| My answer to this question -- for this specific situation, and indeed for any situation is as follows: The teenagers, their Mom, you, me, the gorgeous lady, the polo-playing army officers, and every human being, we all of us seek well-being all the time -- although not always rationally. I have also observed that we all of us have the inherent ability to measure how much well-being we have by inquiring within; that we all of us can learn to describe how much well-being we currently have by the use of emotion nouns with or without adjectives modifying the meanings of these nouns; that we all of us have developed the means to give feedback to each other concerning the credibility of these simple descriptions of our states of being; and that we all of us can learn to use communication of these linguistic gauges of our well-beings to guide us in mutual cooperation in the reaching of at least equanimity. But sadly, although these capabilities are inherent in our essences as human beings, I have also observed that we are not always very good at developing them; for at different moments in time many of us are either suffering or perpetrating wars, murders, rapes, mayhem, conflicts, and scarcities of all kinds, while others are luxuriating in heavenly pleasures amid immeasurable waste. The aim of this book, therefore, is to explain why this is so -- at a level practical enough to inspire readers to make positive change in our habits of communication. To do this, it will present, as a means to find both vital and vitalizing solutions, some principles I have discovered and tested in some very challenging situations. To my mind, these principles are simple, comprehensive, and practical enough to be worth learning and practising conscientiously by, hopefully in due course, all of us. But will you agree? Well, that's the big question? Eye-Zen English principles will not just fall out of the book into your lap. I will somehow have to gain your concentrated attention. So please be patient while I find a way to do so with ......... with some linguistics -- IHXENs and IHYNNs to be precise! The stakes are high for each of us, for our children, for our grandchildren, and for our ... |
What do these teenagers ..... and their retired Mom..... ...... have in common? Isn't this worth pondering for a moment? For the answer this book begins by assuming, scroll down a few inches. |
| Genuine Communication by Angus Cunningham |
| In his wonderful book "Nonviolent Communication: A Language for Life", which was published in 2003, Marshall Rosenberg, founder and Director of Education for the Centre for Nonviolent Communication, describes what he wants: "What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart." When I read that, I wondered if the people I knew would describe compassion in that way. After some reflection, I concluded that the people I know who use this word are probably thinking of compassion as a state of being in which one is giving to another whom one considers to be seriously unfortunate, or worse, inferior. Then I thought of the word's origin in Latin, when it meant a state of suffering experienced with someone else. Next I began to wonder what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma, who was near the height of his powers when I was born in 1942, would have meant when he used the word "compassion". These ruminations ended when I recognized that, whatever anyone may take as the meaning of the word "compassion", Marshall wants a flow between himself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart. That sounds quite apt for my values and tastes too -- except that the word "giving" is not one that describes well what I want. To articulate what I want in a way that I think my language circle would understand what I seek to convey requires some elaboration of the word "giving". Specifically, it must include the idea of mutually vitalizing reciprocity. I might be quite unusual in this. I remember being given things as a little boy that I didn't want, yet feeling obliged, by my family's culture, to pretend that what I was given was what I wanted. To this day my experience is that only by dint of insisting on being accorded the air time required to get other people to communicate reciprocally with me can my needs be met, and especially so with other people whose needs seem -- to my senses -- to be very much more than amply met. |
