Short question = short answer?

Very often we get a short question. There are plenty of examples, but the question could be:

• How do I get rid of my depression?
• How can I make sure things are going better for me?
• How do you think I’m doing?
• What do you think about it?
• What do you see in my behavior / work / whatever?
• How are you doing?

The longest question is only 11 words. Nice and short. And then, unfortunately, we often see something strange happening… Let me try to make it a bit clearer with a video. In the video below, an antique dealer is asked approximately the following question for a Dutch TV program: (subtitles in English included)

What is the most beautiful thing in your store and why is it the most beautiful?

(The text continues below the video)

A question is asked with 16 words. The man trying to answer it is sincere, and earnest about his passion. His sincere answer was: “This is a very beautiful basket, made by the Tichelaar company, it was used on the table, as a decoration and as a fruit basket.” But no, that was way, way too long. And after a complete massacre, the answer that remained was: “basket!”.

But was the interviewer really interested in antiques? In my opinion, the answer is clear as to how it is handled and in my opinion the answer is very clear: no. The questioner was absolutely not concerned with the passion of the antique dealer. It wasn’t about antiques in general either. Not by far. A question was asked and someone has to answer, but the answer doesn’t matter at all. The question was not sincere, and all that was left from the antique dealer’s sincere answer was nothing other than “basket!”. And “basket!” does not tell us anything…

And now to our daily practice…. The questions keep coming and coming. Sometimes it is a professional “client / therapist” question, other times it is a question about our private life. But to come to an answer, we need more words than “basket!”. And then we see whole herds of people dropping out. (Most people at this point no longer read this article and have already dropped out.) Because they don’t have time for that long answer. Busy, busy, every second counts. We want a solution to a problem, we say we are interested, but taking time to listen to an answer, no, we don’t have time for that. We want to see solutions and asnwers. Now!

And if you read carefully, you will see at least two problems:

• No time is spent looking for the right answer. 10 minutes of listening is often too much.
• Probably no time is spent doing anything with that answer either. And the time you have to invest to find the solution can take months or years.

But no, we are busy, we want solutions and answers. Now. We take no time for research, (bible)study, no time to listen, let alone time to do something about it ourselves. And then they are disappointed, sad, angry that the problem is not solved. They run from disappointment to disappointment, “it’s everyone’s fault”, “no one can help me”, but the cause…. might be themselves. And that’s very, very sad to see.

The problems we usually hear, have arisen over many, many years. But the fact that the solution may take at least that many years and hard work to get there (if it can be solved), that takes too much time? What are we doing as humanity? Yes, the first initial problem could be external and there was nothing you could do about it. And that’s terrible. Then you are really a victim of something. But if you don’t want to spend time listening to the answer… let alone working on it… aren’t you also creating a new, self-made mega problem? That’s an exciting question.

Can it be worse? Yes, unfortunately it can. Much worse. What we also hear very frequently is the following:

When I finally had the courage to call someone with my problem, they had to hang up after fifteen minutes because it was almost time for supper. But he did say: if you want to talk about it, call. I would like to be there for you…

Even worse? Is that possible? Yes:

When I met the gentleman from my old church on the train, he asked how I was doing. When I told him that it really wasn’t good, that I was being treated by the Mental Health Service and whether he ever had time for me, the answer was: “No, unfortunately not. Because you are no longer a member of our church, so I cannot help you further. But I will pray for you.”

Are you crying while you are reading this? I do. Because now “we” have created a new problem for those people. They already had a huge problem, but now a huge problem has arisen due to “our” behavior.

And we get these people in therapy on this side of the globe. If they haven’t disappeared forever that is, we get those people for a therapy session… and those are tough conversations. We do have a start and end time for these conversations, but they are anything but “set”. Because we really want to know how you are doing, we really want to give you an answer, and the potatoes can really wait a while. If we have to choose between putting the potatoes back in the microwave in two hours or cutting off the conversation, those potatoes will certainly have to wait a while. Or…you know what, stay for dinner, and we’ll talk in the meantime. There is therefore a relatively large amount of “shuffle time” between each appointment because we consider that it will take time. Doesn’t the set time work out? Fine! If it does: Also fine.

And then these are the professional questions we get because if it is a private question such as “how are you doing” and within 3 minutes they are gone again…? Because people often no longer have time for that long answer to the sometimes complicated life on this side of the globe. Busy, busy, every second counts. We want an answer to a quick question, but taking time to listen to an answer, no, we don’t have time for that. That also does something to us…it makes us extremely lonely sometimes.

Anyone who has ever been to America knows that every cashier asks you when paying: “How are you doing?”. And the only correct answer to that question is “I’m fine, thank you”. The question is not a question, and the answer is not an answer. I have sometimes told them as a “game” that things were not going well. Either they went completely nuts after such an answer, or didn’t even notice. Because they don’t even listen… Always a fun game to play with the cashiers, with always a surprising outcome.

How much time do we take these days to investigate what our real problem is? How much time do we take these days to listen to an explanation of your question? (which you don’t even have to agree with, by the way) How much time do we take to really listen to how someone is doing? Not as a polite question, but really sincerely?

And if you’ve read until this last line, thank you so much for taking the time to read the answer on this blog. We are genuinely very happy with that.

Come on, listen with us. Go to your neighbor: “how are you really doing” and listen… and we hope and pray with you that if you answer that neighbor’s questions, he or she will take the time to listen too. Because that is how we come closer to solutions in a complicated world.

To answer before listening, that is folly and shame.

Proverbs 18:13

Phew, that was another long answer to a relatively short question….