MAKING COACHING RATIONAL YES? NO?

“Well, some people are rational and some aren’t. Just the way it is.” That’s what he told her. He said that in response to what she had just said: “You’ve got to get her to be more rational, she is not being reasonable.”

They were talking about his sister who lived with them and this was supposed to be a problem-solving conversation. Obviously with all of the telling that was going on, the conversation was not a problem-solving one!

The conversation got me thinking so that I started questioning the assumptions within those statements. Both persons were assuming that “being rational” was a choice, that people could be rational or could choose to not be rational. Now, is that true? As the term rational was being tossed around as if it is a thing, I then realized that they were playing tennis with another one of those damned nominalizations.

“So what’s the process of ‘being rational’ if it is not a thing?” “What do we mean by ‘rational’ anyway?” “What do you mean when you use the term ‘rational?’”