Communication @ MindSay 
relationships
I have seen many couples in my life, some that should be together, some that can't be together, some that wish they were together, some that wish they never had gotten together, some that hope they get together someday, some that always knew they would get together, some that are very unlikely pairings to the outsider, some couples like my ex husbands aunt/uncle who danced at our wedding and everyone just stopped to watch because they just danced so well together that they looked like they had been dancing together forever, but the one that I witnessed on my recent trip to Maryland has left my heart in a state of absolute awe. The couple I am speaking of is Dismh8 & Resable . Considering this is the first time that Kim and I just met them, it was uncanny how we both felt like we were watching a perfectly matched pair in action from the minute we joined them. They compliment each other in so very many ways, it was just so nice being around them. Theirs was not a loud, scream in your face type of love, nor was it a meek and humble type of love. It was solid, beautiful and very self assured. They both have very good conversational skills so it wasn't like one carried the whole show! They had their little private jokes and "ha ha" moments while we were there, but even when you were in the midst of them sharing those, you never felt that uncomfortable uneasiness that one can feel when you are with a couple that seems so much in love. We never felt like we were intruding on their "couple time". We felt like we were a welcome addition to it. Yet the underlying "love" they have for each other was always there. Dev is very much a gentleman in his treatment of Resa (well, all of us girls actually) but most especially with Resa. Always offering his hand, or arm when we were out walking, always looking out for her...just warmed my heart! Resa on the other hand, was not a typical "gushy" female either. She was warm, confident, and loving. A sense of pride over "my guy" yet not territorial the way women can be was so refreshing, it was such a pleasure to be around. We got to hear how they were friends before they started dating (I highly recommend it) and we witnessed the bond they have. There is not a bond any tighter, and they are very secure in their love for each other. I myself have not ever experienced or been in this type of HEALTHY AND LOVING relationship and often times in my life when I have been the 3rd wheel with another couple, I have felt the want/need to steal a little bit of the spotlight/attention for myself and I know I feel jealous and whiney about what I have never had...you know the old "why can't I have someone like that?" This has to be the first time in my entire adult life where I was in the presence of a man who is not only attractive, but attentive, kind, gentlemanly, and just a pleasure to be around (Resa, you know he's a keeper!) and I felt no urge to be anything other than glad that they both welcomed me into their home/world. It was so fun for both Kim and I to just enjoy watching them love each other...the funny little things they say to each other, the unspoken things they already know about each other, the stolen looks, the way he held her hand, or the sweet and affectionate way he snuggled his head into her shoulder when he was getting tired when we girls were just getting started on the girl talk and chatter.........
I have to say honestly, that if this is what real, healthy love is like, I want some! However...if I can't have something that is just as real as what Resa and Dev have...then I'd rather be alone!
Ladies and gentlemen.......This is a real love story!!! I could go on and on and I actually feel like this blog is not even adequate to describe what they have, it pales in comparison to what Kim and I witnessed! It was just too incredible and left my heart forever touched! Thank you two for sharing that with us!
I’m not sure instant communication is a good thing. I have long struggled with the accessibility of communication. Be it answering machines, email, commenting on Facebook, Myspace, you name it. I think I am a lot like many people, perhaps women in particular, in that I don’t relish confrontation. As I’ve aged, I’ve gotten a little better at it. But the uncomfortability remains the same.
Since the advent of hit and run communication (i.e. voicemails, emails, cyber commenting) I fortunately or unfortunately have gotten more ballsy. I’m not sure if this new found verbal/written prowess is helping me or hindering me.
Case in point; I had a written electronic communication run in with my son’s principal. My son is in 5th grade. He will be leaving elementary school in 3 days. He will not return to this school next year as he will be in middle school. My son has a limited amount of funds in his lunch account monthly. He spends it at his discretion. When the money is out, it’s out. He’s responsible for bringing in his lunch from home when his account is empty. His account is then replenished the following month and so it goes. My son does not like to bring in lunch from home. He prefers school lunch. He has learned that the cafeteria will let him charge his lunch. They let him charge his lunch and send him home with a note politely informing me that his account is negative and to please deposit more money in said account.
