This kind of attention, this rare kind of listening, as we know, is different. Thinking pairs are not conversations. They are not consulting or counselling or even coaching in its usual modes. Thinking pairs are a unique structure in which the human mind can venture forth with no shackles, no leash, no collapsing into the listenerâs lead. That is why they are so fruitful.
The promise changes our listening.
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Those answers are developments of ten ways of being with each other. I call them âthe ten components of a thinking environmentâ. We will explore them in depth in a little while because when we live them, as a system of being, we and the world around us do begin to change.
This âthinking environmentâ starts and ends with the promise not to interrupt each other. It really does. I know that sounds too simple a thing to change a life, much less a world. But that simple promise is loaded. Like an atom. Take it apart and you see an unimaginable force, a force that generates the brilliance of life, in this case the brilliance of independent thinking.
And in that promise, too, there is a rich colony of catalysts. There are at least ten conditions â the âcomponents of a thinking environmentâ I mentioned, conditions we are providing when we give attention and donât speak. These âcomponentsââ attention, equality, ease, appreciation, feelings, encouragement, information, difference, incisive questions and place â we will explore in fresh detail later. The point here is that they actually generate thought. To decide to live them is to decide to cherish independent human thinking.
This is what I think it takes.
Two things.
One, we have to get it, really get it, that one personâs generative attention produces another personâs new thinking.
Donât rush that.
Two, a personâs generative attention loses its power the very second it wavers. Attention like this has to be continuous.
Take that in, too. It defies 3,000 years of instruction in how to listen.
We can create a thinking environment even in the dwellings of extreme disagreement. We can, quite simply and profoundly, promise not to interrupt. We can honour the three ingredients of that promise: to start giving attention, to stay interested in where the person will go next and to âshare the stageâ equally.
When the practical or emotional investment in the outcome of a thinking pair is potentially high, the chances of its working are potentially low. And with independent thinking you just never know what territory it will wander aimfully into. So I would look somewhere more lateral for this partner.