Communication
Sometimes... or always... communication is the hardest thing in the world. Or maybe it's not and we just make it hard. Maybe I just make it hard.
Sometimes I simply want to express what I want. I believe that there's nothing wrong with any of us wanting what we want. And then I try to go and share what it is that I want and something else altogether comes out, something constrained and filtered by how I think the other person will hear it.
It feels like I can't win.
On the one hand, I entered into an inquiry in Costa Rica: what would my life be like if I never kept another secret again? In that conversation I was very present to how much pain and suffering follow from keeping secrets, both in my life and in the lives of people from whom I hide things. What if I simply shared what I was thinking? What if I simply disclosed what actions I had taken? And I'm not talking about saying everything I think and do to everyone I meet; rather, we all know when we are withholding, when we are not saying something when there is an opening in front of us to say it. So what if I never shied away from those openings?
I realize that living that way might mean that certain people chose not to be with me, chose not to have relationships with me. But at least there would never be anything between us, none of the rot that sets in and spreads in a relationship when things aren't said.
And on the other hand, I care about people. I don't want to hurt them. It's easy to rationalize not hurting them now because the pain down the road--like getting old or the effects of global warming--is intangible. And, just possibly, I'll wriggle off the hook.
But it comes back to this in relationships with people, and in communication: there is only now. There is only this once chance to say something cleanly; to not obscure what we want with the reasons we conjure up for why we want it.
Better to just say it... or is it? I don't know. And like all of life, I suspect there is no answer.
Just a day followed by a day, a conversation followed by a conversation, the ongoing effort to be in this world and share ourselves with others that never ends.
Until it does.
Sometimes I simply want to express what I want. I believe that there's nothing wrong with any of us wanting what we want. And then I try to go and share what it is that I want and something else altogether comes out, something constrained and filtered by how I think the other person will hear it.
It feels like I can't win.
On the one hand, I entered into an inquiry in Costa Rica: what would my life be like if I never kept another secret again? In that conversation I was very present to how much pain and suffering follow from keeping secrets, both in my life and in the lives of people from whom I hide things. What if I simply shared what I was thinking? What if I simply disclosed what actions I had taken? And I'm not talking about saying everything I think and do to everyone I meet; rather, we all know when we are withholding, when we are not saying something when there is an opening in front of us to say it. So what if I never shied away from those openings?
I realize that living that way might mean that certain people chose not to be with me, chose not to have relationships with me. But at least there would never be anything between us, none of the rot that sets in and spreads in a relationship when things aren't said.
And on the other hand, I care about people. I don't want to hurt them. It's easy to rationalize not hurting them now because the pain down the road--like getting old or the effects of global warming--is intangible. And, just possibly, I'll wriggle off the hook.
But it comes back to this in relationships with people, and in communication: there is only now. There is only this once chance to say something cleanly; to not obscure what we want with the reasons we conjure up for why we want it.
Better to just say it... or is it? I don't know. And like all of life, I suspect there is no answer.
Just a day followed by a day, a conversation followed by a conversation, the ongoing effort to be in this world and share ourselves with others that never ends.
Until it does.
Labels: being human
posted by michael at 12:40 AM
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