Some of the best talks happen in the car with nobody looking at each other. Don’t fill it with a screen.
GRATITUDE
WHAT THIS MEANS
Sitting side by side lowers the stakes of a hard subject. Eye contact makes an honest sentence feel like an event, and facing forward in a moving car means anybody can say the difficult thing while pretending to watch the road, with a built-in excuse to stop talking. That is why so much real conversation happens between two seats. The awkwardness has somewhere to go.
Put the phone away on your next drive with a parent or a friend. Leave the music off once, let a silence sit, and see what arrives in it.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Who do you talk to most easily side by side?
MORE IN GRATITUDE & PRESENCE
- The used bookstore owner who knows every regular by name is running a community center that happens to sell books.
- The friend’s dad who drove you to every away game never asked for gas money or thanks. Send it now.
- A dog is thrilled by a walk, a snack and you. Most of us need way more to have a good day.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.