Exploring communication by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
Aug 2011
I am sitting in a plane on the way to Perth for a long awaited holiday and thinking about what to write for this issue of the Nimbin Good Times, but by the time you read this I’ll be well and truly home. Two topics spring to mind and I wonder why they arise together. Terminals, on the one hand, seem a worthy topic and the business of a friend trying to get me to organize his stuff is the other topic worming its way through my mind. Are they somehow connected?
Aug 2011
I am sitting in a plane on the way to Perth for a long awaited holiday and thinking about what to write for this issue of the Nimbin Good Times, but by the time you read this I’ll be well and truly home. Two topics spring to mind and I wonder why they arise together. Terminals, on the one hand, seem a worthy topic and the business of a friend trying to get me to organize his stuff is the other topic worming its way through my mind. Are they somehow connected?
I am intrigued. Let me
wander around these ideas for a moment. Of terminals I am reminded of two things.
The first is the movie The Terminal,
with Tom Hanks in it, and secondly, a wonderful book I read years ago called Angels, a modern myth by Michel Serres. Angels is about creating a philosophy of
communication, of movement between people, while the Hanks movie is concerned
with miscommunication, getting stuck in a place (denied entry into the US and
unable to return to his own revolution-riven country) more usually associated
with transitions. Interestingly, both book and movie are set in airports,
places where normally you arrive, you leave, you arrive…
As to this other topic,
of this friend attempting to get me to solve his problem by asking me to organize
the removal of an item of furniture from his house to store in mine, prior to
his departure. The item was attractive to me, but not so much that I was
prepared to drop everything I was doing in order to get removalists doing the
job in time for an, as yet, unknown departure date. Here was a mixed message
from my friend: you can enjoy a beautiful, difficult to move object, but you’ll
have to organize its removal because my friend was going away (when?). The
problem was, I was leaving on my own holiday soon too. Ultimately I simply
refused to do what was asked of me. The dynamic, if I may speak in this way,
was all wrong and I resisted it.
Good and honest
communication between people needs to be a free flowing thing, not bits
obscured, and withheld. It was not up to my friend to request I organize the
removal of a large object from his house in time for his undeclared departure
date, just because he thought I would enjoy using this object, and my enjoying
it was a good enough reason for off-loading his own responsibility onto me. He
really needed to organize the transport, or disposal, of the object himself.
Angels are
intermediary entities, transporting clear messages between, classically, god
and humans. Airports, those massive tracts of strange spaces warmed up by
homely touches of shops and eateries, are intermediary places. Both connect
meetings across vast skies and both depend on clear communication at all nodes.
Travellers, and meaning makers, need to know their journey will be safe.
So, now I know why the
topics of terminals and my friend off-loading his responsibility onto me
occurred together. It is about communication and the between of
communication that interests me. Clarity of intention is needed; muddied desires
obscures too much unsaid stuff that can easily terminate friendships. Funny,
this word “terminal” and that word “terminate”. The Terminal, the movie, was
about, as I’ve said, getting stuck and yet airport terminals are determinably
not places to get stuck (though sometimes it seems airport staff are hell bent
on making this happen). The word terminal can mean “end” and it can imply
articulations between nodes (as in electric power stations). Words are articulations
between sender and receiver: the clearer the intention and the delivery of all
the facts the more favourable the reception. Understanding depends on it.
I have much faith in
the writing process, and recommend to many of my clients to keep a journal, for
it is in writing that greater understanding is reached. The printed word is an
intermediary, like angels and terminals, and connects thought to thinker and
writers to readers. In writing we come to know what was once half intimated,
half felt – an inkling that doesn’t really go anywhere. Writing connects.
Copyright @ 2013 Dr Elizabeth McCardell
Copyright @ 2013 Dr Elizabeth McCardell
