Words spoken in the emotion of the moment sometimes are not what you mean for the other person to hear. Emotion filled words spoken are often heard with emotion filled hearing, muddling the truth even further. Words written in the emotion of the moment are not always what the other person needs to hear, but what I need to hear, think through, speak up about or get over and move on. But words once spoken, can't be unspoken, once published, can't be unpublished. Emotions cloud my thinking. Writing helps clear the emotional clouds.
In the past year, with the help of others, I have learned a few things about improving communication, the real kind, not the kind I write to myself. Some of things ARE better left unsaid and some things SHARED can make life better.
I am trying to make a conscious effort to tell someone when they do something that brings a little sunshine into my life. It usually brightens both of our days. My friend, Wanda, is especially good at this one. She is my inspiration. Even sharing a "thank you for being so pleasant" to a particularly helpful tax clerk at the Birmingham City Hall (Tuesday, rainy day, long line, then nice clerk) made her smile bigger and my day a little less rainy.
I believe this is especially important for those close to you, spouse, kids, parents, and siblings, because they are the ones with whom there will most likely be stormy days. If I have packed away a little sunshine, the cloudy days brighten a little sooner because it makes it easier to believe that as Annie sang, "The sun will come out tomorrow." Without that sunshine in my solar batteries, the cloudy days seem to never end and it is hard to believe that the sun will ever come out. Living in a cloudy place all the time is depressing, but if there is enough sunshine in our batteries, some of the clouds actually dry up.
Another part of my communication education has been learning that sharing some things that bother me is not altogether bad either. Only writing it down, without ever sorting it out to determine what is important enough to share, is not good. The emotional ranting that does not get analyzed, only buried among the pages, does not get dealt with. The difficulty comes when analysis reveals what needs to be dealt with and having the courage to bring it back out when there seems to be no immediate need to do so. Bringing up the important, but not urgent, things that need to be worked through is the hardest part because it does not always make me or the other person feel better immediately like sharing the sunshine does. It sometimes is difficult to cloud up a sunny day by bringing out that cloud I have been hiding. I learned that holding in all of those clouds made me bitter and the little clouds clumped together for so long make for one bad storm and it was hard to see the sunshine with all those clouds hanging over my head.
I have to keep reminding myself to practice the good communication education lessons so that they come naturally. When I use them, the sun shines more often in my neck of the woods and I get to post more of my writing.
