“Communication is many things. It’s what you sound like. It’s what you look like. It’s what you say. It’s what you don’t say. It’s how you feel. It’s how you hear. It’s how you respond. It’s how you engage. It’s time. It’s intention. It’s transparent. It’s telling. Communication takes effort. To excuse yourself from that (for whatever reason you deem worthy) is simply lazy.”
@ThePurposedSailor
This week, I’ve encountered a few different things that made me want to scream because the communication was incredibly lazy. How small someone made me feel because their pretentious body language spoke volumes. How trite a slogan was where the words strung together were both redundant and empty. How thoughtlessly fast someone responded not considering how unfiltered words and un-considered behaviors showed true colors. How the a-hole customer treated the hard-working employee because he had to wait 5 extra minutes for his take-out. How impatient the driver who whipped around me cuz going 5 over just wasn’t fast enough. How meaningless the constant words are when the actions are often inconsistent.
I certainly do not always get it right and I absolutely have a lot to learn when it comes to communication, but at my core I deeply value the complexity and the effort that communication requires. I strive to always engage intentionally and thoughtfully and when I don’t, I pray I learn how to be better. (And thankfully, a small handful of encounters this week were every bit the opposite of lazy.)
This Day in 2018:
A Permanence Of and a Temporary Nature To
I was talking tonight at a little get together with some friends about the “hard” in everyone’s story. I’d venture to guess that everyone has something (or a lot of somethings) in their story that are hard. There is yet another strange tension that I’m recognizing while learning through this “hard” – there is both a permanence of and a temporary nature to the struggles and difficulties that we encounter throughout our lives…
There is a reality to the fact that once I’m through this hard, there will almost certainly be another. But thank God there is also the grace that each present hard is only present for a time within the bigger picture. And sometimes it’s about getting through only the next 5 minutes….
This Day in 2019:
Albert, Tattoos and Magic, Round 3
What a night. It was sweet. It was meaningful. It was emotional. It was beautiful.
My soul is heavy. The vulnerability was intense. It’s astoundingly difficult to accept the man-made mounds that now replace what cancer took. I look at them and my heart breaks because they are uneven and ugly and the scars tell a dreadful story. But my soul is also heavy with a gratitude that is so immense, words just fall short.
Phase one is complete. We have the artwork outlined and now it’s time to heal so that we can finish the piece with shading and depth…which will simply just add to the story it tells.
No Post for 7/14/20