Learning to Love: Feedback

Does communication depend on the lover’s capacity to ‘send’ his message of love? Does it depend on the loved one’s capacity to ‘receive’? Is it the message of love, itself, that determines the quality of mutual ‘communion’ in their communication? Is it the code, .. the ‘decoding’, or the ‘channel’ ? It is clear that all are important: the lover, as sender; his message, coded to his ´loved ones’ understanding; the channel used to transmit it with fidelity; and the willingness of the ‘loved one’s’ open reception to accept the message of Love.
Much of loving is about communication. Hence, the importance of analyzing all the elements involved, to try to solve the difficulties in the relationship between ‘lover’ and ‘loved one’.
We were talking about it the other day, while catching up on family gossip. We debated over Dr. Gary Chapman’s five codes used in close communication between loved ones:
·         -Use of kind words
·         -Touch
·         -Gifts
·         -Quality time and
·         -Service

These five codes were identified, after studying the problems of thousands of couples who reported these as their main dissatisfactions.

“The gist is..” we all agreed, “..that both, the lover and the loved one, should speak the same language, for fluent communication in a good relationship”.  We came to this conclusion, when we each admitted that our problems communicating with our respective partners, stem from differences in the codes we used;  one partner, trying to show love in a language, misunderstood and rejected by the other. I, for example, show love as my mother did, through ‘service’. However, my ex-husband ( who is still part of our extended family), joined in admitting that the  ‘service’ given as love, made him feel  it was ‘duty’, tending, rather to reject it, because it made him feel guilty.

However, later, while my ex-husband and I walked on the beach, alone, we both agreed that it was not enough for the sender to try to code his message with fine fidelity to his inner authenticity; nor was it enough for the partner to ‘receive’ the message with open acceptance…both had to share their mutual perceptions, distinctly identifying subjective differences, in the exchange. This ‘feedback’ allows for the ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ of their interactive discourse, to re-create synergy in a ‘synthesis’, both can identify and share.

I don´t think this is the only emotional alphabet, in love. Maybe these 5 languages are really ‘channels’ used to transmit our personal ‘coding’ .

 Everyone develops their own alphabet in love, as they each assign personal ‘meaning’ to different ways of transmitting it (channels): the way we touch, the emotions we express, the words we transmit or the  gifts we give. What is important is that love cease to be the abstraction of our mere intention, to become ‘real’ with our manifest ‘actions’, in the present’.

 

Leaning to Love: Meaning

In the beginning was the “Word”; the “Alpha” and “Omega”; the Idea…of God/Love. Then, there was the ‘receptor’ (lat.: re-again; capio/ere- capture); the container; the concept.

If the first idea is God/Love, the conceptual containers are ‘Mothers. This stem-source of Ideas and their manifestations (or better said ‘woman-ifestations’), through concepts, is then divided and subdivided into ‘mesh-words,’ that state shared positions, opinions and stances. Families would be these existential ‘position-statements’. As ideas continue their fissions and fusions into the multiple interpretations among families, we create communities of inter-relatedness. They all require understanding in a common code.

This Spring break, my sisters and I spent time with our Mother, who is still the conceptual mold within our family. If ideas are liquid, she is the container that determines their shape. I confirmed, that the beliefs and meaning that she has given to her ideas, have molded the vessels of understanding in our homes, their rules and the interpretation we all assign, to  Love. It would seem that ideas conceived and spelt out by our Mothers, are the ones that give families their conceptual alphabet. My Mother taught my sisters and me to speak, to listen and to understand both inner and outer dialogue. It is her definitions that give us understanding of life. Even as I teach, I repeat such molding. