An Anomalous Belfry

Hear Me Roar?

So I've been thinking...

(A very dangerous pastime, according to one of my best friends...)

I've been wondering about the manner in which I talk to people.

I know, I know, I need to explain where I seem to have picked up such a random topic, so I will tell you. As I was walking down the halls of the school one day, I saw a book called either/or. I have absolutely no idea what the book was about and the person that owned the volume was not around to tell me. However, that may have been a good thing, otherwise I might not be writing here today.

Instead, that title got me thinking about a short reading that I read in Integrative Seminar class that was an excerpt from the book I and Thou by Martin Buber. The excerpt talked about how it is virtually impossible to know who you are unless you get to know other people. And it is virtually impossible to know other people unless you have some semblance of knowing who you are.

And that got me to thinking about how I talk to other people...

If you were to stop and think about your conversations with people over the last, say, three days, how many times would the word "I" come up near the beginning of a sentence? If sentences in a conversation start with "Well, I...", "That's nice, but I" or other lines like that, we often ending up having a conversation in which we merely exchange facts with one another and fail to actually get to know another person.

Is that what we really want?

I'm challenging myself in this area over the next couple of days, to cut down on my usage of these types of sentence starters and to start having conversations where I am in it to grow in relationships and not assert my dominance or be a mere faucet of facts.

Here goes...

posted by theDING @ 15:50