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4 October 2022
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The
cynic says, "One person can't do anything." I say,
"Only one person can do anything." One person
interacting creatively with others can move the world.
John W.
Gardner
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You don't
really understand human nature unless you know why
a child on a
merry-go-round will wave at his or her parents every
time around--and
why his or her parents will always wave back.
William D.
Tammeus
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I
imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates
so
stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone,
they will be
forced to deal with pain.
James
Baldwin
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We
tolerate differences of opinion in people who are familiar to
us. But differences of opinion in people we do not know
sound like heresy or plots.
Brooks Atkinson
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Wordless
Messages
Leo Buscaglia
Though words are still the major source of communication,
they are not the only source. In fact, St. Exupéry
said, "Words can be a source of great
misunderstandings." We also talk to each other
in wordless messages. When I see people on the
street I almost always say, "Good morning. How
are you?" Many times they answer, almost
fiercely, "Fine!" I cannot help but
wonder, "Then why the hell don't you tell your
face?"
We talk to each other with smiles, with handshakes, with
hugs, with laughter, with eye contact, with touching,
holding, enfolding, and a myriad of gestures. These,
too, are languages. Some of which may "speak
louder than words." You can tell a great deal
about a person when he or she shakes your hand. A
hug can send off so many messages. A glance can
suggest a thousand words. Still, not too many of us
respect the power of wordless messages. We do not
even think about what they are telling others about us.
I was recently in a hospital with a most serious cardiac
condition. I had many nurses taking care of me day
and night. It soon became apparent which nurses were
performing routine duties and which were actually engaged
in helping patients to heal. How a thermometer was
put in my mouth carried a special meaning.
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So did
taking my pulse, giving a backrub, taking a moment to
greet me with a touch. Wellness comes from within
but communicated warmth helps to bring it forth. I
had a room full of flowers and plants. It was a joy
to share them through the ward. I'd take them and
use them as an opening to friendship. "For
me?" the other patients would ask, and already one
could see expressions of joy on their faces, eyes taking
on new life. Someone cares. I made friends in
almost every room. The doctors made medical rounds
in the morning and Buscaglia made love rounds for the rest
of the day. My own health increased amazingly
fast--and I could perceive attitudinal changes in many of
the others almost daily. One man who, on my first
visit had said, "Who the hell cares? I may as
well die!" was walking around the ward with me before
I left. To "say" is wonderful, but to
"do" can have even greater power. I had a
Buddhist teacher several years back who taught me that
"to know, and not to do, is not yet to
know!"
Unless you enjoy talking to yourself, it takes two for
human communication. This usually means one to speak
and the other to listen. But listeners are as rare
as sensitive speakers. Most of us have forgotten the
fine art of listening. If we listen at all, which is
rare, we have the static of our own preconceived ideas
working constantly until, when all is said and done, we
hear not what the person is saying but what we are
prepared to hear. We often find that people have
answers to our queries and solutions to our problems prior
to our stating them.
I recently discovered that the average speaker can utter
125 words per minute. The listener can process about
400 to 600 words per minute. True listening is
determined by how we decide to use the intervals.
Are we preparing our own dialogue? Are we planning
tomorrow's menu? Are we fantasizing about what we
could be doing or places we might prefer being rather than
where we are? Are we observing and sensing the
person's mannerisms, clothes, grammar, sexual
quotient? All these things often seem to be
occurring at once and it's only afterwards when arguments
ensue that we see how much was missed.
The pitfalls to true listening are expressed in a
thoughtful poem "Listen" by an anonymous writer:
When
I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me
why
I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my
feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do
something to solve my problems, you have failed me,
strange
as that may seem.
Perhaps that's why prayer works for some people.
Because
God is mute and He doesn't offer advice or try to fix
things.
He just listens and trusts you to work it out for
yourself.
So please, just listen and hear me. And if you want
to talk,
wait a few minutes for your turn and I promise I'll listen
to you.
Sharing, so vital to loving communication, stops when you
sense the other person is not listening or caring, and the
sad part is that often we are not given a second chance.
A third, and most vital level of communication is also
nonverbal. It is communication through action.
You may remember that Eliza Doolittle's love message in
the great Lerner and Lowe musical My Fair Lady was
"Show me!" If you love me, she shouts,
don't just talk about it--show me in action! Do
loving things for each other. Be considerate.
Put your feelings into action. Make that favorite
food. Send the flowers. Remember the birthday
or anniversary. Create your own love holidays to
celebrate--don't just wait for Valentine's Day.
Now, the final question.
What is everyone doing instead of saying "I
love you"?
We are mainly distancing, destroying,
intimidating, disappointing, degrading, devaluing and we
don't know how to change this. A new language of
love can remake our minds. In their important book, The
Human Connection, Ashley Montague and Floyd Matson
state that love is the highest form of
communication. They say:
Human communication, 'as the saying goes, is a clash of
symbols';
it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than
media and
messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a
deeper
need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or
garbled,
tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent,
communication
is the ground of meeting and the foundation of
community. It is, in
short, the essential human connection.
