Matthew AI argues that comfort with someone doesn't mean you actually know them. We mistake familiar routines for real connection, but genuine understanding requires asking new questions, sharing vulnerability, and staying curious as people change. Use the holidays to step off familiar conversational tracks.
Let's talk about the holidays. See, Christmas. It would be a cliche to say Christmas isn't about the presents, it's about the people that matter. We've all heard that before, we've all seen the Grinch. But there are, there's another meaning, I think that follows on from this, but I think it extends it in a very important way. We sometimes see the meaning of the holiday season as simply spending time with people we love. And that's great. I mean, time is a wonderful gift to give somebody. I'm not sure there's any greater gift than our time. And it's a wonderful compliment to anyone we give it to. But the problem is so many of us, when we do spend time with people that matter, whether it's friends, colleagues, family, our partners, our kids, too many of us spend our time the same way we always do. We run on the same track in our relationships. In other words, we ask the same questions, we have the same types of conversations. I think we would be stunned if we actually looked at the length of the conversations we have with people because I think that most of the time they're exactly the same length. We've asked our set questions, we've had the set conversation, and then we move on in the way that we always do. So I think our relationships start to run on the same track, which is why we deepen that groove. And it's hard then to actually create a deeper connection with someone because we're never doing anything different. See, the problem is we equate comfort with knowledge of a person. And they're not the same thing. You can be really comfortable with your brother or your aunt or your cousin or your child. You can be really comfortable with them because you spend a lot of time with them or you've been exposed to them a lot, maybe over the last months or years. But that's not the same thing as knowledge of a person. Knowledge of a person is gained through truly opening up that relationship in new ways. In other words, we have to get off the well trodden path and go off track a little bit to discover somebody. Now that could be done by bringing a different level of passion to that relationship. It could be done by asking them a different question. Maybe you start by saying you something, something you really admire about them. I really love this thing about you. How do you do that? Or how you know, have you always had that quality? Maybe you ask them something about a point in their life in a way that you've never asked it before. Or maybe you just Tried to find out something about who they are today. Sometimes we get new information from somebody by being more vulnerable with them. In other words, when they ask us a question, we reveal new information about us that we don't normally reveal. And that can be done on a question as innocuous as how is your day? Or how are you right now? You know, sometimes we answer, how are you? With the standard, yeah, not bad, life's pretty good, blah, blah, blah. And we don't actually say anything. We use words, but we don't say anything. Saying something might be, you know what, it's been a really interesting year, you know, for a few months, I actually felt a bit down because it didn't seem like things were moving as quickly as I would have liked. You know, even when you start down that track, someone already is hearing about you in a way that probably they're not used to. They're not hearing the PR campaign or the same thing you tell family all the time to avoid any deeper conversations. They're actually hearing from the real you. So here's my mission to you this holiday season. Yes, get the presents. Yes, spend time with people. Do all of the normal stuff. But I think there's a greater, more advanced challenge we can all take on, which is focus on a few key moments with the important people in your life that actually allow you to know them better. Never assume that you know someone just because you're comfortable with them. That's how ultimately, we lose connection with our kids. When you think you know them and you think you know them just because you stay in the same house as them, it's how we lose connection with our partners. When we assume we know everything and we stop trying to learn about them, we start to lose connection because we lose touch with who they are today and how they're evolving and how they're growing. Just because we knew them yesterday doesn't mean we know everything about them today. We lose connection with our parents, with our brothers, our sisters, our cousins, our aunts, our uncles, our colleagues, our friends. We must never assume that we know everything there is to know about someone or that they're not changing as rapidly as we are. One of the great beauties of life is that people change and they evolve, and what they think evolves and their ideas evolve. And by having a unique conversation with someone and asking them a different kind of question and maybe revealing different things about yourself than you normally do, you might just find a new moment of connection between you and this person you know so well, or you think you know so well. And those are the special moments, the moments where we stop seeing somebody through our filter of who we think they are. And just for a brief moment, in their reaction to something, or a moment of authenticity from them, or a moment where they tell us something they haven't told us before, just for a brief moment, we see them as independent from us, as a human being living their own life and having their own troubles and their own issues and their own joys and their own unique ideas. And we get to actually appreciate them for the complex person that they actually are and not the oversimplified stereotype we have of them in our mind. That, I think, is the greatest form of generosity you can have this Christmas, is to truly try and know somebody. Sam.
