One of my favorite things to do is “people watch”. If I can just find the right spot, like a cozy sidewalk cafe on a busy street, or perhaps a park bench under a shady tree along a well-trodden walking trail, or even hanging out in front of my local barbershop…I could sit there all day... and just watch.

What exactly am I watching? It's not just the people and the way they look, act, move, no. It’s also what I’m imagining their life to be like. What did they do this morning, where are they going next? What are they dealing with? What are they feeling gratitude for? Or, to put it simply, what’s their story? 

Of course, this is a fairly useless and extremely speculative exercise, which normally could be labeled as just killing time. But it's not a waste to me. In fact, I would devote MORE time to it, if I could.

Why is that?

It's because everybody has a story — that person that cut you off on the highway, the teller at the bank, your grocer, or mail person; the person watering their lawn, or picking their kids up from school. Whether they know their own story, much less my own ability to divine it from a few glances, is debatable. What is not debatable is that there IS a story. The speculation about what that story is? Now, that’s just a little cherry on top of an imagination-fueled sundae.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who want to hear your story, and those who could not care less. 

I estimate that the ratio of those “curious to listen” versus those “waiting for their turn to speak” is 25/75. By this logic, only about a quarter of anyone you meet is truly curious about you. You can always tell if someone is part of the 25 percent because they will enquire about you — simple as that. The ratio might go down to about 10 percent if the question, "what do you do for a living", is eliminated. This question often signals a desire to transactionalize the conversation and relationship. Nothing wrong with someone looking for ways to do business with you, but just don't mistake it for genuine interest in who you are as a person.

My Margaret Mead moment

Margaret Mead was, and perhaps still is, the world's most famous anthropologist. During much of the 20th century, she lived amongst tribes in places like Papua New Guinea, chronicling their lives...their stories. She rightly imagined that they had something to tell us and that we’d like to hear about it. Now, when I say what I’m about to say, I don’t say it to trivialize her work and her science. But in a way, what she was doing was an amped-up form of people watching, sort of like what I do at my sidewalk cafes. Margaret Mead might just have been the world’s greatest people watcher. And of course, she went way beyond that. Rather than just imagining what her subjects were like, she invited them to tell their stories — something relatively unheard of during a time in our history when many in the "civilized world" thought there was nothing to be learned from these stories at all. 

Margaret Mead chronicled the stories of people the rest of us would never meet so that the world could know a little something about faraway people and their lives. Her presence and her questions must have been a powerful gravity and tonic for the people she talked with. This strange woman came amongst them with questions. Perhaps they had never been invited to talk about themselves in this way. Heretofore, they had been a mystery to us, and us to them. But to me, the even bigger mystery was...

Why did they talk with her?

Everybody has a story to tell

Everybody wants to be asked, listened to, heard, understood.  (And if they say they don’t, they’re lying). 

According to research (related to the homeless, people convicted of crimes, victims of crime, those recovering from PTSD, recovering substance abusers, etc.), one of the most important parts of them getting back on their feet is that they are able to (re)discover their own story, and also have the opportunity to tell their stories to others. This is called “Narrative Therapy”. This level of storytelling helps them to come to terms with potential trauma, by shining a light on it, talking about it out loud, and cutting down the power of something that at one time felt scary in the dark

Whether it’s done in an official capacity with a licensed professional or not, the invitation to tell our story and to have someone listen with empathy is a powerful force to contend with. 

What I love most about Margaret Mead’s explorations is that they didn’t originate from any sort of “look at me” instinct like you’d see on Instagram And her chronicles didn’t come with a sense of voyeurism, tokenism, or anything of the sort. Just simple curiosity and empathy. Those two combined sure make for a powerful tonic, don’t they?

Sometimes, the best stories emerge from those who don’t seek attention, or perhaps those who’ve never been asked in the first place.

The reason this matters, this form of listening, is that it’s not just about lifting others up. It’s about humility, self-awareness, meeting someone on their level (whether “above” or “below”, whatever that means), and having the mental and emotional space to give. Imagine that—listening is giving. Here’s some wisdom from Disney Corp. Chairman of the Board, Bob Iger: 

“I knew it was my time to retire when I noticed that I was no longer listening very well”.  

Perhaps you thought that the Chairman’s job was to bark orders at everyone else, and it was everyone else’s job to listen to him? Apparently, Iger thought it was the other way around. Who woulda thunk?

How can we be better listeners?

It all starts with that spark of curiosity. That curiosity is the moment you start asking questions, and THEN seek out those answers.

As individuals, we can then seek opportunities to learn other people’s stories. Particularly, the stories of those who might not’ve had the chance to tell theirs yet. Once they share, it’s your turn to be an active observer and cultivate your listening skills. Remember, listening is an active—not a passive—activity. 

Then, consider what you’ve learned, especially from potentially unconventional sources — and digest it. How can you take this new information into your next Zoom meeting, into your lunch hour, into your happy hour? How can you apply it to your relationships? Your home life? How can you act as the springboard for one idea to reach another person, and change their world too? This is the start of your new trajectory. 

Here’s a quick aside about my friend and former business partner, Alan Graham. While we were in the early stages of building Lynxs Group in the early 1990s, Alan happened to befriend a heroin addict under a bridge. 

Most of us, myself included, would never have the proclivity to begin a conversation like this — to ask a question, and to then hear the story (particularly under these circumstances). But Alan did this all the time. It was his nature, his calling. This curious side of him led him on his next journey to establish the nonprofit, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, and the Community First Village, both of which provide services and shelter for the homeless here in Austin.  

Alan is a great example of the positive outcomes that can happen when you simply stop and ask — when you satiate that little bug of curiosity. While Alan and I’s stories diverged as he continued to pursue Mobile Loaves, his new calling collided with countless others in the most beneficial way. And it was all because he bothered to ask, "what's your story?"

Without anything in return

Asking someone’s story is wholly beneficial to the self, sure. But the best part of asking someone their story? The feeling they get, of being valued, heard, cared for. The best part has nothing to do with the self at all. It’s about the other person entirely.

Having someone feel seen and heard is a powerful thing and a sentiment that could do a lot of healing in our modern world. 

It may also answer the question as to why the indigenous people of New Guinea allowed Margaret Mead to observe and question them in the first place. Margaret took a chance on the idea that her simply asking would be treated as a compliment, an invitation even, rather than an intrusion. 

Everybody has a story. We should share our own and hope to receive the gift of others’ stories in return. And if we share ours and don’t receive their story thereafter? That’s fine, too. The point is listening, and that includes respecting their desire to share or not share. 

When we engage with each other like this, we start to belong more to one another. We start to relinquish the hold that once-powerful stories had on us, or recall stories that were once lost to time — stories we may have totally forgotten until we were asked. 

Our stories are a large part of what makes this place "here", and what makes us "we". Let’s make a space for them, which I’ll now signify symbolically with a (——). 

Let’s fill in that space with our own narratives, and stories from our own lives. Let’s create space for active listening, so that others may also fill in the gaps.

That space is (here). Your story goes (here).