Everyday Canvas

Conversations and Condiments

Prompt: How should a person or a character in a story approach a difficult conversation, ideally?

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Ideally, the first thing that comes to mind is feedback. Not just any feedback, however. More like positive feedback. In other words, first the good news.

Surely, one doesn’t want to hold back on the negative feedback either, but it is a good idea to deliver more positive feedback than the negative kind. This could be fortified with pointing out to the person’s uniqueness, contributions, and strength, together with giving examples.

Second should be staying objective when making another person face a negative event or action, especially his own. Describing the situation as is, rather than evaluating it through one’s own thoughts and feelings, will work better to get the idea across.

Then one should consider the other person’s immediate experiences. Is that person going through a tough time in his life? Some compassion can be very helpful.

Other small details are important, too, like eye contact, soft but serious voice, good posture, focusing the attention on the subject when one talks can make a difficult conversation flow more easily and produce better results.

Prompt: If you could choose only one condiment to use for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

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This is a difficult question that made me think a lot. I guess it would have to be the ubiquitous ketchup only because I can make other condiments using it.

Add horse radish to Ketchup and you have a cocktail sauce.
Add syrup to it and you have a glaze for meatloaf and a whole lot of other foods.
Add spices and soy sauce to it you have a barbecue sauce.
You can also cook sloppy joes, meatballs, franks and beans and many other foods in it.

Ketchup is good on its own when I use it on some sandwiches and French fries, and one can always polish silver with it.