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Someone over on Quora shared something their first philosophy professor said:
If you can’t paraphrase somebody else’s position in a way that they would agree with, you don’t understand it, and if you don’t understand it, you can’t debate it.
What a brilliant statement!
How often do you argue with your wife when you could not paraphrase what she thinks in a way she would agree with? And how often have you fought about something when neither of you really knew what the other thought?
I can recall a couple of times when Lori and I realised, after way too many angry words, that we were actually on the same page. And there were far more times when we weren’t nearly as far apart as we initially thought. We could have saved all that frustration and hurt if we had started by making sure we each understood what the other thought and wanted.
Next time a discussion with your wife is getting heated, say “Just to be clear, are you saying ____?”
Image Credit: © doidam10 via stockdreams.ai
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