9.09.2005

Failure to Communicate

This post is not meant to be critical in a negative sense, but critical in a constructive manner. Having decided not to move to St. Louis I noticed two divergent modes of communication that arose through the whole process. Prior to going to St. Louis, people were generally supportive and expressed their hopes that all would go well. After deciding against St. Louis, the majority stated their relief that I would not be going up there and how tough it would have been. This dichotomy existed not only in communication towards me, but also in the dialogue going on in my head. This leads me to believe the real problem wasn't a failure to communicate, but something deeper.

Truth is, we as humans generally want to make the best of any given situation. Even when we think decisions may not be the healthiest, we have a general belief that God will help us out and that we will be able to handle the difficulties that lay before us. So we can rationalize a potentially bad situation into something manageable.

However, are there degrees of good and bad? Are all things equal? If there are degrees of quality (stolen concept from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) in our decision making process we must evaluate and decide between perhaps even two necessarily good options. In this case a good job as opposed to a stable way of life in a time of tumultuous change.

Not really sure where I'm going here except that I hope that we can not only communicate, but intellectually decide when we have decisions of significant magnitude to make. And perhaps I'm the only person who struggles with this problem. After all, in hindsight, it was my failure to listen to the naysayers in the first place. :)

1 comment:

kteachjoy said...

I appreciate your Zen reference!