November 9, 2009The freedom to be lighthearted

Filed under: This Week in the World by merylrunion |

I’ve had a lot of meaningful conversations with my Dad lately. And our conversations in my last visit about what two-letter words are allowed in our scrabble competition were among my favorites.

As someone who never used to know how to initiate the important conversations, it’s such a delight to be able to relax into mundane ones, knowing the important ones are taken care of. If you don’t know how to SpeakStrong when it matters, it’s difficult to be lighthearted and play. I remember times when every communication had some kind of an agenda – looking for an opening to say what had gone unsaid for so long. Testing the waters and retreating if they seemed turbulent. Thinking more about what needed to be said than what was.

One of the benefits of Speaking Strong when you need to is it frees you up to be lighthearted when you can.

I heard once that the purpose of words is to create silence. Not an awkward silence where people are ignoring the elephant in the living room, but a comfortable silence where they are enjoying a sense of communion over tea. Or a sense of communion over two-letter words that can make the difference between being able to play your high-scoring seven-letter word or not.