Leading with love – for strangers and at home

What if we started out assuming people liked us? What if we led with connection and joy and kindness? What if we first looked for what makes us similar instead of what we perceive makes us so different?

Those are the questions that were racing through my brain as I got into my Uber with my driver Lal from Pakistan.

He was polite but cold. I could feel a separation. I felt as if he assumed I wouldn’t like him or, at the very least, not be interested in him as a human.

Could be perception, sure. It was early on a cold, Swedish morning. But I felt as if he felt like a second-class citizen, despite the fact that he was doing me kind service.

So I asked him where he was from. I asked him about the food in his country and whether the snow we were having that moment was common for the season. He asked what I did and was excited — clearly excited — to learn I was a writer. He told me to visit in July when the days are long, and the sun is out for 22 hours.

The ride was 30 minutes, and we chatted like new friends do. And I felt him slip into an ease, a change, a comfort. He was happy to pass the time with conversation, and I was confident he could feel my genuine interest in every question I asked.

When we said good-bye, I showed him a screenshot of the most recent story I had written for the New York Times. He smiled, “That is the most important paper,” he said. “I liked meeting you, Jenny.”

I don’t think I imagined what happened. I think white women of a certain age whom he has encountered have been rude at worst and dismissive at best. I think he expected the same of me, and I don’t blame him.

I could have accepted the assumption that he had some level of disdain for me and left it at that or even cemented his belief in that disdain.

Instead, I decided he wanted to be my friend. Ok — maybe not friend, but someone who would enjoy talking to me. I decided not to assume that he disliked me. And whether he did or not at the start, he certainly didn’t by the end.

In other words, I smashed the self-fulfilling prophecy.

What if we did that in our relationships, too? What if we assumed our partner was, well, our partner and was not — despite what they might be saying or doing right at that instant — against us in any way?

What if we remembered that just like the strangers we meet, they are nervous about being loved and accepted, some more than others, some with more baggage or damage or pain than others, some with more defenses and fears, especially when it comes to us who they love so much and want to be loved back by so much?

What if we walked into every moment, every conversation, every exchange assuming the answer would be yes? Assuming our partner would be excited about what we had to say? Assuming our partner will be happy about anything that makes us happy?
I

feel pretty sure how much a stranger in a strange land with another stranger in a strange land — with different color skin and being a different age in an already unequal balance of power, like Lal — wants my kindness and acceptance and respect. So I can only imagine how much our partners want that. I understand why that’s hard for Lal. We need to understand how hard that might be for our partners too.

When we come to our partners with an idea or plan or question or even a story, we should assume they want to hear it. We should accept where they are in that moment, though, and know that we might not get the response we hope — not because they don’t love us but because they just cleaned up dog poop or can’t get a client to call them back or wish they could run away from it all for a change.

I take it very personally when I don’t immediately get the response I want from my wife. And yet I didn’t take it personally when I didn’t immediately get the response I wanted from Lal. Why? Because I allowed him his feelings, and yet I don’t always allow her hers.

I can only know how I am meaning for what I say to land. I can’t know how it really will.

And if or when I don’t get the kind of response that I want and have come to expect from my wife — a loving and supportive and positive one — I will do my best to take a breath instead of taking it personally. Because, the truth is, once she clears the way to really hear me and not be misled by stress or exhaustion or longtime baggage, she does hear me. Every time.

Give your spouse a break just like you give your Uber driver a break. Maybe he’s being cold because he’s racist or a jerk. But more likely it’s because riders before you were racists and/or jerks.

It’s all about grace, and we need to have as much at home as we do out in the world.