The following is reiterated at my other blog.
I'm spending the day at home, resting and reflecting, listening to and archiving music from my family's disc collection to take with me back to New York. It's quiet and there's hardly a thing to disrupt my thoughts, and yet I'm still restless, continually distracted by small frustrations. I'm feeling anxious about returning to New York. I haven't had much time really to rest. I slept in until noon today, terrorized by strange dreams about the world coming to an end, and about Tom Cruise trying to disrupt my wedding. I forget if those were two separate dreams or part of the same.
I want to write down some thoughts I've been having about communication. I believe now that there is hardly such a thing as purely objective communication between people. By objective communication I mean the transmission of thought, idea or sentiment between two people where the receiving party understands completely those thoughts, ideas or sentiments that the imparting party wished to transmit.
There seems to be an inherent subjectivity in all communication. When I say, "Please close the window," what I mean to communicate is "I am cold; please help me to warm up by closing the window." By giving the first phrase, I intended no miscommunication, but it demands a sensitive recipient to perceive that I am cold if I fail to contextualize my demands. This example is a simple case. The problem is subjective communication is far more general. All communication is contextual. If I am tired or exasperated, my relations with other people may deteriorate because I do not have the patience and grace to speak accurately to them. "Accurate" is a cold and academic way of saying to speak peaceably and with understanding, making allowances for the other person's context and my own. Such communication is ideal, especially when both parties engage each other with this kind of understanding.
By context, I mean the physical, emotional and spiritual circumstances. I use these three categories, separating the emotional from the spiritual, because emotions are primal passions and sentiments, while into the spiritual category I place things like the will, as well as mental health and stability. I suppose I could have used the term psychical instead of spiritual, but that would preclude the religious aspect personal context, and for me this aspect can be especially important.
In speaking with other people, especially those I am close to, I wish to understand not only what they say, but why they say such things--that is, I wish to know their context. Language, I am learning, is a beautiful thing, but with very real limitations. Raw data is easy to transmit via language. The recitation of facts ("I am 6 feet tall") poses no challenge. But humans are complicated and most of our intellectual and emotional struggles deal with the abstract. If my soul is tormented, why? I can rarely communicate the answer to this question even to myself, when words are not required. If I am deeply in love with another person, how to I make that love known to them? And will I be satisfied, even if they understand that I love them, knowing that I could not fully express the extent of that love? And even if they did, how could they confirm their comprehension, so as to set my mind at ease?
Empathy might achieve the kind of communication that I desire. I might suggest to define empathy as "humbly submitting one's spirit to knowing that of another." In the relationship I have with my fiancée, I agonize to know her fully. I want to search her heart and mind, never with the intention to exploit, but with the intention of sharing one spirit. This is humanly impossible. More selfishly, I desire for her to know me and accept me as we know each other better. This is understandable, but also connected to our human insecurity.
I am comforted that with the full range of communicative possibilities, which surpasses language to include empathetic silence, presence, body language, intuition, physical intimacy, and steadfast commitment over many years, it is possible to probe the infinite depth of another person's character over time, and share one's own with them. I am also comforted that such a relationship with our Creator is promised throughout the Christian Scriptures and is in fact the stated goal in the Gospels. So there is my spiritual context.
This subject is still so much broader, but addresses a very human need: our need to be known, and once known, accepted. Perhaps we can accept this need with humility and with our limited abilities still strive to do our best to seek each other out in love, both for their benefit and our own.
Sitting on the "cow" together.
A photo of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion, on the north side of Sherbrooke street in Montreal.
A photo of the hall itself, without any chairs, tables or flowers. But we had Joelle and Keith!
