There is a strange phenomenon in the realm of existence, and this rule applies in all areas of life.
There is something happening, even beyond humanity, to the birds in the skies, to the animals on the land, to the creatures in the sea, even to plant life. Something binds at all, and that something is communication.
Our very being here,
bodily and spiritually,
it is communication.
We are in constant communication. Even when we are not communicating, we are communicating, because in our non-communication we communicate perhaps some of the most powerful messages. These are usually messages of inference and assumption: the promulgation of falsehood.
In our humanity, silence, for example, communicates volumes. It can communicate exclusion, mockery, abandonment, the fact that there is no relationship, and it can even suggest love, but not usually. We normally associate silence with something negative.
we are still communicating
when we are not communicating.
When we break connection, we often force people to question our relationship with them or our motives, or cause them to question the future we might or might not share together, as the case may be.
And yet, we may have decided for a good reason to break the connection. Perhaps a toxic relationship has formed that we need to free ourselves from. The only way to do that is to stop communicating. But it is always good if we can clearly communicate what our intentions are, so that the other person can begin their mourning. If they continue to come to our attention, evasion is the only way to enforce a communicated limit.
This problem becomes very practical in our electronic world when we do not receive responses to the emails or text messages that we send. It’s the same when people don’t get a response from us. It is quite normal for people to think that we have forgotten about them, or that we don’t care, when we don’t reply on time, or don’t reply at all. Maybe we’ve all thought that, ‘they don’t seem to like me anymore’ and ‘what have I done wrong?’
It would be a useful prayer, in our electronic age, to ask God every day:
‘Lord, show me what I’m communicating
negatively for not being able to communicate.’
‘Lord, reveal to me what I am communicating to you
through my silence.’
‘Lord, help me to know, too, how to keep my peace
in situations where you should be silent.
‘Lord, give me ways to refrain from speaking
when I must remain silent.
There are times when we don’t communicate by choice, for a good reason, but we need to make it clear to the person we’re not communicating with why we’re cutting off contact. Say it once and never feel the need to go back.
In other cases, the choice not to communicate is possibly passive aggressiveness. That is never good. It would be better to have the conversation required to resolve the conflict.
In some other cases, we happen to be distracted, as the photo suggests, by a myriad of other abstractions.
Sometimes technology takes over
that human beings must occupy.
We have the opportunity to reflect how much technology replaces real communication; that our reluctance to connect, because we are so ‘plugged in’ to our device, speaks in deafening tones of our relational ambivalence. And this happens in family relationships as much as anywhere.
By not communicating, we often communicate
a message that we should not want to communicate.
