Sometimes talking about the thing that is most obvious is the hardest thing for me to talk about. 

There could be a big issue….the “elephant in the living room” …it could be a job change, an illness, a troubled relationship, or a conversation that may be hard in how we’ll have it. In some moments, I can just feel it: That elephant is strolling right through the middle of the room, right through the conversation, and it seems like there’s no way around it.  Yet, somehow, I can find a way to dodge that topic. So, instead, the conversation goes something like this: I ask “How are you?”  The answer I get is “I’m fine” 

I guess, in the times when I’ve initiated that conversation, (being the one who asked the first question of how are you?), the practice I need to learn is recogizing that elephant in the first place. My next best thing might be to then ask the next question: “No really, how are you?”  When I approach a person who is grieving or struggling with a hard time, my having the guts to  risk asking that next question is the very meaning of what true friendship is. 

And if even if this an acquaintance, a co-worker or a neighbor,  any one of us who recognizes the elephant when she sees  – asking the next question –shifts the world a bit.  Inviting the person to the next level of conversation is naming the elephant when we see it — allowing for a breaking open that can make all the difference.

And if I’m the one dodging that big ol’ elephant in the room when someone asks, “How are you?” I have a choice.  When I’m up to it, my response can be not the standard, “I’m fine,” but instead risking and being honest.  “My son just started back to school and he is wearing me out.” or “My mom has cancer.” or “My job is not bringing me life.”  By risking this sharing of what’s really going in my heart – that conversation can help open up my heart and allow me to breathe just a little bit better.

 The elephant in the living room gets in the way.  That ol’ elephant takes up too much space, it blocks our view of one another and blocks our hearts.   What would happen if – either way we discover ourselves in the living room (the asker, or the one being asked)– we risk the next question or we risk sharing our hearts a bit.  What would happen?

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Lesley Brogan is tethered to her village. The middle daughter of a middle daughter, she and her partner co-parent two boys (11 and 8) with their two dads. Life rarely seems easy, but in it, there is energy and wisdom -- and, it seems -- just enough humor to get the village through their days.
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