W.A.I.T. … a moment or Two
What does WAIT mean? The acronym that is. It means why am I talking? Everyone must have got into a situation at some point or another when you know you’ve got to say something, or you feel you have to say something, but you haven’t fully thought it through, but you say it anyhow.
Some of you may be aware of my Irish background. The Irish are many things, but one of the things that we’re well known for is conversation. While growing up I could always remember the buzz around our family table, in particular, when we had my cousin visiting, who could talk about seemingly relevant issues at the speed of an Alabama auctioneer.
The result was fast forward, fast thinking, and interaction around whatever the conversation points were. Everyone would be injecting, or trying to inject, their perspective. For the most part though, when my cousin Norma (God rest her soul) was present, she prevailed. When I think of those times and those conversations, it always makes me consider the phrase “couldn’t get a word in edgewise” was invented by the Irish.
This love of conversation is of course wonderful and amusing all at the same time. However, when we take it out of the loving jovial context that often remained in the conversations around the dinner table, and into a more serious environment some other rules apply.
Conversation of course is interaction between others, which typically requires listening, discerning, or deciding what the response might be to a particular point, and then interjecting accordingly. Of course, when we know we have a few people together the dynamics change, and when we have new people together, people that may not have met each other, and the context of said meeting there’s a lot of unspoken dynamics at work. Am I trying to impress the other people, am I trying to sell them something, am I just giving them information so they can decide for themselves, am I looking for others’ opinions, am I making a statement, am I issuing a rule or instruction, are we praying together? … the list is long and extensive. The way that we enter a conversation often determines what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it.
People do this not just through words, but their body language, disposition, and perhaps even some hierarchy of age or wisdom or authority that affects all these things. What has all of this to do with the title of this reflection? Wait a moment or two.
Back to my Irish heritage. When engaged in conversation, and if I haven’t been involved for a while, or perhaps don’t have anything constructive to say aside from affirmation, which can be done by head nodding or other means, I do find myself wanting to talk, to say something to interject, even if it’s just to show that I’m there, I’m present, see me, hear me. Some might say this is part of my character, yes, it is. But that doesn’t necessarily make it right. And the acronym that came up this week during a meeting of WAIT has spawned this reflection.
In Group sharing situations this is particularly important to ensure that everyone gets a reasonable amount of airtime. If one person is holding on to the talking stick for too long, they don’t get to hear the wisdom from the person who’s been quietest. Who is also probably the person who’s done the most listening? And therefore, may have done the most discerning or thinking about the topic at hand.
Why am I talking? I’m sure we can all recall situations where we started to say something, to contribute, which is not well thought through, or in the worst case just a pure interruption to someone else in the group. And when I say group, this can just be two people, where one person has to dominate the conversation regardless.
Asking ourselves the question silently (that is without talking out loud) why am I talking can help bring us to some reflection. Did I need to say that at that time? Should I listen a little longer, with a bit more intention before responding? The answer to that question is an undoubted yes in many cases.
A Passionist priest whom I met for a short period before he passed always amazed me in the few meetings, I had with him. He would sit quietly absorbing what was going on in the meeting, or might even appear to be disinterested, but trust me he was listening.
Father Mike Houlihan was his name, and at the time was living in a Passionist community in Sierra Madre CA.
After experiencing a few of these meetings with Father Mike, I noticed that when he did speak up, he would have something relevant to say, sometimes so relevant it tied up the conversation and its outcome in a neat bow.
So, I asked Father Mike “I notice that you don’t say much in these meetings why is that?” I inquired with my innate Irish verbosity. Without missing a beat, Father Mike replied: “If you have something to say it should be two things, one it should be the truth and the second is it should be important”. These words resonated with me, and when I heard the weight acronym “Why am I talking” this week it made me think of Father Mike again.
Perhaps all three of these things are important, the truth, the relevance or importance, and a head check to see if I am talking just for the sake of talking. So, perhaps during the next week, we can consider the WAIT acronym, particularly when we start talking involuntarily, without a good purpose or intention.
Perhaps WAIT is the way that we see if our intentions are good before talking, and this may be the best guide of all.
Add Ten Seconds
Add ten seconds to each moment,
And my response would be better,
kinder, warmer, more forgiving,
than my first.
But can I ever be as loving as He is to me?
A Garden Full of Conversations
Poem, Image and Reflection Copyright 2024 Michael J. Cunningham