Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts

Monday, December 8, 2014

Of abilities, decisions and other misconceptions of love.



I wanted to talk about misinterpretations and taking responsibility for interpretations others make of us. Well, I changed my mind. I do not want to sound grim or defensive. There will be time for that when emotions subside and situations grow colder. Instead I have something more festive to talk about, Love. Yup, love again. But you have to admit, that is the sole subject that can never be discussed enough, plus it always invites people's dreamy expression on their faces. And how could one ignore that happiness? 

So many of you have asked me privately, what was going on with me and my status updates/reports on Facebook. Why the culinary titles of my insights as pieces of beef? Well, it started as simple posting of the excerpts from my conversations with my new found (and lost) love interest, but it soon became something more, a project. I will not describe it yet, but it has a point. However, it slowly moved from what is on the outside into inner perceptions. My beef, my love, my rules, my decisions!

I know I have been talking about love on two or more occasions. I was somehow detached from the subject matter, though. This is actually what I am trying to do here. To take things from my private life and lift myself above it to get the better perspective of how I think things work. This time, I am personal. Not because I have any secret agenda. No, this time I am personal, because the message could not be more insightful to me. Let me explain.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Of talking, listening and the importance of being silent

When I was 20 something and living in Ljubljana, I got into a dispute with my landlady. In the heat of the moment I must have said some really mean stuff to her, because what she said then in a very calm and soothing voice still echoes in my mind. “You’ll see, that tongue of yours will hit you in your life!” I did not know what she meant then so I simply grinned at her disbelievingly.

When I was a kid, I had a similar experience. I remember it was Sunday. I know that, because Sundays were the only days that the whole family sat down and had a family Sunday lunch together. We had the traditional meat soup, followed by mashed potatoes and cooked meat from soup - a true peasant’s lunch. Somehow I got upset with my mom and again in the heat of the moment I called her “a goat” (in Slovenian language that is quite an insult). She just looked at me and said: “You know, if you hit me, the pain will go away, but words, they stay. You can never take them back!” One would’ve thought, I’d learned back then. Obviously I had not. It is easy to lose the perspective, when one is overwhelmed with emotion.

The pain we feel after the words have been said come from regret that we hurt people we love the most. Remorse is then futile. One cannot take words back. No matter how un-meant they were, no matter how un-true they were, no matter how un-anything they were. Any explanation looks like a cheap excuse. No “I am sorry” can ctrl+Z it. Words were thought, said and received. They were then taken, interpreted and became a catalyst of physical manifestation called emotion. Sure, my mom has forgiven me; sure my landlady did so, too. Or maybe she simply forgot that awful boy that caused her pain. No matter how justified those words seemed to me at that moment, in the aftermath I felt terrible. I felt ashamed and I felt sad that people, who allowed me to be even a smallest part of their life, were hurt only because I was angry, dissatisfied, unfulfilled and childish.

That got me thinking. It is not the words that we say that are the problem. The problem seems to be rooted in a previous state of the conversation. Once emotions overflow us barriers are already lifted and the tsunami like wave of destruction has been released. In order not to succumb to it, one has to listen first. One needs to keep the calm inside and listen. That is how I learnt the importance of being silent. Let me explain.


Friday, June 8, 2012

Of shame, sefishness and other objects embedded in our brain.

First I would like to apologize for posting this late in the week. There were some weird tiny creatures sweeping the valley that coined me to my bed. I honestly did not feel like writing anything at all. What I did, however, was watching Community - all the seasons; 3 of them to be precise.  Needless to say, I loved the show. I haven´t given it a chance before, but I am pretty sure you all know of it already, so I do not want to spend any time on its premise and meta-humor it uses. I came to realize there is a pattern pervading my life. I usually get to know new stuff (to me) long after everybody else have got over the hype already. In a way I am like the MEME character Slowpoke, who seems to suffer the same condition. I actually do not mind being like that at all. I like to let things enter my life when they do, instead of constantly following trends of what is going on right now. There is so much information that I find useless on internet and so many shows that never reach the level of intelligence I like to be intrigued by or music that is plain simple copy paste sex sales attitude assemblage that I do wholeheartedly cherish the oblivion I live in sometimes.

However, there was something exclusively rare in Community that moved me, what other sitcoms tend to ignore. There was a moment of insight without any hint of sarcasm, irony or auto irony that I generally love. There was an insight that moved me so much, I had to stop and re-watch it 3 times just so that I could write down the monologue Jeff (a self-obsessed smartass character in it) had. It spoke to me about connection. A Connection to oneself rather than to each other.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Of interpretations, reality and other cracks in human communication

Things happen, I say. Not able to say who has caused them, because that would start out as a looking-for-a-reason, but inevitably end up in finger pointing. I say, Life happens. I say that a lot, not yet sure how I feel about it, though. That covers my view on everything, regardless. It must show in my own interpretations of reality, then. As a person of a restless eye and mind, for that matter, I am intrigued by the simplest things that happen around me and if I have the photo with me, I take pictures of the weirdest things. Lately, majority of those are cracks in the roads I am walking. There is just something about their unpredictable, man-influence-free nature that seduces me. Yet, they all resemble each other, where ever I take them. May it be Krakow, Reykjavik, Berlin, Stockholm, Malta, Porto, Barcelona or Kobarid.  However, when I take pictures of moments that are not only cracks in the asphalt, I am not looking for any kind of reasoning as why it happened or what it represents. On the opposite, I take them the way they are and there is always a certain thought they provoked, a memory or look-a-like resemblance. I found out, the image is always embedded in a context. The kind that is taken for granted or we are just used to see them together supporting each other. There is a natural go-along relation between them. I am all about context and a message it supports, that is why I like to change it, twist it or simply turn it upside down. By that, the original message gets stronger, clearer or it creates a new meaning completely. But then it does not matter, if I emphasize or diminish it. I am not interested in that. Nor am I interested in interpretations people make, because they, too, happen anyways. People will always try to grasp the thought behind them and assume conclusions. That is a magic side of Reality I call human state of mind.

Now, interpretation of reality is a topic worth writing about. Or should I say misinterpretations based on assumption to understand.