Saturday, September 19, 2009

Question Number Five

I am kicked back on a lazy Saturday afternoon having spent most of the morning and early afternoon running assorted errands. I’m watch a classic movie – “Captain Ron”. We were expecting a heat wave to start today but it looks like the Weather Channel has adjusted their forecast and pulled it down by about ten degrees, which means it will hot, but bearable. T.R. and I were talking about Captain Ron yesterday and that put me in the mood to watch it, so I have it fired up on the DVD. I may slip out and catch something in the theatre a little later in the day, but I haven’t made that decision yet.

So, here is Question Number Five:

What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?

Well, I certainly don’t kid myself into thinking I am wise enough to re-order the world according to my wishes. I am sure the law of unintended consequences would rise up and take a big old bite out of my butt if I tried that. With that caveat, let me answer the question.

I am torn between an increase in compassion and an increase in communication. I think an increase in honest communication would be a major step in the right direction to resolving a lot of the intractable problems we seem to have in the world. If we could truly speak what is in our hearts, unafraid of miscommunication and manipulation.

In general, as humans, we communicate by telling stories. It is one of the methods in which we come to understand the world that we inhabit. We tell stories and depending on how effective we are at story telling we set the context, we exchange information and emotion, and we come to a better understanding of each other. If we are not particularly good at telling those stories (and there are many reasons why we are not) we often simply fail to understand each other. Much of the difficulties in life arise from the fundamental failure.

So, if there is one thing I could change it would be a change to make us all better story-tellers.

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