Focus on the Overlap

I recently had a conversation with my mom that caught me off guard.

She wanted to get a copy of my book into someone’s hands. At first, I assumed we were aiming for the same thing: get the book in front of someone, hope they read it, hope they like it.

Then, as we kept talking, I realized something.

We weren’t doing it for the same reason.

For her, it was about her relationship with that person. A thoughtful gesture. A little maternal pride. The book was just a way of doing something nice for someone she knew.

For me, it was about the book itself. Getting it into someone’s hands was part of what I was trying to accomplish.

For a second, that difference bothered me.

Wait. We’re not on the same page.

Then I thought about it a little more.

We didn’t need to be.

She got something she wanted. I got something I wanted. And somehow, those things happened to overlap.

That got me thinking about pickleball.

Four people can walk onto a public court having never met, and there’s a good chance none of them are there for the same reason.

One person wants exercise. Another wants to win. Someone else is trying to work on their third-shot drop. Someone else is mostly there to socialize.

Those goals can be completely different.

Yet the game still works.

There’s already a shared structure. There’s a court, a net, rules, and a score. There is a basic agreement about what happens next.

Nobody has to know why anyone else is there. There just has to be enough overlap to play the point.

Relationships are harder because the lines aren’t painted for us.

And sometimes we’re not even playing the same sport.

A friendship might work one way. A romantic relationship another. A relationship with a parent might be different again.

And even within the same relationship, the game can change.

What someone needs today might not be what they need tomorrow. What I need can change, too. Sometimes in a matter of hours.

So the question isn’t always, “Are we on the same page?”

Maybe it’s:

“Where do our pages overlap?”

Sometimes that overlap is obvious.

Sometimes it has to be defined.

Sometimes you have to infer it, because neither person has a clean explanation for what they’re actually trying to accomplish.

And sometimes there just isn’t enough overlap.

That’s useful to know, too.

Because maybe I spend too much time trying to get people onto the same page when I don’t actually need the whole page.

Maybe I just need to find the part where we can play together.