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Talking in Our Hearts and Our Heads

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I've been thinking . . .

about the conversation in the comment box.

About three weeks before SOBCon07, as I was planning what I would say. I sat in my darkened bedroom imagining the time and the place. When I did, a stunning thing struck me, overtook me, I finally saw the whole group.

The image was even more than I had been ready to receive. I suddenly realized the room would be filled with people who had generously shared their minds. It was amazing, electric. I was overwhelmed at the idea that a roomful of people could know each other so well.

The reality was even more than that. . . . How could it be possible?

Research says that 50% of how we communicate is nonverbal – it’s in the tone, expression, body language, such things. One study showed that 84% of communication on the telephone is vocal and 16% is verbal.

How could these people — we, who never met — know each other so well?

It was trust and safety. . . . like it is every morning here.

That’s not to say that it never comes out just a little wrong, but so often it’s so much more than right. We learn and discover. We laugh and cavort. We design, narrate, create like conductors, feel for each other, play. We talk words into meaning. We have world-size ideas.

How do we crawl into a comment box and turn off the rules of 3-D?

Maybe it’s that we know that we are listening. Maybe it’s that we take time to think. Maybe it’s that we know that our words are everlasting.

Maybe it’s that we’re not in a box at all . . .

Maybe we’re talking in our hearts and our heads.

I hear your voice when you type what you think.

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Life, an Onion, and Social Networking

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I've been thinking . . .

about life on the Internet and an onion.

Once a friend gave me a metaphor of the world as an onion.

Life in the comment box is what my friend called Layer 17.

“Imagine that life is like an onion,” a friend said to me. “Most people live on that brown papery stuff on the outside. That ‘s where they go about their daily routine. They’re born. They have kids. They die out in the sunshine on that brown papery thing.”

“Yeah, so.”

“You like to live be thinking and talking inside somewhere down near Layer 17. You come out and have fun on the papery thing, but you live near Layer 17.”

I have fun Social Networking on the papery thing, but the comment box here is Layer 17.

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Turning on the Lights to See

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I've been thinking . . .

about clutter.

I’ve read papers on psychology that said an extrovert who is put in a position to act as an introvert may interpret his or her feelings as depression. The feeling leads to less interaction and one reinforces the other.

That thought is only somewhat related. . . .

I’m a seer. I need to see the vision I’m going for. When I see it, I can flush out all of the details. I can make path to it’s door. I can walk there, drive there, fly there. I can make every bit happen, because I can see the way from here to there. It’s the 30,000 foot view that gives me the power to make decisions. From there I can go dig through a data set with confidence. From there, I can tackle a task with efficiency.

Until . . .

My life begins to clutter. When I live with clutter, after a time, I begin to interpret it as darkness, chaos. an inability to see.

Things start to collect. It’s note here, a pen there. I set out a document that I’ve received. My husband puts the mail next to my desk, but I’ve no time to get to it. Three comments and two IMs come in at the same time as two emails. A phone call begins. Twitter.

night scene with one street lamp

Each of these events tugs my brain to the ground into the clutter. Chaos.

Details without the 30,000 foot view are flying in the dark. They are information with no context — they’re road names minus a roadmap. They are a computer needing to be defragged. When my desk begins to clutter, that clutter finds it’s way into my head. It’s night inside the clutter.

I’m cleaning off my desk this morning. With every thing I dealt with, dumped, or delegated, I felt lighter. I can see my desk again.

Even better, I can see where I’m going — nothing cluttering my vision.

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He Can't Let It Go . . . Maybe You Can't Either

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look at this

Jim Walton over at church tech matters responded to I Can’t with thoughts of his own. Hi post is well worth checking out . . .

While you’re there follow the link to the post with Clif’s comment. It’s got another powerful take on the “can’t” discussion.

And don’t miss Vern’s powerful conversation, that starts with can’t, from his post here on Sunday.

Of course, if you just can’t right now, I understand . . . completely.

Smile,

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Finding our Feet

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Head to Toes

sneakers

It starts before we even think in words. We’re babies in a cradle.

We find our hands and wonder. . . what the heck might these things be? Somehow we see the two hands and soon we learn how to make them move. It’s a little later when we realize they’re attached to us, though.

The party that is our life begins. Our hands symbolize interaction. We wave “hello.” We touch a face, wipe a tear, hand a flower . . . We use our hands to make our ideas into something more than thoughts. Our hands make them real.

In school we learn ways to use our hands.

Ah, but our feet. From the first our feet are further from our head. We have to reach to touch them. We put them in shoes. In some ways, we take them for granted until they’re hurt. They’re in charge of transportation.

We’ve found our feet when we claim our place to stand.

We find our hands in our infancy. It can take a lifetime to find our feet.

My son left for real life today.

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I Can't

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I've been thinking . . .

about the word can’t.

In my internal dictionary, can’t has at least four meanings.

can’t: I am facing a roadblock.
can’t: I am powerless.
can’t: I am without the skills.
can’t: I am unwilling.

I wonder how often I know which of my own definitions I’m using.

Can’t is a contraction.

It seems to make me smaller.

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