My mind went blank as soon as Sarah asked me, “What have you been up to for the last two years?”.
Two years is a long time and a lot has changed in my life. The correct answer was “A lot”, but I knew that’s not what she wanted to hear. She wanted a big thing or a quick overview. But too many things to choose from were swirling around my head, causing my brain to shut down.
As I froze, Sarah smiled at me over the Zoom call, waiting for an answer.
After a few seconds of my brain freezing, I tried to reduce the scope of the question myself and replied to Sarah, “In terms of my writing?”. We were in a Zoom call giving each other feedback on our newsletter essay.
She replied, “Yes and just generally” with a big smile on her face.
I thought I had a way out but she didn’t want to let me out.
So I ignored the second part of her request and just answered the first part – it was easier. But I could sense she wanted more.
For chatty people, like Sarah, a question like “What have you been up to?” makes sense. I know her well enough to know she just wanted a “normal” conversation. When I asked her the same question, she gave a brief overview of what she had been up to. But her normal (as a chatty person) and my normal (as a quiet person) are very different.
This reminded me of whenever I’d see my niece after school, I’d ask her, “What did you do at school today?”. She’d usually respond by saying “I can’t remember” and I’d think “how can’t you remember, you just got home.’ But one day, my sister told me that this question was too big for kids. Instead, my sister told me to ask a more specific questions such as “What did you do at playtime?” or “Did you do any writing/maths/drawing at school today?”.
When Sarah asked me, “What have you been up to?”, I felt like my niece being asked “What did you do in school today?”.
I’m writing this so if you ever speak to someone and they almost freeze to a question, the question might just be too big of a question for them to answer and there might be an overload going on in their head. And if they do that, treat them like a child, given a more specific question.
And if you are someone who never knows how to respond to big questions like this, know you’re not alone.
I don’t have a good solution to this yet, but if I ever find a good one, I’ll let you know.
Funny, this gave me an insight into a current dilemma, which is the stress I'm feeling around a very busy period coming up in the next month and the realization that I've been lobbing the big, general question at myself, "How am I going to get through this?" And I've been freezing in response. Instead, I could make the question more specific. What do I need to do this morning? is actually entirely approachable and not overwhelming. Your story is a good reminder of how to question myself.