Keep Talking

Communication is hard. It's the most difficult activity in which we humans engage. And while other animals "communicate," humans are the only creatures on the planet to use language. Feel free to use your uniquely human ability to use language and argue that one in the comments below.

When I started teaching, one of the courses on my load was titled "Applied Communications." It was nothing but a "dumbed-down" speech class built around modules published in the late 1980s. I first taught the class in 1999-2000. So much had changed in just over a decade... The modules were oh-so out-of-date.

But this hadn't changed: communication is hard.

I can send what I feel is a very clear message to someone, but that message passes through filters and noise before being received and interpreted. The message, truly, is in the ears (or eyes) of the beholder. Language is infinitely complicated and communicating tainted with all sorts of external and internal "stuff" before decoded and understood. It's frightening, really, to try and make someone understand your message as you want it understood. Sometimes it requires persistence and repetition. Sometimes it requires dogged stubbornness. Sometimes it requires all the patience love can muster to make the message heard.

This I believe: words are not cheap. As a human, I know they are my most complicated tool. I've spent my life trying to understand their nuance, but still fall short sometimes. And while I can't argue against the old adage "actions speak louder than words" I believe in the power of words written or said well to send the right message. Sometimes words are all I have. Sometimes the message doesn't break through the noise and emotional stuff the first time.

This is why I keep talking. This is why I continue to send the message. This is why I won't quit.

I saw Pink Floyd on this tour. Amazing show. Keep talking.

I was Just a Child Then...

Last Saturday, I stumbled across a picture of Aimee and me dancing at a friend's wedding. It was late 2001, only six months after our own wedding. Aimee's back was turned to the camera, but it was her, wedding hair, red bridesmaid dress and all, while I'm facing the camera. I hardly recognized the boy in the picture--me. My hair was dark and full, my face bone-thin, and my grin full of boyish wonder. I was twenty-six.

Nearly eleven years later, I'm thirty-seven, my hair is a bit more grey, my face fuller, the grin more knowing, the smile of a veteran on the eve of deployment.

There's a line from Pink Floyd's "Your Possible Pasts" (from The Final Cut, their often overlooked last album with Roger Waters) which reads, "I was just a child then, now I'm only a man." I've always liked the song, despite its bleak, rather bitter take on life, and I feel that line more now than ever. I don't know when I became a man--or the man I am--sometime between the photo from that long ago wedding and now. When I look back and think about the years in between, when I think of my journey with Aimee, the birth of our children, our ups and downs, good times and bad, and her death, I realize how much has changed for the boy of twenty-six dancing with his beautiful, newlywed wife.

What would I tell that boy now if I could go back? What could I tell him about what life brought to his stoop, about the challenges he'd face, about the heartache and all the rest?

Keep smiling, I suppose. Love your beautiful wife with as much passion as you can. Life, at its best, is far too short, so live with passion. Embrace it all--good times and bad--and love like your life depends on it.