trips into another, how within a beat good will can turn to ill, then I think we could solve many misunderstandings. I am euphemising misunderstandings when I should probably just say 'fights'. Or, in their more tempered version - 'arguments'.
Over the course of this past year, I've become increasingly philosophical about hurt feelings and apparent insensitivities. I emphasise 'apparent' here because often times what are perceived as insensitivities by one party are often unintentional on the part of the other. In fact, experience would tell me that in such times, the other party is often of the best intentions. Sometimes, things just get missed. In the moment, because both parties are occupying different head spaces, they miss each other. One may be seeking gentle counsel while the other wants a sounding board to ricochet off his or her enthusiasms of that day or week. And I've been on both sides.
Nevertheless when timing is off you cannot help but feel disappointed, like some part of you has been overlooked or missed. It's a sorry feeling because you're also starkly aware that it's not all about you. And it isn't. But I think the best conversations are those which give room for negotiation. They provide time for both parties to come to the table with their own 'catch-up' stories - be it of a sad or happy theme or temper - and then allow the two to meet, now in the middle. Within a matter of minutes, you come to understand the slight nuances of the other person's happiness or sadness and here is that moment of perfect tete-a-tete, of understanding. C.S. Lewis wrote that 'we read to know we are not alone'. But we also listen for that same reason. We listen to identify and to be identified. There's a wonderful dialectic in any relationship, and of course in the very best.
This entry isn't pointed, but it is tendered to be recognised. I will be honest about that. More appropriate than either of those readings, however, is one that is philosophical, yet sensitive. Because sometimes it's easier to register philosophically what you feel than struggle to verbalise and birth those feelings into the real world.
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