Sometime in 2020, when I was still living on the other side of the world, and my sister could no longer visit our parents in person, we decided to schedule a weekly family video call.
The purpose might have seemed obvious: for us to check in with each other.
There was a deeper reason too.
The conversations we had when we came together as a family were often mired in old stories and entrenched patterns. We both yearned for a space where we could experiment with different ways of being, and of being together, a space where we would (re)connect meaningfully as a family.
We sensed that our parents would be open to this. But how were we to accompany them effectively towards this on a relatively short video call from one week to the next, when they hadn’t undergone the organic evolution that we had over years? And how would we craft the conditions for each of us to show up with our best selves, responding thoughtfully – rather than reacting mindlessly – to our unique emotional triggers?
I’d been experimenting with Nancy Kline’s deceptively simple Time to Think components in my online gatherings, especially Attention – listening to “ignite the human mind”, without interruption; and Equality – giving equal turns and attention. Participants, including myself, were astonished at how merely respecting these two components deepened the quality of our interactions, giving each of us a feeling of ease, of being heard.
And so, one day, after some weeks of mediocre family conversations, we tentatively asked our parents if they would be up for trying something new. We would have a maximum of 3 minutes each to speak, we would mute ourselves unless it was our turn, and we would follow the same sequence for 2-3 rounds. I would cut the speaker off – including myself – at the 3-minute mark.
This might seem authoritarian, against the cultural norm of relying on implicit etiquette. Priya Parker encourages us to rethink this in The Art of Gathering, insisting on the importance of generous authority: combining compassion and order to serve our guests. One way of achieving this is to impose explicit pop-up rules, applying for the time of the gathering, and designed to ensure that people in all their diversities can share a common experience.
Our parents said yes. After a few weeks, the rules no longer needed to be enforced. Each of us naturally stopped after a few minutes, finding that we had come to the end of what we had to say. Sometimes one of us had a lot more to say, and it felt right to hold the space for that person. Other times, we listened intently through long moments of silence. Week after week, some of us found ourselves sharing things we hadn’t felt we’d been able to before, and we rediscovered each other, paying deep attention to what was spoken, and unspoken.
On our last gathering of 2021, we took turns responding to two questions:
How has this year been a gift to you?
What’s one thing you want to explore in 2022?
The answers were profound.
And as each of us spoke – and listened – I felt an invisible thread being woven between us, connecting us not only as a family, but as individual, beautifully imperfect, human beings.
How are you practising the art of gathering with the people who matter most to you, as we start this new year?