I’ve been thinking a lot about communication. How precious and precarious it is. How difficult it is to get it right. And how much I have to learn about it. As much as I try, and as much progress I think I’ve made, it can all get weird in just a moment’s time. This has all been working on me and within me, stewing around inside my brain and my heart for the past few days. And I just got a small piece of the puzzle late last night.
I couldn’t sleep because we had an intense thunderstorm with lightening coming in like strobe lights, followed by huge explosions of sound. Very exciting. Very unusual for this small corner of the world. We get rain but not thunderstorms. Another facet of climate change? Sigh. But I digress…
So in the midst of the storm, it came to me that at the core of so much of my communicating is the need to be right. I like to think that it is about the need to be witnessed, to be heard. But when I am very honest with myself (as I try to be), I realize that after all this time and all this self-work, I still just want to be right. And I want everyone around me to think so too. The more I want it, the more tongue-tied and inarticulate I get. The more off-message, the more counter productive. The more someone disagrees with me, or if I have a minority opinion in a group, the more I dig my heels in. I get a little preachy. I keep trying different ways to make them see my point. I advance the art of communication not at all. Sigh. I need to go back to the drawing board. To breathe. To allow. To surrender. All good words for me. I have so very much work to do. This looking at self stuff is so not easy!
I did this drawing as a commission for someone. It represents the Fifth Chakra or the Throat Chakra, home of communication with ourselves and others. It is light at the center, but it gets a bit dark and messy at the edge, with many different layers and a lot going on. The words I thought of for her were easy and discerning. More sighs! More good words for me.
susanbradfordart.com 