Tribal wars

Among the many important things I have learned about the nonviolent communication and nonviolent relationships, the issue of requests vs. demands holds a special position. Not only that it is now completely clear to me that I don’t want ever to demand people doing anything at all; simply because I don’t want them to be doing anything out of being forced to do it by my demands, but rather because they would be genuinely interested and honestly motivated to do it – you know, the children-feeding-ducks analogy again. Another thing that I also learned is to distinguish within myself between requests and demands. Namely, sometimes I might be quite convinced that I am only requesting people to do something, but then it turns out that there was a demand hidden underneath this polite request. The way of checking out is pretty easy; I just need to sincerely ask myself: “Will I be completely happy if their answer is NO?” If I will be disappointed, angry, hurt…, then this means I was in fact demanding, expecting the other to behave in a certain way, with plenty of shoulds in my head: “He should this, she shouldn’t that…”

Anyway, lately I have been struggling with another issue in regards to the question of demands and requests. Working with youth or when communicating with my teenagers, I often find it so difficult to get across that I am only inviting them to do something, proposing something, requesting, but not demanding anything. Somehow my communication gets distorted somewhere in the empty space between us. Our dialogue follows this algorithm:

Me: “Would you be willing to do ….?”

Teenagers: “So are you saying we should…?”

Me: “No, I am not saying what you should or should not, I am just asking whether you would be willing to …?

Teenagers: “Yeah, but the thing is that you are expecting us to…?

Me: “No, I am inviting you to… And if my proposal is not working for you, I will be only too happy to sit with you and try to find a way that will work for everybody…”

And sometimes this dialogue continues: me sincerely inviting, them hearing demands, me proposing, them hearing shoulds and shouldn’ts, me honestly requesting, them hearing orders, me wanting to empower them and their power of choice, them hearing restrictions and limitations… Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes weeks for them to start hearing my message…

It seems to me that the contextual communication is overriding the direct one. It is not what I am saying and what the energy behind my words is. It is rather who I am. You see, I am an adult and they are teenagers, kids. From their perception I am from the hostile tribe of grown-ups who don’t listen, who don’t hear, who don’t pay attention and who don’t give a damn about kids’ needs, feelings, inner worlds, opinions, perceptions…

I belong to the violent tribe of grown up masters of the world, who have the power over kids and who just demand, order, expect, boss around and manipulate in any way just in order to get their way. I am a member of the aggressive clan that they have learned to be very careful with and fight very hard to emotionally survive.

Actually, understanding the context in which they are hearing my words now makes my attempts a bit easier, a bit more clear. Now I at least know that when I start working with a new group of teenagers, I need to be extremely careful to not invade their world with my adult arrogance and to not try to rape them with my “wisdom”. Because then I will only prove to them that I indeed am from that tribe and the war will start.

What I need to do to is to sit in front of them as simple and open and honest as I can, vulnerable and imperfect, and listen to them with a sincere desire to understand their world, to respect it, to connect with it. And patiently wait for the inspection and evaluation period to be over and to, perhaps eventually, be honoured to be trusted and invited.

And when this contact happens, it is just about the most beautiful feeling of connecting with another over a huge and a deep gap.