Have you ever been in a room, surrounded by people much cleverer than you? Ever been part of a group where there’s something everyone else can do much, much better than you? What impact did it have on the way you behaved? How do we feel when we know moments like that are coming? So, what if we could change it all in an instant? At 7:38 p.m. last Wednesday, the loveliest 64 year old woman showed the world how it’s done.
It all started on 11th March 2009. My wife and I had had a lovely meal and we were wondering what makes people really show their truest beauty. And as we sat chatting in this bistro, we noticed the rarest of energies around us. It was lovely and so very sudden. It was a group of people, of mixed ages, mixed backgrounds, mixed colours, standing talking. They all held a glass as they talked. And they were all doing the same thing. They were smiling.
As my partner and I sat chatting, we noticed that their smiles didn’t go away. The smiles were deeper than social smiles, they were inner smiles. In fact, simply being near these people unlocked something pure in us too. They made us smile even more than we already were. Who were these people? So we thought we’d find out. We said hello and took a moment to smile with them.
This group had planned a surprise birthday party for a friend. Their evening had gone really well. And so having said hello, Lisa and I thought we’d leave them in peace. But just as we wanted to return to our seats, I heard it. “:-) Ja!”. Was someone in the room German? I said something back in German. And then, like a sunburst, they all let me have it. Loads of them spoke German. It was like a summer shower of moment – so many responses – and all in German. The people weren’t German, but somehow, lots of them were trying to speak it.
Out of nowhere, more heads kept popping up. It seemed like everyone was just having fun by giving it a try. And all the time, they smiled. No ego, showing off or cleverness, no interpersonal hierarchy, just loads of smiles, with us all enjoying the moment together. And as we then chatted, it became clear that this evening was a gift. And as we listened to these people, smiling, I felt their passion for life.
And it hit me. What if people's lives could have more moments like this? These people were truly beautiful – they were flowing. And we could sense that they didn’t show this side of themselves very often. So what could we do – that very night – to unlock more of this in the world?
So, smiling, I just went for it. “This might seem a bit forward, but would any of you fancy meeting up from time to time to speak a bit of German?” Two smiles stepped forward. Between the three of us, that very night, we decided to create something very different. We’d meet the following week to chat in German. Every effort to speak German would be applauded; no snobbery would be allowed; no ego; no pretentiousness; no confidence-bashing; no sarcasm; mistakes would be welcome and if there was something we didn’t know how to say, everyone would muck in and help. Every effort would be encouraged at all times – ability simply didn’t matter.
When we met, the evening was a roaring success. There weren’t 3 of us – there were 7. Friends had found out and wanted to give it a go. With everyone initially a little nervous, we just went for it. And the more mistakes we made, the more other people joined in. And the more other people joined in, the more adventurous everyone became. Mistakes , messy grammar, pronunciation all over the place, made-up words, exaggerated accents – the more we got wrong, the more everyone joined in. Everyone was 6 years old again. Trying. Having fun. Not caring. And smiling. At all times, smiling. The smiles simply wouldn’t go away. The adventure was opening people up. And there came a moment when I found myself silently wondering what it was that this evening was doing for people inside. In creating this flow, what was being unlocked?
But I then moved out of the area and lost touch with many of these people. But I often wondered… do any of them still meet up?
3 weeks ago, an email arrived out of the blue. One of these German evenings was planned, and would I, now living some way away, like to travel down and join them? So I did. It was being hosted by someone I didn’t know. And as I neared the address last Wednesday evening, it was in a place I didn’t know, In a street I didn’t know, with no-one I knew around outside. And it was silent. But when I knocked on the door, it flew at me.
As I was shown through to the back garden by the friendliest 8 year old boy doing his very best in German, I saw them sitting there. All 25 of them. Different ages, different colours, different backgrounds. All sitting in the sun, laughing, joking, chatting furiously, fascinated by each other. And everyone – doing their very best – to do it all in German. There was the most nourishing friendliness, welcome, interest and connection before I even had a chance to say hello. And everywhere, smiles. I sat silently for a moment, enjoying them all. No ego, no snobbery. Just smiles and enjoyment. Sure, there were University Professors there – they’d obviously been invited. But as they sat alongside the 8 year old who was loving doing his very best to get it right and wrong, they all just smiled. And spoke whatever German they could. Then, she spoke to me.
I won’t say her name. I’d find out later that she is 64. She is a truly lovely woman. The kind who was raised another way just a few decades before us. She couldn’t stop smiling. You could sense that despite the sweetest shyness, she had so much to share, so much to try and say in German. And as she spoke, I suddenly sensed it. She just said a few German words that little bit differently. It was a kind of beautiful German that existed long ago but they don’t speak any more. And it was so subtle that on another day, I might have missed it. So I listened at the core.
She’d loved her father so very much. He was an intelligent but affectionate man. And well before the war, he’d had friends in Germany who’d been worried about the way Germany was going. He helped some of these people escape to England. And they were influential people. And this lady’s father was so impressed by their bravery, that he’d sit down every night and have fun by teaching her to speak German the way they spoke it. This lady loved these nights. She still loves the memory of them. But after the war, her father died. she tried speaking German at school once as a way of remembering him, but the English children’s parents hated Germans, so the children beat her up. She never spoke German again. Until one day, just recently, when she overheard two friendly, happy women talking in a café, about this club they’d joined, where everyone relaxed and spoke whatever German they could manage – no matter how many mistakes they made. The lady then spoke to the two. She loved their smiles and friendliness. Then they asked her if she’d like to join them at this funny German club.
Apparently, she didn’t have to even think about it. She smiled and replied: “:-) Ja!”. And last week, she told me that this was the most connected she’d felt to her father since he’d died. She could not remember being this happy. She loved getting her German really wrong and not being the best. And she was smiling. Right at her core.
Just how much do we sit on sometimes? What are those things in our past that make us hold back? For every way in which we behave, there’s at least one reason from the past. It might be a compelling reason. But does that make it a good reason? In fact, how often do we find that our reasons for the way we choose our future behaviours aren’t, actually, all that reasonable? So many of us have days when something from our past is trying to flow, just waiting for us to unlock it. It can be tough. And even scary, but when we see the adventure, seize it, give it a try, what the hell, go for it, challenge our comforts, and do something that we never thought we’d do, it unlocks us. And unlocking ourselves suddenly makes a lot of things happen. One of the first of these things? We smile.
Is ditching our comfort zone worth a try?
:-) Ja.
Jonathan
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