One Simple Question

One Simple Question

Don’t worry; we wouldn’t dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant!

2 Corinthians 10:12

Every autumn around this time of year we begin teaching a course at our university called Relationships 101. It’s not required. It’s a general elective. But students fill the auditorium on Monday evenings to hear us lecture on relationships. We love teaching this class. Why? For starters, it’s exciting to have students in a college classroom who don’t have to be there. But mostly, we love teaching this course because we know it makes a difference.

After more than a decade of teaching this course, we now routinely receive e-mails and notes from former students who express appreciation for something we said or something we demonstrated in class that seemed to stick with them and help them out.

And one of the notes we sometimes receive has to do with a simple question we pose to these students. We’re about to ask you the same thing. Before we do, however, we want you to know that how you answer it will reveal a bit about your interpersonal approach. So we want both of you to take a contemplative moment to consider it. And be honest. Here’s the question: What thought races through your head when you walk into a room of people?

While there are countless responses to this question, all of them are likely to fall into one of two basic camps. These two fundamental responses, in our experience, come in the form of two quiet questions: “How am I doing?” or “How are they doing?”

A social setting fundamentally elicits one of these two positions. You walk into a room of other people, and you are either concerned with yourself and the impression you are about to make or you are focused on them and what is taking place. Whenever your approach falls into the category of “How are they doing?” you are priming the social pump for empathy, sensitivity, and a listening ear. Alternatively, when your basic social approach is to ask “How am I doing?” you are more likely to feel insecure, uneasy, and self-focused.

Of course, nobody is always operating from the how-are-they-doing platform. We all tend to fluctuate between the two. And when it comes to our marriages, we tend to do the same thing. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can lean more and more frequently toward the empathy side of the scale. And when two people are doing that for each other, they are creating the safest and most loving place on earth.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become bitter or vain, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

—Max Ehrmann