Inherent interference

When I look at something beautiful I don’t want to think about my eyeballs. When I say something from my heart I don’t want to think about the words.

But there is an inherent interference pattern at every step of every process that involves the sharing of information.

I experienced this tension when living and working in China. I was the only person who spoke English in my day-to-day life other than the translator that would meet me at the judo training sessions and the other imported performance coaches who I’d meet with weekly at the Irish pub for trivia.

After spending more time in silence than at any other period in my life, I realized that even my first language is a second language relative to my inner voice.

That voice that speaks from the heart before being translated (alterred) by my conscious mind, fumbled by my mechanisms of oration, polluted by other noise, mixed up with my subconscious body language, all before being reversely translated by the listener who is usually not really listening. (a subject for a different day)

At every level of commumication, there is a bit of the information that is lost and this creates a friction. Tension. Stress.

When we acknowledge this we can more easily understand the challenge our species has had and continues to have while working toward collaboration and peace instead of provoking and perpetuating violence and war.

We must also see this fact as a call to action to sharpen our skills of listening, empathy, patience, and humility in order to best receive what someone else’s heart is trying to convey.

And we must train as well the ability to listen deeply to what our own heart is saying in order to cultivate language that can do it justice when we speak.

This is how we heal ourselves, heal our relationships, and heal our world.