guess the flip side of that that I've just discovered is it's probably pretty helpful to get clear about when we're forcing conversations that don't need to happen. We really do have the power to stop and be curious and ask questions and share and watch our ego as it inflames and give it a moment to dissipate and be compassionate with each other and have conversations that can be healing, but we are we aren't doing it. Because it's much easier to doom scroll or to d to grab an opinion from some uh talking head to align with some ideology and have someone to hate and blame for all your problems. It's much harder to think that multiple things exist at once, and yes, some things that this particular group is doing or these this particular ideology is doing is harmful to you in some way. That's kind of just the reality of a coexistence. And then looking around to as much as we can say to each other, okay, well, we're all occupying the same space, this same society. What are our what are the goals that we hold mutually? What do we want? Now let's have the tough conversations to get there. That's possible. I mean it has to start at the kind of small level and work its way up, but it is possible and we have to insist upon it from the people and the things above us. But then that means we have to put our weapons down. That means we have to really care about what the other person is saying. And we have to be willing to make a compromise. And that's that's tough to do. Obviously. It's not really ever happened at large. And maybe it's not supposed to. Maybe we're supposed to be in this constant state of of contrast and frustration and egoic battle. Because that's how we learn who we are. I mean, maybe I don't know, I don't pretend to have the whole thing figured out. But when I was at lunch with my friend today and when I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about, I was thinking how rare it is to have those kind of open-hearted, messy conversations, and how I'm still learning how to do it here and put away my own fear of what people will say if I d I don't agree with them or they don't agree with me. There are plenty of times I've had tough conversations and walked away with no agreement, but an understanding that we had respected each other enough to listen. But that's rare. Usually there's some common ground to be found simply because we all breathe. We all love, we all get scared. We all get angry. We can find commonality in that. So hope hopefully this week or you know, whenever you're listening to this, that you will allow yourself to have some tough conversations and stop jumping to huge judgments about people. Get curious. At the very least, you're going to confirm what you thought was true. I mean, you know, I guess in the worst case scenario, in the best case scenario or better case scenario, you're gonna learn something about the why. Why is that other person or group the way they are? Might not change your mind about the situation, but it will expand a little bit and it will create more curiosity in the other person, and people will slowly start to put their armor down. I believe that's true. That's what I'll commit to. Beginning right here with you. And I hope that uh there was something in here that sparked for you. And that you get really passionate about your curiosity. It'll help a lot of people. It will definitely help the future generations. Okay. Until next time, take good care of yourself. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 26:11

Unsided.