What Does That Look Like?
Five little words that have people looking at at me like this…..
What does that look like is a question I’ve learned to ask to clear up all confusion. It’s a clarifying question to make sure that both parties are on the same page. I didn't realize how important it was to ask that question until I became an adult and reflected on my childhood. I remember as a child that when people would give me instructions and I would say I'm confused they didn't understand what I was confused about. Perception is everything, and the way that I perceive instructions versus the way that it was intended is often skewed. There always seemed to be a difference between the two, and as an adult I saw this happening even more, so I just started to ask, “what does that look like?”. This was so that I could get a clear picture of what the other person meant when they were giving instructions or making a request of me. I’ll use an example of friendship. I once had someone say to me “we should be friends” and my response was “what does that look like?” and they got offended. I asked that because what they may have expected of me as a friend was more than I was willing to give at that point in my life. Their idea of a friend may have been someone they talk to daily and see once w week. For me, at that time in my life the only new friends I had space for were people I’d talk to once a month, though I also had and still have friends that I see once every year or two and some I now only interact with via social media. There are different types of friendships so I didn't wanna go into it thinking that this would be one type of friendship and they were expecting another. In situations like that, one could easily end up disappointed.
Now that I think about it. This has probably been the case with some of my father’s family. I didn’t grow up with them, and we moved to Florida when I was going into third grade. I don’t have any memory of them ever visiting me and when I would go back to Savannah, which was often, I only saw my mom’s side of the family. I didn’t expect or desire anything from them in terms of a relationship. I can remember being at my youngest brother's high school graduation and my dad’s mom being offended because all her other grandkids hugged her, and I didn't. This is a great example of expectations not being clear. She took offense to something that wasn't personal. I am not a hugger. It doesn't matter who you are, I'm just not a big PDA person and I'm not trying to hug up on strangers.
Now there was a “FREE HUGS” era in college...
That was a long time ago though lol. She was offended by something, that had she known me, she wouldn’t have taken personally.
It can be the same way with in-laws sometimes as well. Like I have a family that I’m close to, so I’m never pressed to really mesh or incorporate myself into other people’s families. When it comes to people in general, I've always been of the mindset that if we get along cool but if we don’t that’s cool too. From asking the question “What does that look like?” though, I’ve learned that in some situations people were expecting more of me. I can remember having conversations with my Mother-in-law and once we talked about what she was expecting from me in terms of a daughter-in-law/mother-in-law relationship. That conversation was a game changer because I was expecting a causal relationship, some surface level conversation here and there, and a see you on the holidays type of situation but she was expecting something deeper. Had that conversation never taken place, we would have never gotten on the same page, but thankfully we did.
