Have you ever had difficulty conveying an idea to a friend? Maybe you tried a bunch of different ways to share, using examples, logic, emphasis, even pantomime, and nothing works. Your friend just doesn’t understand you, and you’re frustrated and ready to give up. Then you say to yourself, “No one gets this or me. No one will ever understand! Why bother talking at all!”
I related. I’ve been there and so have a lot of others. I was talking to a friend about this ordeal — failed attempts to share about a difficult concept, or a profound experience, or something else that seems so essential and yet becomes abstract and elusive as soon as you put words to it.
My friend gave me some advice, something that worked for him when he was in the same boat I was in.
He said, “I was in a similar situation. I was also talking with a friend, just like you, about an idea I had, and he wasn’t understanding it. I got so frustrated trying to share this idea that I blew up and said that I’ll give you just three more words to understand it. If you can’t get it after these three words, then too bad. Maybe they’ll plant the seed and you’ll get it one day. So, I shared three more words. My friend listened, took what I said in, and replied they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I left despairing. A few weeks later I met with the person I had been talking to. They were all excited. It turns out they had contemplated what I was talking about and finally something clicked. They couldn’t say what clicked exactly, but they got it. We talked about the idea I had shared. And I can confirm – they did indeed now understand the idea. That moment began the first of many productive conversations about the idea from there on.
“So, sometimes you just need to plant a seed, share your idea in different ways, like with three words only, and encourage contemplation and patience with what you’re saying.”
Three Key Words is a phrase that reminds me not to give up when sharing seems hard, to keep exploring and learning new ways to tell the truth and communicate something valuable, because oftentimes the most important things to say and understand are also the most difficult to communicate.