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Key points
- Living in the Zoom Room of COVID has robbed us of good manners and knowing how to listen.
- As we move back to the office and normal face-to-face interactions, we need to bring our good manners with us.
- Getting back in synch with old friends may require some work on your part.
Two friends recently called to tell me that, for the first time since COVID, they had lunch with people who were once their closest friends. Many of us are venturing out these days to meet up face-to-face with good friends we have missed during the pandemic. What was unusual, however, about both calls was that they had the same reaction: halfway through their lunches, they realized they no longer had anything in common with their old friends and didn’t have anything to talk about. In fact, they left their respective lunches wondering why they had ever been friends with these particular people in the first place.
Making new friends is tough;
knowing how to keep old friends is even tougher.
We all need to learn how to be friends again. COVID has robbed us of knowing how to have real conversations. In our isolation and forced life of Zooming, we’ve lost some sense of grace as well as social skills. We’ve become isolated, impatient, and bad listeners.
It’s time to embrace some lessons from cotillion
Cotillion is a fine Southern tradition where families send their young teenage children to learn to ballroom dance (hence the name, cotillion) and acquire good manners and social graces: in short, to become civilized.
I grew up in the North and did not go to cotillion. However, I spent more than 40 years in the South raising our three children, and I learned firsthand, through our children’s friends, the startling impact Miss Lydia’s Charm School and Cotillion had on their ability to develop social graces, good manners, and conversational skills.
This is where broccoli comes into the story
Our oldest son had a good friend who believed the only vegetable worth eating was pepperoni pizza with extra tomato sauce. Whenever he joined our family for dinner, he ate the chicken or meatloaf we served but always passed on anything green or tossed like a salad. Eventually, we quit offering or asking if he wanted to try the vegetables.
Like most teenage boys, he didn’t talk much at the table, but was polite enough and cleared his plate when he finished eating. In short, he was a fine dinner guest with a limited palate and little inclination to engage in a conversation.
One night during dinner, he asked us to please pass the broccoli.
It was one of those stunning moments where everyone quit talking as the bowl of steamed broccoli passed from hand to hand to him. After he had served himself some broccoli, he asked for the salad.
Then, he started talking about going to cotillion and how much he liked learning how to dance and how important it was when you are dining in someone’s home to try a little of everything offered on the table.
He asked how each of our days had been and what we thought about this or that, and before we could catch our breaths or gather our wits, we were all deep in a wonderful conversation about what each of us had done that day. We talked. He listened. We asked questions. He answered, dinner became a great and gracious conversation, all because he had tried broccoli for the first time and ate a little salad.
Here’s what I learned from his cotillion experience:
- You should always eat the broccoli served. That’s how you open yourself to new experiences.
- Don’t be so quick to pass on the salad: You may think you know you’re not going to like salad, but if you give it a try, you might be surprised. Even someone’s parents can be interesting if you just take the time to meet them at their table.
- Old friends can become new friends. It’s more about what you decide you’re willing to try to understand about them than it is about what you thought you knew.
- Ask a question, then wait and listen for the answer. Really listen.
- Good manners matter.
When you make the move to go back into the office, out to lunch with a friend, or on a trip to see family, take some good manners along. Be open to new experiences. The old ones are gone.
Make new friends along the way, but sit for a while with your old friends. Ask questions, listen, and laugh with them. Perhaps you’ll find a path to a new friendship with them.
Or, maybe you won’t, but the effort will be worth it.
