Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower by Tom Krattenmaker

Author:Tom Krattenmaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

Too “Nice” to Care

In the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, which is where I grew up, there’s a phrase to describe the way people treat one another: “Minnesota Nice.” It’s not always as “nice” as it sounds.

“To the locals, ‘Minnesota Nice’ is truly nice,” observe two experts on this matter, Jerilyn Veldof and Corey Bonnema, who have written extensively on this aspect of Minnesota culture and provide resources to help newcomers navigate it. “We wave our fellow drivers through four-way stops; we help dig our neighbors out of the snow even when the wind chill is minus-forty; and we tend to be exceedingly polite. It’s all good, right? Not so fast. Talk to transplants from other states and countries and you get a different story.”5

A component of this niceness, Veldof and Bonnema explain, is a tendency to stay out of one another’s business. Don’t be too nosy. Give people space. Sounds fine, right? But this has a shadow side. The “Minnesota Nice” experts tell stories about people like the new guy who for two years has never been invited to a party or other social event; the person who connected with people just fine the other times he moved to a new place, but has made not a single new friend since moving to Minnesota; the workplace transferee who really needs someone to school her on office dynamics and culture, but who never receives any helpful tips—the result, no doubt, of colleagues’ not wanting to have a slightly difficult conversation with her. No, let’s not intrude. We don’t want to upset or embarrass anyone, do we?

But what if someone craves and needs an “intrusion”?

This disinclination to intrude might be well intentioned (I have doubts). It also shows “a lack of interest,” Veldof and Bonnema observe, “or, worse, a lack of feeling, and can lead to an even greater sense of isolation.”6

It can. It does.

When my short-lived first marriage abruptly ended while I was in my twenties, leaving me in a state of confusion and deep disillusionment, an intrusion would have been really nice. (This divorce happened, as fate would have it, in the only year in my postcollege life when I lived in the Twin Cities.) I needed someone to talk to. For me, the compulsion to maintain a veneer of success and competence trumped all that, of course. Then, and to some degree now, a key part of my idea about myself, and what I project to friends, family, and co-workers, is my having it all together. Months passed without my mentioning the marriage disaster to certain friends. I kept the topic conspicuously absent from many conversations where it had every right to come up.

“What’s new with you, Kratt?” a friend would ask.

“Not much. Getting used to my new job at the AP bureau. What about you? Have you heard the new R.E.M. album?”

Avoiding the embarrassment of my failed marriage was more important than opening myself to support. The first person with whom I seriously and honestly discussed the painful ordeal was a stranger, and she conversed with me for a fee.

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