An Open Book

One aspect of social media that I find hard to deal with is getting glimpses into our daughter’s life that she might not realize she’s sharing – which highlight the differences between the world I grew up in and the world she is dealing with. (And our grandkids and great grands too).

I am an open book. but written in an old and cryptic language.

In my mid 70’s I can afford the luxury of being just who I am. I’ve probably been lucky in being able to do so for a more significant part of my life than salary workers or some professionals because I’ve been self-employed, But our daughter has been with a company for 30+ years; shes in her fifties; and life choices come with

consequences. She has more vacation time than God. She works (over 70% of the time) from home. The company is stable and growing in a controlled manner. Life is pretty good. But there are tensions.

I’m no stranger to tensions. I listen. I comment a little – hoping only to offer supportive perspective. But mostly I find my self saddened that we have turned the world into what it has become.

And that brings me to my graphic for today. As we age, even if we are an open book, the language we speak through action and word is a cryptic language. Others, younger than us, or less experienced, may not understand our words, they may not be able to visualize the circumstances, they may not have the same context into which to place the ideas.

I find it harder to communicate. It’s not always about needing to share, sometimes it’s even just knowing how to LISTEN. I find a lot of people don’t do very much of that and I know that many times what is really needed is a listening ear to hear someone else work out their own problems through the act of sharing them. I know I did that a lot in my younger days. Just being able to speak the trouble out loud allowed my brain to notice details that had not been previously apparent and in discovering them to reach new and usable solutions.

I see and hear a lot of discussion about peoples problems, certainly social media is filled with people trying to do what I was just talking about – but typing it out isn’t the same as speaking the words and HEARING THEM with your EARS. Besides — how many people contribute HELPFULLY on social media. There’s a lot of snark. A lot of thumbs up, smileys, wows, etc., but not a lot of honest to goodness personal interaction. And we all need that.

I’ll keep trying to find ways to make my language less cryptic to those interact with. I hope you do too.

Cheers for today and stay safe.