We're Not On HGTV: Making a Truly Welcoming Space
When we’re trying to build connections, it can be very tempting to emulate what we see on TV. In home shows, family dramas, and reality shows of all kinds, we see carefully curated events, people on their best (or most interesting) behavior, and children who act politely and then exit the scene quickly and quietly. Every behind the scenes story you read talks about how much of a pain in the ass it is to get everything to look like that. If we’re looking for connection building, creating beautiful events just isn’t it.
When we put our efforts into how our interactions appear instead of how they feel, we end up with weak connections. There are some events that are not about connection building. Perhaps, like a wedding, they are connection affirming. Perhaps, like a business meeting, they are there to leverage connections for a larger goal. Perhaps, like a holiday, they are there to bridge connections between the past and the future. All types have value, but they’re not what I’m talking about here.
As an aspiring connection builder, I need to accept the inherent messiness that comes with having other people around. When we are less concerned with how things look than with how they feel, we have to accept that for different people, what feels life-giving will be different. Maybe I want to sit with a friend and chat. Maybe Forrest wants to run around the backyard playing soccer. Maybe another friend wants to hang out in the kitchen and prep dinner for the people he cares about. Maybe yet another friend wants to just eat a meal in peace, hoping her kids keep playing until she’s done.
None of these looks like a big happy family meal, but there’s a lot of freedom in letting go of the way things look. As a person who has to keep a lot of plates spinning in the air, I find it very refreshing to have a place and time where all I have to do is be a certain way. No one has expectations of me other than that I will treat them well.
Moving away from an idealized outcome to a wholesome process that creates relationships may be the most neglected yet important task of our lives. How many cliched tropes do we have about the meaningfulness of friends and family? But in our culture, how much of our time is actually set aside to do that? How many of us really feel like we did something just because we got a meal on the table? Do we even know how important that work is?
Do you know how rare and hard it is to create a place where people feel welcome? There’s a lot of thought and work that goes into letting go of our expectations and just letting people come as they are. This stuff gets hard, especially when the kids are fighting and that one friend came in pissed off from work and the food is not ready yet! Building a space where all of those things are okay, not just with our immediate family, is how we build a true community. It’s how we build a soft landing place for people to come and be valued in the whole of who they are. Don’t you dare let a lack of a color scheme and menu theme keep you from seeing how beautiful this work is.