So, if you want to make the human connection in a loving
relationship you may want to review the following:
* Tell me often that you love me through your
talk, your actions and your gestures. Don't assume
that I know it. I may show signs of embarrassment
and even deny that I need it--but don't believe it; do it
anyway.
* Compliment me often for jobs well done and don't
downgrade but reassure me when I fail. Don't take
the many things I do for you for granted. Positive
reinforcement and appreciation work towards making sure I
repeat them.
* Let me know when you feel low or lonely or
misunderstood. It will make me stronger to know I
have the power to comfort you. Feelings,
unverbalized, can be destructive. Remember, though I
love you, I still can't always read your mind.
* Express joyous thoughts and feelings. They
bring vitality to our relationship. It's wonderful
to celebrate nonbirthdays, personal Valentine's
days. Give gifts of love without reason and hear you
verbalize your happiness.
* When you respond to me so I feel special, it will
make up for all those who, during the day, have passed me
up without seeing me.
* Don't invalidate my being by telling me that what
I see or feel is insignificant or not real. If I see
and feel it--for me--it's my experience and therefore
important and real!
* Listen to me without judgment or
preconception. Being heard, like being seen, is
vital. If you truly see me and hear me as I am at
the moment it is a continued affirmation of my being as we
help each other to change.
* Touch me. Hold me. Hug me. My
physical self is revitalized by loving nonverbal
communication.
* Respect my silences. Alternatives for my
problems, creativity, and my spiritual needs are most
often realized in moments of quiet.
* Let others know you value me. Public
affirmation of our love makes me feel special and
proud. It is good to share the joy of our
relationship with others.
I know you're probably thinking that the above ideas are
not really necessary between lovers. They occur
spontaneously. Not so. It is these very
aspects of communication that are the cornerstones of a
healthy loving relationship. They also make up the
most beautiful sounds in the world!
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Stop,
Look, and Listen
Leslie Levine
On
the afternoon of her fortieth birthday, I called a friend
to wish her well. I asked about her plans for the
rest of the day and learned that a celebration had already
taken place. In the morning, my friend, her two
sisters, and her husband had risen high into the Kentucky
sky in a hot-air balloon. "What was it
like?" I asked. "Well, I don't know if I
can explain it," she said. "I was so
focused on the moment, when it was actually
happening."
What
I learned from my friend that morning is that sometimes,
to be in the moment, you must surrender to it
completely. That's not to say you won't remember it
later, though you may forfeit the chance to put the moment
into words. And although I couldn't say exactly what
my pal experienced that morning, I heard the thrill and
awe in her voice.
To
truly be present, one must live inside the moment
and experience it for its own sake. If you live outside
the moment--observing and explaining--you're no longer
absorbing and feeling. The moment breaks apart and
eventually disappears. Think of a movie.
Sometimes it's impossible to explain what you've
seen. On another level, though, one you can't
necessarily pinpoint, you know that once you begin
dissecting your experience, you take away from it as well.
When
you live inside the moment, you break ties with the past
and the future. You put aside yesterday's regrets
and shelve the fears of tomorrow, because ultimately these
moments have minds of their own. And like sand
through your fingertips, moments can't be held for
long. Even if you only have them by a thread, your
moments are worth holding on to, especially when you put
them all together. After all, isn't a succession of
moments what our lives are all about?
As
hard as we try to hold onto our moments--recognizing and
honoring them-- it's still tempting, habitual really, to
let them go, to minimize their presence. Instead of
collecting them, we scatter our moments like marbles that
roll in every direction. It reminds me of that old
game, Hot Potato. Get rid of it, quick! It's
as if we don't know what to do with the moment, as if we
really have to do something with it.
Perhaps
our penchant for minimizing the moment has something to do
with waiting. As children, many of us learned
exceedingly well how to wait. Wait until you're
older, wait until you're bigger, wait until you finish
your homework, wait until after school, wait until after
dinner. We were told to wait a lot. So we
waited, and instead of enjoying the moment, we focused on
what we were waiting for. It's not surprising then
that we tend to downgrade the moment or miss it
altogether.
As
I get older, the moment has become increasingly more
important. When I yield to the moment, I stop
fretting and worrying about the future. I stop
guessing at what may happen and, instead, pay attention to
what's right before my eyes. Sometimes the moment
exhilarates like a bright and unexpected shooting
star. Other times, the moment is painful, as if I'm
getting poked repeatedly in the side.
A
few years ago, I sat on my son's bedroom floor folding
some baby clothes that he'd outgrown. I could feel
the sadness and regret creeping in, but I wanted so badly
to feel OK about the passage of time. I quickened my
pace to push the pain away. I wanted the moment to
be over. Suddenly, though, I looked up and noticed a
very blue sky staring down through the window. Just
feel it, I said to myself, as I slowed down, trying to
focus on the task in front of me. I held a shirt
close to my face and inhaled as deeply as I could.
My heart seemed to crack and fill up at the same time as
feelings of hope and loss collided right there in a pile
of little boy's old clothes. When I finally got up
to leave the room, I wasn't sad anymore. Instead, I
thought about the miraculous growth of a child, whose
shirt size is less about loss and more about the gift of
life itself.
