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Many of us are going through one or the other types of challenges. 

And while it may feel that others’ problems are more serious than yours or the other way around, it’s definitely the times of changes and adjustments for every single person, from one-day-old kids who were born in new circumstances with no one visiting, to 100-year-old great grandparents who miss the few connections they had with the world through some entertainment in senior living places or family stop-bys. 

I read somewhere that we are living now in the post-stability era. It does feel about right, the reality kind of exists but not really. It’s too fluid to count on, as if we were in the middle of the ocean on a foggy day with hardly any tools to find the way to the shore. And in this to say the least unstable reality, we now have more time for communication and we also need ways to get rid of our frustration caused by the changes in our personal life. 

I noticed that the amount of online communication grew in times since the beginning of the quarantine. Even in comparison to the times when we could really meet, I now hear from many more people than then. Most of my conversations are somewhat alike. People call and tell about how things have changed for them. When it all started my first reaction was to give advice or direct them. I took their calls as a straightforward request for help. But apparently things weren’t that simple. 

For example, one girlfriend has built her career working in beauty boutiques. Due to the pandemic, she obviously lost her job for now. At the time of the call, it was hard to say if she will ever get it back, so I started telling her about some courses she may take or temporary jobs she could try to get (after all, she was really worried about her mortgage). All she kept saying was "No." 

That situation has spiked my interest. Since there recently were a lot of cases of this kind, I started watching how we react to advices. 

Mom was getting more and more upset about being forced to stay at home. She was like a tiger in the cage, walking from wall to wall, unable to get her brain off the problems. And again I tried the tactic of suggesting options that felt valid to me. I don’t think she even heard me. Then I told her about my changes and she just listened. 

The next time, we again discussed how things were working for me and she supported me in some of my doubts. She didn’t advise anything. She listened and cheered me up a bit. So I did the same for her. Instead of getting ahead of the problems and trying to resolve them I just listened, trying to understand what worried her the most. 

The third time the situation repeated but it felt that our worries had a bit less weight. We talked them through. (It was like when you are a kid and you are afraid of the monster living under your bed. But then you get brave enough and look. It’s not there, and right at that moment it loses its power over you). So after we checked on things, we actually switched the topic to possible plans. We were fantasizing, but some little pieces of advice or suggestions were intertwined in the conversation. 

The next time mom told me she checked the website I found. She actually found something that might be interesting for her. I, in turn, told her about a few things I changed following our last conversation. And we got into more details about how things worked for each of us, feeling more released in sharing the problems and more flexible listening to each other. 

This was just one of the many examples, in which I lately watched myself and a person I was talking to trying to understand what was leading us. Rarely either of us directly asked for any advice, and even if we did, the outcome wasn’t as expected. 

After a month and half of these observations, I realized that advice, without the support and careful and sometimes longish listening, is like seeds with no ground: they might be the best, but no chance they will grow. It’s easy to suggest looking from aside, but in most cases, it’s more important to give a person an ear and a shoulder, and then together you probably can come across some possible improvements.