I have never given permission for my son to charge his meals. I have no intention of covering the unauthorized charges. My son is 11 years old. It’s my philosophy that a missed meal will give him incentive to either budget more accurately or bring a lunch from home so as not to go hungry. Perfectly reasonable and well within my parental rights.
I received two “collection calls” from school this week requesting payment for the unauthorized charges. The second call was from the cafeteria manager who informed me that he could not in clear conscious turn away a hungry child. Not kidding. Direct quote. By now I was quite ticked. I was ticked that this school employee had the audacity to openly refuse to comply with my parenting request. I do feel the need to add one, in my opinion, minor detail. I happen to know it is the schools policy to offer a cheese sandwich and milk to a child who has no lunch. The child is offered a lunch, just not the lunch of his/her choice. No child has ever, will ever go hungry. Don’t even get me started on childhood obesity, that’s another ball of wax. But I digress.
My son hates cheese sandwiches. If the school policy had in fact been implemented, my son would have had one cheese sandwich lunch. Brought his own lunch from home that day forward. End of story. But the cafeteria and grownups in general, do not want to say no to a child in any way shape or form which leads to a negative lunch account.
In my momentary flash of anger, righteous though it may have been, I fired off an email to the principal. Alerting her of the situation at hand. I was not hot enough to forget that we only have 3 days of school left. The tone of my email was one of “just so you know, the cafeteria manager is blatantly telling parents how it’s going to be and you may want to reconsider allowing children the ability to charge money willy nilly and then ask for payment. Have a great summer.” That was my tone. However, I did and do think this is a relevant issue. I hit send and sat and stewed.
She wrote me back. Almost immediately. Her solution was that I tell my son to either bring a lunch from home or request the cheese sandwich lunch instead of requesting his lunch be charged. I can only speak for my 11 year old son and there is no way that he would request a cheese sandwich when he knows he can get the full meal deal with impunity. Come on. What kid is going to do that?
She did not address the cafeteria manager’s lack of boundaries and stated that she knew I wouldn’t want children to go hungry. Please. We live in an affluent suburb not an inner city school in Compton (not that there’s anything wrong with that). There’s not a kid in a 20 mile radius going hungry. They don’t go without a cell phone in kindergarten for Petes sake. To state the obvious, I was furious.
But the more important issue at hand is who gives a shit? My son has 3 days of school left. Then we’re done with this school. I have one child left there but she would never pull the stunts my son does so it’s never going to come up again. Why did I feel compelled to address this issue?
I realize I am a huge sucker for “the principal of the thing”. I fall into that trap time and time again. And I do stand by the principal of the thing. However, if I weren’t able to sit in the comfort of my kitchen and fire off a written tirade with no ability of back and forth direct communication would I have felt compelled to address this issue? Probably not. If I had to physically go to school and sit across the desk from the principal and address this concern, would I? No way. If I had to even make a phone call and speak with her directly over the phone would I? Again, probably not.
Additionally, if she hadn’t the ability to reply to my email immediately, would she have taken the tone she did? Probably not. Her response was not reasonable. I can only assume she was caught up in the heat of the moment as well and responding on impulse.
Is this good? Is the ability to rapid fire missives a step up in communication or down? Was it the “right thing” to voice my displeasure over their system? To make my opinion known? For the record. Or is the “right thing” to move on? Live and let learn as my dear friend Angie would say.
I’m going to implement a “5 second rule” for communication. Especially written. I’m going to make myself take an hour to respond to a written form of communication. Be it a happy return or confrontational. I tend to spill my guts and then regret it later. If my attitude/thoughts haven’t changed or simmered in 1 hour, they must be somewhat legit. And I’m going to try very hard to implement a new rule of direct communication whenever possible. When these aforementioned situations come up, as they always do, I’m vowing to myself that I will at the very least pick up the phone and speak directly to the person. Thereby insuring better odds that my meaning will be conveyed accurately and my tone will be more civil, compassionate, and empathetic.
Wish me luck! I’m trying to evolve here.
