WHEN PEOPLE PRETEND TO LISTEN - LESSONS FROM A COMEDY WRITER

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Want to laugh at black humor? Read anything by David Sedaris. I’ve just finished his latest ramble-in-a-book-form titled ‘Calypso’.  It’s very funny when it’s not causing me to blush or wince. I loved it.

Sedaris saves his most barbed tongue-lashings for service providers – at airports, restaurants, in taxis and in hotels. “How was your trip in today, sir? Good? Awesome!” or “Hot enough out there for you?”

These kinds of ‘fake-friendly’ conversations drive the author nuts and they have the same effect on me. Here’s what he says about one young woman who repeated a greeting she’d learned in a staff training weekend away:

I just wanted to get a rise out of her to feel some kind of pulse. I knew that the young woman had a life. She’d gone to school somewhere. She had friends. I didn’t need a fifteen-minute conversation, just some interaction. It can be had, and easily: a gesture, a joke, something that says, “I live in this world too.” I think of it as a switch that turns someone from a profession to a person, and it works both ways. “I’m not just a vehicle for my wallet!” I sometimes want to scream.

This passage made me think of all the times I’ve cringed or seethed privately in doctors’ offices, or hospitals or clinics or in the offices of social workers. When conversation is inauthentic or it’s being managed to an end well before anything meaningful is expressed – no one is cared for. The patient and caregiver make their exit without hope of healing because no human connection has been made.

David Sedaris provokes meaningful (or at least unexpected) conversation by being outrageous. But we caregivers don’t have that luxury. We need natural and meaningful conversations with our families, friends, co-workers and our service providers. Because we don’t have the time or energy to waste on any phony platitudes.

So my message to caregivers today is, call them out. Speak up and say something the next time you are met with empty niceties when what you really need is a meaningful exchange. When a service provider asks (while flipping through papers or looking at a computer screen), “How are you?”, answer “Terrible. Last night I slept for 37 minutes. What about you?”