Imagine me in the passenger seat and my son driving. We're in the same car, on the same road, and we're living two different realities. He's got his whole life going on in his head, and I've got mine. Then there's the space where those two lives meet, which neither of us can completely see from our own seat.
I've thought about this since I was a little girl. If I could have one superpower, I wanted to see through other people's eyes. I still wonder what a stranger's life looks like, how somebody got where they are, and what a moment looks like from the other side.
Watch Episode 16 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrwvtfCBOAw
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This episode is about the stories we tell about each other and what those stories create between us. A mother offers help. Her grown son hears a lack of trust. He shares less, she worries more, and each response seems to prove the other person's version. The relationship starts taking a shape neither of them intended.
I can see that at work too. The leader, the team lead, and the person who just arrived can look at the same process and see three different problems. I want to understand all of them. That doesn't mean I can make everybody happy or that I have to give up what I believe.
There's also the part I describe as being able to twist the room. When I look at something from several positions, I can sometimes see a possibility I would have missed from my own. It connects to what I said in the Blockbuster episode about the limited view of who we've created ourselves to be.
I don't have a superpower. I can't know exactly what another person's experience feels like. I can ask questions and leave room for an answer I didn't expect. That's what I'm interested in here: what we might learn before deciding we've already understood somebody.
If someone comes to mind while you're listening, I'd like to hear whether you've ever asked for their version of the moment you keep thinking about. And if hearing it changed anything, what changed?
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Michelle Vaughn