Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

How have you been?
Sendak sounds fatigued and resigned.
“It’s been a rough time,” he admits. He’s gotten “quite old.” He is still
working but it doesn’t matter if he ever publishes again. What time he has left is
“for me and me alone.” Sendak speaks about the death of his publisher and his
publisher’s wife. “My tears flow,” he says. “I am having to deal with that and
it’s very, very hard.”
There can be art in a question. Terry’s next one paints with a deft stroke.
Having heard Sendak’s loneliness, feeling his mortality, she asks:
Are you at the point where you feel like you’ve outlived a lot of
people who you loved?
“Yes. Of course,” he answers. “And since I don’t believe in another world, in
another life, that this is it. And when they die they are out of my life. They’re
gone forever. Blank. Blank. Blank.”

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Terry acknowledges the thought: “Having friends die tests our faith.” She
knows Sendak does not believe in God and rejects religion. Still, she wonders
whether he feels any spirituality as he considers his own death.
Is your atheism staying strong?
“Yes. I’m not unhappy about becoming old,” he says. “I’m not unhappy
about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me
and life is emptied.” He reflects on the hundred-year-old maple trees just outside
his window. “I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how
beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old.”
As Terry thanks Sendak, thinking she is bringing the interview to a close, the
conversation takes its most interesting turn. She hears more than his words. She
picks up on his tone of voice, the way he paces his thoughts. She hovers on the
moment.
GROSS: Well, I’m really glad we got the chance to speak because when I
heard you had a book coming out I thought what a good excuse … to call
up Maurice Sendak and have a chat.
SENDAK: Yes, that’s what we always do, isn’t it?
GROSS: Yeah. It is.
SENDAK: That’s what we’ve always done.
GROSS: It is.
SENDAK: Thank God we’re still around to do it.
GROSS: Yes.
SENDAK: And almost certainly, I’ll go before you go, so I won’t have to
miss you.
GROSS: Oh, God what a …
SENDAK: And I don’t know whether I’ll do another book or not. I
might. It doesn’t matter. I’m a happy old man. But I will cry my way all

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the way to the grave.
GROSS: Well, I’m so glad you have a new book. I’m really glad we had
a chance to talk.
SENDAK: I am too.
GROSS: And I wish you all good things.
SENDAK: I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live
your life.
Nearly poetic, Sendak spoke from his most solitary place, staring directly at
the mortality that we are all destined to confront. Terry told me it was one of the
most emotional interviews she has ever done.
“What struck me about him in that interview is that he opened the door
without me even knocking, to talk about the things that I was uncomfortable
even asking my parents about when I knew they were dying.” Terry picked up
on Sendak’s cues. She followed him through his thought process. She asked
gently. Perhaps without even realizing it, she stood in Sendak’s shoes—alone,
vulnerable, and exposed. She asked about hard things and conveyed her
willingness to hear whatever came back. Then, she asked for more.
“That’s the thing about interviewing,” Terry explained, “You’re there for the
special thing, which is to dig deep and get to the essence of what it means to be
you.”
Whether you’re a radio host, or a friend, a concerned parent, or a trusted
colleague, empathetic questions can lead to discovery and surprise. They help
you dig deep and do a little perspective-taking. They can also be achingly
difficult because they may visit some intensely private places. Conversations
that build on empathetic questioning require patient, skilled, and focused
listening. Terry listens for the revealed moment, where an inner thought,
emotion, or expression of the human condition unfurls. She listens for reflection,
acknowledgement, or a telltale pause. She listens for illuminating stories that
haven’t been finished or heard before.
She creates what I call intimate distance. The intimacy is expressed through
her evident interest in her guest. It is authenticated by her questions, which
embrace human complexity and frailty. She maintains distance by sitting back,
withholding judgment, letting silence linger, and retaining an outsider’s eye.

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Intimate distance allows Terry to engage emotion without getting trapped by it
or drawn in so that she forfeits her observer status.
Maurice Sendak died eight months after his interview with Terry Gross.
He published one more book after Bumble-Ardy. But it is the words from his
most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are, that resonate and connect to
Sendak’s own journey through life.
I am holding the book now, tattered and worn, the binding barely holding the
pages in place. I read this book so many times to my children when they were
young that when I close my eyes I can feel those little people next to me, nestled
with their innocence and wonderment against my younger self. I see the journey
now, having completed so much of it.