Boarding now…
Have a safe flight.
Thank you.
And please let me know when you get to Amsterdam.
Sure, will do.
Hey, BTW, did you get an aisle seat?
Yes I did.
Wow, good for you! I know how important an aisle seat is to you.
9 hours later…
In Amsterdam.
2 hours later…
Great to hear you arrived Amsterdam safe and sound.
So how many more hours d’you have to go?
10, 11, not sure…
Gosh! I don’t know what to say. But well, just hang in there.
Will do some work, sleep, movies, whatever…
Yea, now you’re talking.
Well, I will now let you go.
Bye.
Later then…
I love how you’re usually quick to dismiss me😊.
Noo… Seriously… I just don’t like to take away from you time to do stuff😊…
This is a chat I had with a friend.
And I chose not to respond to the last statement on chat.
But I will respond to it in this post.
Why?
You rightly ask.
When I said I love that he usually is quick to dismiss me, I meant it.
Hence the 😊 emoticon that I ended my statement with.
I meant it as a compliment.
But reading his response, it obviously wasn’t taken as one.
Then I wondered, how often people, myself included, get too busy defending themselves that we fail to even recognize compliments.
The unexamined life is not worth living – Plato
There are people in this world who will go down their graves without ever hearing any feedback – compliment or criticism – from anyone.
Were that to be my experience, I would consider it a great loss.
But because most of us don’t have the guts to speak it as it is in black and white, this is the fate majority resign their lives to.
Constructive feedback is important in that it gives us an opportunity to pause, and take an inventory of ourselves, especially the blind spots.
Now, whether it was the right thing for my friend to decide that I needed to be let go so I can get stuff done – even when I am the one who initiated the conversation – is a judgement call I will not make today.
It is relevant.
However, I consider a great blessing in our friendship that I have created a space conducive enough for my friend to be direct to the point with me. And for me to be direct with them.
My prayer is that the friendship can evolve to the next step where we can both do this without being defensive.
And believe you me, being raw and direct with a friend is no small fete.
It is difficult. And it can be a painful process.
But guess what is worse, them coming to you several years or decades down the line with the most painful words: “why did’t you tell me?”
I don’t know about you.
Knowing me, I could never live with myself. Knowing that I should have given feedback, but I failed to. And now somebody else’s life turns out a different way.
So my dear friend, I meant every word I said to you.
As a compliment.
(This is the point where you say thank you😊…)
You’re welcome.
Your turn…
What has your experience been like with giving or receiving feedback? How did it go? Were you misunderstood?
Let’s continue the conversations in the comments below.
