My Bagel Has A Hole In It
This morning, during breakfast, my son told me, "Daddy, I need a new bagel. Mine has a hole in it." I chuckled and told him "It's okay bud. Bagels are supposed to have holes in them." But, he persisted, "No daddy. I need a new bagel. Mine has a hole in it." Again I reasured him, and again he insisted on a new bagel. At this point, I asked him, "Can you show me what hole you're talking about?" I went over and looked at this bagel with him and he pointed, not to the center like I had assumed he would, but to the side where a raisin must have previously been. I reassured him again. This time I acknowledged that yes, that hole really shouldn't be there, but the bagel is still okay.
Later, getting ready for work I was reflecting on this and was struck by how this simple interaction so perfectly distils patterns that come up in conversations I often have with others around me, both personally and professsionally. In this brief exchange I assumed I knew which hole my son was talking about. In doing so I was also assuming he didn't know what a bagel was supposed to look like, despite this being the 3rd time this week alone he's had a bagel. Had I not taken the time to ask him to show me what he was talking about and taken the time to understand his concern I would've chalked the whole thing up to "silly things kids say." All this despite knowing he's a very smart kid.
When interacting with my wife or colleagues at work, how often do I behave the same way? How often do I say, not so explicitly that, "I know what's going on and you're mistaken," despite knowing I married a very smart girl and work with excellent engineers? Next time I see this behaviour arising, I hope I remember this bagel, slow down, and seek to understand what others are seeing that I'm not.