There is a strange phenomenon in the realm of existence and this rule applies in all realms of life.
There is something that continues, even beyond humanity, to the birds in the sky, to the animals on the ground, to the creatures in the sea, even to plant life. Something links at all, and that something is communication.
Our very being here
bodily and spiritually,
it is communication.
We communicate constantly. Even when we are not communicating, we are communicating, because in our lack of communication we communicate perhaps some of the most powerful messages. They are usually messages of inference and assumption: the enactment of falsehood.
In our humanity, silence, for example, communicates volumes. It can communicate exclusion, mockery, abandonment, the fact that there is no relationship, and it can even suggest love, but not usually. We usually associate silence with something negative.
We are still communicating
when we are not communicating.
When we break the connection, we often force people to question our relationship with them or our motives, or we make them question the future that we could share together, or not, as the case may be.
And yet we may have decided for good reason to break the connection. Perhaps a toxic relationship has formed that we need to break free from. The only way to do that is to stop communicating. But it is always good if we can clearly communicate what our intentions are, so that the other person can begin their grief. If they continue to attract our attention, avoidance is the only way to impose a communicated limit.
This problem becomes very practical in our electronic world when we do not receive responses to the emails or text messages that we send. It’s the same when people don’t get a response from us. It is quite normal for people to think that we have forgotten about them, or that we do not care, when we do not respond in time or do not respond at all. Perhaps we have all thought that ‘it seems that they no longer like me’ and ‘what have I done wrong?’
It would be a useful prayer, in our electronic age, to ask God every day:
‘Lord, show me what I’m communicating
negatively for not being able to communicate. ‘
‘Lord, show me what I’m communicating
through my silence.
‘Lord help me to know, too, how to keep my peace
in situations where I should be silent. ‘
‘Lord give me ways to refrain from talking
When should I keep quiet
There are times when we do not communicate of our own choosing, for good reason, but we must make it clear to the person with whom we are not communicating why we are leaving contact. Say it once and never feel the need to go back.
In other cases, the option not to communicate is possibly passive aggressiveness. That is never good. It would be better to have the conversation necessary to resolve the conflict.
In some other cases, we happen to be distracted, as the photo suggests, by a myriad of other abstractions.
Sometimes technology takes the spotlight
that human beings should occupy.
We have the opportunity to reflect how much technology replaces real communication; that our reluctance to connect, because we are so “connected” to our device, speaks in deafening tones of our relational ambivalence. And this happens in family relationships as well as anywhere else.
By not communicating, we often communicate
a message that we should not want to communicate.