Tangent

I have been posting components of Participles and Portents since the end of November, and while I should probably keep up the continuity, I find myself wanting to write a  bit on another wave length.

I have had the most amazing and bizarre last few days. 

Have you ever found yourself sitting on both sides of the table at the same time?  Almost as if you are having a conversation with yourself?  And no, I am not talking about pondering the universe in a moment of sublime silence in the dark of the moon.  I mean talking with a group about an issue and then having someone from that group call you to discuss the issue later.  So there you are explaining a component to this person, only to have the phone ring a few moments later and another person raise the issue from another perspective.  Off you go again, addressing the issue in a way that brings each party closer together, without ever disclosing that you are somehow creating a thread that will hopefully bring these people together. 

Am I a matchmaker?  No, by no means.  I would never presume to get involved in such delicate matters.  I certainly do not have the pedigree for that - definittely not.  But have I begun to live in a conscious effort to create more harmony than disharmony when possible? Yes, I think perhaps I have.  Lately it seems that more and more often I am running across people who don't even notice that they actually do see eye to eye.  They get so hung up on a word or a phrase that is not exactly the way they would say it and poof, everything is wrong in the conversation from that point on.  It's as if that phrase turns to gum in their ears.  Yet if you manage to get that gooey nuisance out of the way, it suddenly becomes clear to them that there was never any discord at all.

What I find most distracting in all of this is that almost everytime both people at the table have managed to gum up the works.  Perhaps we have just become impatient listerners.  We hang in there for awhile and at the first note of potential disagreement with our opinions we turn our ears off and allow our minds to start shouting retorts.  In doing this we miss out on any possible recovery that may happen while the other person(s) are speaking and end up interjecting our accumulated misjudgement into the conversation.  Which brings with it the equal, yet definitely not opposite reaction from our conversational partner.  And thus the cycle of communication is complete (not).

I must admit, I am also no saint when it comes to this.  I am certainly guilty of throwing up the mind-walls and listening to my own personal rant when someone trips a personal trigger.  Luckily I have really great friends (I would include my Mom on this list by the way) who tend to give me a jab or two (three if necessary) to get me over myself and back into reality and listening to what is really going on around me.

So I wonder on this very rainy and grey day in Cow Country, why it is that I seem to be listening more lately, or if that is just a figment of my imagination, and I am about to be given a jab at any moment?  I am ever hopeful that it is not the latter, and that I am, if just for this brief moment, a bit more open to the possibilities of the world at large and all the value of the people that surround me.

Just thinking out loud.

Promise next post we'll be back to the story.