According to the one earthly being I love above all others, I can sometimes use fifteen words to explain something that she might need in five. She prefers the five.
She was overjoyed, then, when we sat around a table with some good friends sharing life together. One of our friends shared something very simple and very profound on how progress is often best made in life. This friend got it over in five words
Converse, Connect, Understand and Act.
There have been some situations that I’ve been in where there’s little to nothing in the way of connection and understanding. So although actions have happened and supposed conversation has taken place there has actually been little in the way of something lasting, memorable, productive or of any excellence in those environments. Indeed it came across as though those environments operated on the basis of ‘conversation’ and ‘acting’ without those crucial middle aspects being cultivated.
That’s tragic.
Whereas, it has also been among the highlights of my life to have experienced situations where connecting and understanding has been just as important as conversing and acting. In fact sometimes the connecting and understanding has been so enriching and rewarding that the acts that followed were vastly more productive than we ever imagined. There was a way of operating on that understanding that lead to such a flow that things happened almost seamlessly and others would point out how ‘easy’ we made it look. It was brilliant.
Conversations don’t work unless there’s understanding and connection, may come the response. Yet this is exactly the point – there’s a lot of action and there’s a lot of conversation and it’s not ‘working’ as in being truly as effective and fruitful as it could be – because of lack of understanding and true connection.
Businesses carry on, institutions plod along and relationships limp from one anniversary to another and all miss out on the opportunity to experience flourishing. Not as defined by profit margins and pay rises, but by relationship development and life transformation. That is a great definition of what enrichment can be like.
Just applying some simple steps – not just conversing, but connecting and in connecting developing and understanding and from that leading to the actions that flow from that. Actions reflecting the richness of the understanding through the connection that came about because we converse – you talk and I listen, I talk and you listen, we talk and we listen, we submit to each other, we learn from each other.
This is not utopian fantasies from far away to dream about. This is what we were created to experience from the example of divine love developed from conversation, connection, understanding and action.
Insights like this are gratefully received in chunks delivered in a way that my dearest loved on would acknowledge as simple to understand.
(Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 