A full circle back to Science Fiction

It has been a while since I’ve come to these pages.

We launched our website for our company, and it blossomed in the most wonderful way which I’ve been immensely grateful for. In all the work since then, I’ve neglected writing. I’ve been wanting and needing to write. Time away from writing only highlights my need for it. In writing I get to work with an idea that has come to me and through it I learn what I really think about that idea. Like the amazing Joan Didion would say ‘I don’t know what I think until I write about it’. So I return to this safe space that was created out of the nurturing and caring environment of a bloging course to write about an idea, learn more about it, and eat a humble pie about the incredible power of Science Fiction stories.

If you’ve been here from the beginning you know my feelings towards science fiction and I’m here to say that my ignorance has been profound. Star Trek TNG, Voyager, and Star Trek: Picard all have preserved my sanity in the long years of the pandemic.

I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Picard when the importance of language in expressing feelings was highlighted for me. In the episode, Admiral (then Captain) Jean-Luc Picard visits a group of warrior nuns who live by a philosophy of ‘The Way of Absolute Candor’, which is a “total communication of emotion without any filter between thought and word”. This philosophy applied to our way of communication can become very annoying very quickly, as the scientist on the mission points out. But the way this philosophy is practiced among the nuns, is what many social workers, counselors, mediators, and in general peace-makers urge people to do in their communications:

Use “I” statements!

In the episode, during a flash-back when Picard has returned to the planet to visit the nuns and the little boy left in their care, there’s a small banter between one of the nuns and Picard about how Picard doesn’t like children. The little boy hurt by this conversation says to Picard: “My feelings are hurt, I actually did think you were found of me.” To which Picard replies with all the warmth and compassion that in fact he likes him very much.

“My feelings are hurt“, is such a wonderful sentence. My feelings. The focus, the subject of the sentence is the feelings, the feelings that belong to the person who is experiencing and narrating them. In this sentence, there’s no “you”, although the “you” can be implied, the focus is so strictly on the person who has been hurt. It’s a simple utterance of truth about one self in its most indisputable way.

Compare these two sentences: “My feelings are hurt.” versus “You hurt my feelings.”

In one the subject of the sentence is the the hurt feelings of the person speaking, and in the other the subject becomes the person who has done the harm. In the second sentence, and perhaps contrary to the goal of the speaker where they wanted their hurt feelings addressed first, the feelings of hurt become secondary to the person who did the harm. Therefore, in turn the person who experienced the harm becomes secondary to the person who did the harm.

The first sentence looks towards reparation and healing, and the second sentence looks towards accountability. And both have their own place. I’m not arguing that we don’t hold those who do the harm accountable, what I want to highlight here is that the most important person/part of the conversation should always first be the person/beings who were harmed. In the process of addressing the harm and working towards healing, the harm and all the needs that the harm creates should proceed anything else. AND the best way to bring attention to that linguistically is to change the sentence structure. “I” statements matter. They are indisputable facts. People cannot argue with how “my feelings are hurt” but they will argue that they didn’t hurt my feelings.

We often think that our words don’t matter as long as our intentions are good and pure. Do not underestimate the power of words, how language shapes and reshapes thoughts, influences feelings, and breathes into existence different ways of being and understanding. If you want your words to land better with the listener, change your wording. This is one of the most underestimated rules of best practice when it comes to healthy dialogue. Putting “I” or even better, “my feelings” as the subject of the sentence, refocuses the issue on the harm that was done, not on the person who did the harm.

I found this gem in my encounter with fictional beings in a science-fiction series and in the words of other writers who imagined different modes of expression. I’m grateful for my Sci-Fi philosophy lessons.