Jade called me last night in tears. She was slighted on Facebook. She has a friend, who has a friend, who is a friend, of a mutual friend and this friend didn’t confirm their friendship on Facebook. She was really upset. “Why didn’t she add me”? She kept asking. “What’s wrong with me”? She kept asking. Mind you this Facebook debacle came off of a previous Facebook debacle where Jade had put in a Friend Request and was denied. She was devastated by that one. It didn’t matter that the request was for a woman she knew in elementary school and hadn’t heard from or thought of in a million years. She was rejected. And rejection is rejection.
Which got me to thinking, why do we feel rejected by Facebook? Is it truly rejection if a person you haven’t thought about, will most likely never lay eyes on, who you don’t even know rejects your friend request? If this is rejection, what is it when someone you actually care about and actually see on a daily basis says they’re done with you? Is Facebook just another way to avoid intimacy? We put out this profile that may or may not be accurate. It’s completely subject to our writing and creative writing capabilities. The goal is to have as many friends, and hopefully attractive friends as possible. What is that all about? We want to have “friends” that we don’t communicate with face to face to impress faceless strangers? Weird.
Jade of course refutes this argument. Is insulted by this argument. She’s not trying to impress anyone. She’s on Facebook for the community she has created. She writes down any little thought that goes through her mind. As do her community members. It’s a way to stay connected she argues. Well, if you are truly looking for a connection, wouldn’t you call the friend? Isn’t it important to actually hear a voice? Hear an inflection? Have more than a one way dialog? And if this community is your social circle, it’s a little disturbing. Our social skills are going out the window. Not that for past couple decades we’ve had much to begin with. But people don’t even speak to one another anymore. People get their needs for intimacy met from typing to strangers they would not have even thought about if not for some computer program. Doesn’t that alarm you?
There appears to be a breakdown in communication, to put it mildly. This past election is a prime example of this breakdown. There was no communication going on. No exchanging of ideas. No artful reply. No discourse. No debate where the players actually used manners, listened, and politely pointed out differences or similarities. We are so accustomed and desensitized to ranting that we don’t even recognize it anymore. We simply pick our ranter and plug in. Liberals pick their ranter, conservatives pick their ranter and nobody listens to anyone outside of their ranting circle.
We have such a need for anyonymity these days. Why is that? Why do we choose not to speak to a loved one or otherwise? We prefer to type. Why do we choose strangers over confidants? Is it that we don’t have the skills to communicate anymore? It’s just too hard to actually have to listen? To have to formulate a response without the time delay of typing? To actually have to respond to what a person is saying through words, body language, inflection and tone when the ability to filter and edit based on our reading interpretation is gone?
I argue that we need intimacy. We need face to face intimacy. We need conversation, in person. We need to touch each other. Both literally and figuratively. We need to become human again. Especially now when people are hurting. Now is the time to disconnect. To talk to your neighbor over the fence. To meet up at the water cooler and speak. To call a long lost friend and catch up. To hug your actual face to face friends when you actually meet them for dinner. Together. Not online. Not texting. Not emailing. Not facebooking. We have children here who are growing up in a world where people are becoming more and more robotic. If I see one more person with a blue tooth connected to their head while at our children’s soccer practice, I’m going to lose it. It’s creepy. Our children are growing up in a world where adults don’t converse. They yell, scream, talk over, and turn their back on anyone who doesn’t nod and smile. Our children are having sex with strangers because they don’t see intimacy in this world. True intimacy. They aren’t shown the skills of meeting someone. Learning about someone. Spending time with someone. They are simply doing what we do. We have needs, no time or desire to really get to know someone, so we simply hook up. Needs met, next task on the list to complete. No time wasted.
So I practiced what I preach. I went marching over to Jades house. I gave her my rant. She facebooked during my rant. Still trying to get this rejecting friend to accept her request. I told her she’s crazy and left. Progress. Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Please, have one face to face conversation with a stranger today. Just ask how they are doing? And actually look the person in the eye. And wait for an answer. Try it. It’ll make you feel better. I promise.
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