I
don't know if you can live inside each and every
moment. But when you can, try to stop, look, and
listen long enough to be right where you are, not in your
past, not in your future. Just right in the middle
of a split second in time.
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If Spring came but once in a century, instead
of once a year, or burst
forth
with the sound of an
earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder
and expectation
there would be in all hearts to behold the
miraculous
change! But now the silent succession suggests
nothing but
necessity. To most people only the cessation of the miracle
would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's
power
seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The Simplest
Days
Some of my
favorite days are those during which I don't really do
anything. I might go for two or three walks, read for a
couple of hours, go for a run, listen to music, watch a good movie
(or sometimes even a bad one), and basically just avoid
"accomplishing" anything. This is very hard for me
to do, though, so I don't have as many of these days as I probably
should have.
There are times
when I simply have to force myself not to do anything, and to
relax and enjoy it while I'm not doing anything. It seems
ironic to me that something like reading, which I used to spend
hours and hours doing when I was a kid, is now something of a
luxury, and I feel like I'm wasting valuable time when I'm with a
book enjoying a story or some interesting information.
But our lives
have changed significantly in the last twenty or thirty
years. The "down" time that people used to enjoy
so much simply doesn't seem to be a part of our lives like it used
to be. When I was a kid, for example, television was still
limited to three networks and PBS, and we didn't watch it much at
all. The computer wasn't around yet, so all the extra tasks
that now take up so much of our time--checking email, responding
to email, managing bank accounts, ordering gifts, surfing the
web--didn't exist, even in our imagination.
Add to that the
fact that most households now have both spouses working, and we
tend to have more chores and tasks facing us during our supposed
"down" time when we're not at work. If my wife
weren't working, she'd have more chances to do the shopping; since
she works 40 hours a week, the shopping is pretty much my job,
which I do every week. If I were a househusband, I'd have
plenty of time to do the laundry and dishes; since I'm not, those
are tasks that get added to the time when we're not at work, so we
have less "free" time than we would have had a few
decades ago when it was much more common for one spouse--usually
the wife--to spend more time at home.
And even though
we have both spouses working these days, most families don't have
more disposable income--most families are barely getting by, many
without insurance or other necessities of life. This is
partly because of the rampant consumerism that we've been pushed
into by marketers and advertisers, and partly because the wages
that most companies are paying are not at all generous due to the
need that companies have to maximize their profits.
Our quality of
life, in my opinion, has gone down pretty drastically, and if I
want to have a high-quality day during which I accomplish
absolutely nothing, then I really have to fight for it. I
have to ignore the messy breezeway for a day and not clean
it. I have to resist the urge I have to get online and add
to the website, no matter which great idea I have--it can and it
will wait for me.
I'm not an
irresponsible person, and I don't leave any tasks undone if
they're absolutely necessary. But I know that more and more
in my life, I have to look very hard to find the times that are
simple, relaxing, and "non-productive." And I make
every effort to make some days that way.
Perhaps as I'm
growing older I'm finally learning the importance of the concept
of the "Sabbath." It's always seemed rather silly
to me that every member of a particular religion should have the
same day as a rest day, and that may be why I didn't see the value
in such a day. But now I know that I need my personal
Sabbath, whether it be on Friday or Tuesday, or even two or three
days long after a long period with no Sabbath. There's much
wisdom in the idea of rest and recovery, even if we have to force
ourselves to take that down time, making sure that we're not
violating our own promise to ourselves to be at rest.
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more
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Silence
must be comprehended
as not solely the absence of sound.
It is the
natural environment for
serenity and contemplation. Life
without silence is
life without
privacy. The difference
between
sanity and madness is the quality
of our thoughts. Silence is on
the side of sanity.
Norman
Cousins
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Two years ago I gave a gift--larger than one I would
normally do without
asking Seymour, my husband--to a cause I support. I decided I would
balance my unilateral decision by not buying fresh flowers on Friday
afternoon for the next year, a long-standing habit pleasing primarily to
me. "You really can buy flowers," Seymour said when I told him my
plan. "It's fine about the gift. You don't need to balance."
It's been a good practice, though. I pass the
flower shop as I do my
Friday shopping. I stop to admire the display. I watch the
flowers change
with the seasons. Often I feel like buying some. I
listen to my mind
make up reasons: "It's been more than a year now."
"These are so pretty!"
"Tom and Mary are coming for dinner." "I really
should be supporting
the local flower growers." So far, I pass them by. The
important lesson,
one that is still working, happens when I am halfway down the street
and realize that the tug at my heart that was present in front
of the flowers is no longer there. Life is easier without
imperatives.
Sylvia Boorstein
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A life of love is difficult, but it is not a
bleak or unrewarding life.
In
fact, it is the only true human and happy life, for it is filled
with concerns that are as deep as life, as wide as the whole
world,
and as far reaching as eternity.
It is only when we have consented
to love, and have agreed
to forget ourselves, that we can find
our fulfillment.
This fulfillment will come unperceived and mysterious like
the grace of God, but we will recognize it and it will be
recognized in us.
John Powell
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