True communication is the response I get
I first heard this sentence in my mid twenties. It challenged me to consider that I was to take primary responsibility for my communication..be that words, art, body language, symbols like jewellery/tattoos/costume, my mood, my actions or inactions..
That if I am showing up in the world and getting a response I do not want, then the first place to change is to look to myself.
What am I communicating from my being? Confidence, fear, scarcity, distrust, love, care, peace…
What am I communicating in my choice of dress, my costume? Including what I have done to my skin?
What am I communicating via my actions?
What am I communication with my words, spoken, written, unspoken?
We are a signal into the field into which we are engaged. Like an echo, if what comes back is silence, or dissonance, or violence…then we need to look to the signal creator. That would be us.
This is a very hard lesson to stomach. It places a large part of our circumstance into our own hands. (Granted millions/billions of people live in circumstances where scarcity is real, threat and danger are real, and there is little they can do about that except choose their response to this threat/danger/lack)
If I have a message to deliver and the response I get back is a very different signal than the one I wanted, then I need to first look to myself. How can I change my communication to get a different response?
At core, the responsibility rests with us. We can change, adapt, respond differently. This is our liberation and our burden.
The moment we point the finger at the other…’they are not receiving my message’..we abdicate our responsibility as communicators, and in that moment become a victim to that situation..
Recognising our power to change the response of the world to us by changing our communication changes everything.
Photo taken February 26th 2021
