The book came in today. I immediately began reading it, despite the fact that I have other homework to do.
Some really good quotes from the book:
"I can help you to accept and open yourself mostly by accepting and revealing myself to you."
"But, if I tell you who I am, you may not like who I am and it is all that I have."
"I can only know that much of myself which I have had the courage to confide to you."
"The greatest kindness I have to offer you is always: the truth."
"To refuse the invitation to interpersonal encounter is to be an isolated dot in the center of a great circle--a small island in a vast ocean."
"To reveal myself openly and honestly takes the rawest kind of courage."
"It is a law of human life, as certain as gravity; to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people... not love things and use people."
I'm halfway done with the book--it's a short book--and I have reflected upon a lot of the things Powell has said. Powell describes five levels of communication, a very fascinating phenomenon that after some thought, is applicable to the people I meet daily. I'm not going to type out the exact text so I'm simply going to summarize.
Level 5 - Cliche Conversation
The weakest response in human interaction in which there is no communication at all. "How are you?" "It's really good to see you." We talk in cliches and we mean almost nothing of what we say. If we get a really thought out answer to the question, how are you? in detail, we would be astounded. Usually, we don't bother and give the simple, "Fine, thank you."
Level 4 - Reporting the Facts about Others
We remain content on restating facts on what others have done or said. We offer no personal reflection on these facts. We simply report them, we give nothing of ourselves and invite nothing from others in return.
Level 3 - My Ideas and Judgments
There is some communication of my person. I will take the risk of telling you some of my ideas and reveal some of my judgments. My words are carefully thought out, I will carefully watch how you react. I want to be sure that you will accept me with my ideas, judgments, and decisions. If you appear bored, uninterested, disgusted, I will retreat to safer ground--change the subject, or worse, I will start to say things I suspect that you want me to say.
Level 2 - My Feelings (emotions)
The thing that most clearly differentiate and individuate me from others, that make the communication of my person a unique knowledge, are my feelings or emotions. The feelings that lie under my ideas, judgments and convictions are uniquely mine.
Level 1 - Peak Communication
(Can't really be summarized because I do not truly understand it).
Wonder if I'll ever be able to accomplish level 1.
2 comments:
We humans are programmed to behave in such a way. Everything in life comes in tiers; we look at things and put them on a shelf where they belong, usually with other similar entities. Because of this, we tend to treat the people we come across no differently. If you happen to put everyone at the Level 1 peak communication, after a while that will really lose its meaning, and it won't feel so special anymore. When the time comes to reveal yourself to that only other person, what do you get out of doing so? Probably the same as what you've been achieving already with everyone you came across. At the same time, we need to remind ourselves that familiarity breeds contempt. Certain friendships and partnerships only work the way they do because both parties keep themselves at bay without revealing too much. Mutuality reaps what mutuality gives.
Lol this book made you have an epiphany? Well its an interesting theory ql but I don' know how much you can rely on technicalities when trying to forge a meaningful relationship with someone. Lol who could this person possibly be i wonder hmmm
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