When receiving texts — except texts of a purely perfunctory nature — do you read between, behind the lines?
We offer affirming eye contact during face-to-face conversations.
Timing, tone, cadence, clarify meaning in voice calls.
Are we listening to texts?
You may engage with the person who responds to texts as if anxiously awaiting, even aching for human contact. Prior knowledge may inform your understanding of your quick-to-reply friend.
I find it helpful, early in any text exchange, to declare my level of availability. I am unlikely to ignore a verbal approach and I try to acknowledge texts.
Apparent indifference can be cruel.
Respond in kind: words for words, sentences for sentences, emojis for emojis. One who composes a paragraph deserves a like-response. A thumbs up emoji or hand clapping butterflies may come off as dismissive when a friend just spilled his guts.
Grammar rules and sound spelling seem widely ignored with texting. While pedantic perfectionism may reek pretentiousness, effort reveals respect.
Avoid alarm —- can’t wait to tell you something terribly important to you and your future when we meet next month — is hardly fair.
Read between and behind the lines.
Friends might be telling you something of crucial importance (to them) and selected you to be their audience.
Arrived in the USA late last evening from Malaysia.
Leadership will always be strongest, most effective when the leader sees and regards herself or himself as a servant to those in her or his care.
This is not for effect or for greater impact, it is simply how authentic leadership works.
If you are the leader then you will be a servant who seeks to serve those whom she or he leads. You will do so with all your heart, mind, soul and you will love those in your care. You will love them to such a degree that they will end up even unknowingly tapping into the very best of who they are because that’s how people behave when they are loved.
If you think of yourself as elevated, deserving of being served by others, afforded status by your role, you are not a leader no matter what you think you are. What you are is one who is capitalizing on those whom you are really called to serve.
Your leadership function must benefit others, not you.
When you are the true leader there is nothing you will not do within the bounds of law and the boundaries of sound ethics to enhance the lives of those whom you lead.
It’s enjoying face-to-face conversations, really listening to each other, responding, asking relevant, respectful questions. It’s encouraging people to talk about things they find interesting, important.
It’s sharing, refusing to dominate or set the agenda for every conversation.
Meals with friends, unhurried times, occasions when talk leads to laughter and may also lead to tears simply (and profoundly) because shared history is being re-lived.
Pain – revisited.
It’s simple meals that transform into events because hearts are healed even though a shared meal was the only intention.
It’s welcoming others, people known and unknown. It’s genuine openness, radical hospitality. It’s wild generosity. It’s sincere interest expressed.
It’s the simple things.
And, no cell-phones are required or necessary.
————
Two personal matters:
I will be in KZN from May 5 to May 15, 2024. Best selling author Terry Angelos (WHITE TRASH) and I will host a public seminar. During my visit I will, at your invitation, meet with groups, schools, churches, businesses, and individuals. Please contact Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za to find out more about the Angelos/Smith event or schedule events with me.
This column appeared first in The Mercury on March 20, 2001 and has been published every weekday for 23 years. Thank you for your readership.
Listen to people for long enough – some people need very little time – and you will “see” into their hearts, their souls, and have a measure of the fear and pain that is theirs.
The things we talk about and the way we talk, the things we find funny, offer a glimpse into the very depths of who we are and into what is hurting within us.
Every time I open my mouth to speak I am offering clues to the state of my emotional health.
While it would be foolish to jump to conclusions based on a few uttered sentences and we ought to give one another the benefit of any doubt, some topics and obvious attitudes are unmistakable, unavoidable, and announce who people are and the pain and fear that is theirs.
When listening, racial slurs and racial jokes get my attention.
I think they indicate fear, fear that parades as superiority.
Swearing, especially blasphemy, suggests deep cynicism, the very antithesis of faith and hope.
Men ridiculing women, anyone expressing rudeness toward waiters, showing off with wealth, one-upmanship, I believe all indicate a persistent lack of self-acceptance and self-worth.
What can be so painful about living that anyone has to employ such defenses?
May we be agents of grace and kindness – both to others, and to ourselves.
What kind of week will you have? What kind of person will you be this week? Ask these questions and most will say they don’t know or reveal a Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) attitude.
It is possible to plan.
Here’s my five-point plan for this week:
I will do something every day that is an act of self-care and self-love. It is impossible to love others without also loving myself.
I will occupy the driver’s seat of my life. Abdication of this adult role to others – except under extreme circumstances – is the definition of selfishness.
Within the framework of my predetermined values and boundaries and my callings, I will be a highly cooperative person, a team-player, an encourager.
I will listen without waiting to speak knowing that every person has a voice worth hearing and something to teach me.
I will commit at least one specific act of unexpected generosity, one that costs me time and/or treasure, each day. This is to train my seeing, thinking and responding to others so that generosity becomes an ingrained way of life for me.
I’d love to see what you are planning for your week. Email me your 5 or 3 or 7 point plan.
[—- To all the powerful and wonderful women in our lives. For me they are: my sister, nieces, my sons’ girlfriends, friends, and colleagues in so many places around the world and the Women who made me a dad —]
Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself in her marriage, to motherhood, to taking care of her family, but is able to develop a strong sense of herself and hold onto herself, even while being a loving wife, mother and friend.
Enriched is the woman who does not tolerate tolerate poor manners — or being taken for granted, being sworn at, being victimized verbally and physically — from anyone: not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, parents, but who appropriately, and sufficiently values herself so that she does not accommodate those who do not treat her very well.
Enriched is the woman who is fully aware that she never has to participate in sexual activity that she herself does not want, who knows that her body is her own and private temple which she shares, even in marriage, only when it is by her own sacred and deliberate and joyful and joyful choice.
Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination and intimidation, and passive-aggressive behaviors, whose relationships are pure and open, and within which she maintains a strong and valued voice.
Enriched are men who know such women, women who show up, speak up, and, as most women do, make things even more beautiful than they already are, see beauty all around and encourage all whom they know and love.
It can be a line of a novel or verses of a psalm or a thought expressed by a friend.
Psalm 139 has been doing the rounds in my head lately……here are a few of David’s thoughts about David, David’s experience:
“For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s Womb.” “….. your eyes saw my unformed body.”
A dad showed me a wallet photograph of his son, a beautiful, beautiful child, perhaps 8 or 9 years of age.
The dad was quick to express deep shame, even before telling me the child’s name, that he’d not married the child’s mother. He repeatedly said, his demeanor warped as he talked, he had sinned. His shame appeared to permit the dad very little room to ENJOY his child.
“How long will you punish yourself?” I asked, “when will you free yourself to really enjoy your son?”
Blank stare. Silence. He stared perhaps at the realization I would not join him in layering shame he so liberally embraced. The silence was perhaps needed to process the idea that his son, the “evidence,” could be enjoyed at all.
I experienced something similar with another person – when my sons were much younger – who questioned the validity and the Hand of God in my own family.
This godly man, and by all appearances quite a fine one, could not see my two adopted sons — a term I only use when pertinent to a particular context – as incredible gifts from an amazing kind, generous, extraordinary God. He harrumphed, could not celebrate my sons and me and was stuck with how my sons and I came together.
“Not God’s intent,” he concluded and EXPRESSED to me.
His theology trapped, then choked and strangled his capacity for any semblance of joy at our blessings and apparently he’d have preferred me to join him.
In both cases I saw “theology” or “church culture” or whatever suppress the joy of parenting and the joy of living.
It’s the goodness and kindness of God that leads to repentance — I think I’m just beginning to understand Romans 2:4.
I declare again, as I have many times in print and from the pulpit, every time a child is born we ought all stop whatever we’re doing (imagine it with me!) and fall to the ground, worship, and give thanks and then rise up and join hands and celebrate the miracle that is every birth.
May David’s insights about David as expressed in Psalm 139 become your insight about you and my insight about me.
There ARE NO ILLEGITIMATE children.
There are no unplanned pregnancies.
No child anywhere is an error.
May I remind you, even Jesus’ peers questioned his legitimacy.
Finding out your child has NOT been invited to an event that all the other children are attending can be very painful. Do you say something? Do you fight it? Do you let your child know? I’d suggest you talk about this before it occurs or as soon as possible if it does:
• Acknowledge the hurt. Very few things are as painful for a child as finding out about a birthday party that’s already occurred among friends. The pain is real, appropriate, and expected no matter how logical the explanation or innocent the oversight.
• Failure to include your child may have nothing to do with your child (or you). But, examine yourselves. Is there anything your child is doing, or you are doing, that makes it easier for others NOT to include your child? At least face the possibility others may consider you or your child difficult.
• Suggest your child address the omission as politely and kindly as possible with the friend. Of course age is critical here – but a stronger backbone will result!
• Encourage your child to understand the difference between hurt and damage. He or she may be hurt, but it is unlikely the experience has the power to impart damage.
• Encourage and engage in zero payback or retribution.
I have thought a lot about how family members are linked – connected: nourished, or drained? – and checked out exactly how it has been for me in the past 24 hours I have talked to my sister (Cape Town, South Africa), to my brother (Christchurch, New Zealand), to my older son (in New York, USA) and to my younger son who lives with me in Indiana, USA.
When my sons call or text and want to talk or tell me something I experience an immediate and involuntary sense of urgency. Duty or protection mode kicks in. Part of me – a small part – wants to drop everything to hear from them. It is a physiological reaction and I feel it. Almost instantly thinking takes over and delivers context and reason and I relax. “Just checking in, Dad,” from New York, and, “Can you pickup curry for dinner,” called from downstairs nourishes me through the invisible connections my sons and I enjoy.
When my brother and sister phone I am always nourished and encouraged. There is no “alert” within. I like to think it is the same for my siblings when I reach out to them.
difficultrelationships.com 