Being a part of a community* with lots of people, naturally means that we regularly come across what seem as endless mounds of problems and hang-ups. However, I've learned in the last stint of my life that being a healthy community isn't necessarily defined by the quantity of problems that you grow beyond, but rather the manner in which you deal with them.
For instance, I would rather my gravestone say "He was a grumpy and hard man, but he sure as hell tried to love people," rather than "Look at what this man accomplished."
So we all spend a lot of time talking with the folks in our lives, trying to figure out how to go about learning and moving forward as a whole community in the most healthy way. I've come to know these conversations as times of translation. It seems as if I'm either helping to translate for someone else, that someone else is translating for me, or more often than not a little of both.
While, in the midst of translation the other day, I had a friend bring to my attention something I often forget about, especially in these conversations. We talked about the difficulty of receiving advice from a source because of a certain air that can often come when sharing something you feel well versed in and feel is a needed addition to a conversation. Frankly, it's often hard to hear a person's loving advice, no matter how helpful, because of the air in which it's given.
I know it's not only the responsibility of the listener to process the words given to them, but also the responsibility of the giver to be conscious of the manner in which his/her gift is given.
So in thinking about why I would want to give advice in the first place, I realized that my words can often be totally misheard just do to the air in which I speak them.
I've know this for a long time, but it was good to be reminded of the fact that good advice is given not so that the source can be accredited but so that it enables the receiver to really take hold of that advice and decided for themselves how to apply it, if even at all in the first place.
*here used in reference to a group of people who share life together loosely and sometimes intimately
