by Elizabeth E. George
What we are about to do is attempt a communication. The only thing is that your response can only be vaguely anticipated, based on what I choose to render to you. It is at that point that you have the choice to do what you wish with what I have presented. I may never fully know how my words have affected you, or if I have fully conveyed my message as was intended.
Unknowing of all that I may splatter on this page, I do acknowledge that it will be honest.
You are the audience in this communication. (Well, for now.) Sit back and listen.
I am the host of the initial means of conveyed message or thought. Look me in the (virtual) eye.
For us to know what will happen to our relationship — however much of a beginning it may be, as in writer to reader, possibly — depends on our first impression.
I anticipate that you — reader, audience — will take me seriously, as it is the beginning of this particular conveyance of thought.
In the beginning, we are neutral, serious — to the extent of truly trying to understanding where we fall as one, this initial entity of a relationship.
Now, depending on my individual choice of phrasing and your willingness to connect to my words, we may communicate effectively enough to not bore, disenchant, confuse one another.
If I can tell you a story, and you take away from it something, there is a level of completeness to what we have done.
If you remember facts, per say, as in details of my story — the who, what, when, where, why, and how of its characters, I should be flattered and happy.
If you recall how I said what I said, you paid attention to the details of me, the storyteller, as part of the story, I should be more than flattered, honestly.
There are are many levels of attempted communication, and what we are experiencing right now will never be complete, because I will not be able to sense your reaction nor elicit a response that can be continued with my reaction, then yours, then.mine, etc…
Real communication has to encompass a circular — or more than one communication would be spherical — shape.
Everything has a shape.
What we are experiencing, right now, between us, is merely a partial circle – an unfinished, simple parenthesis.
Photo by ScWeeGee-Boy-Stock.
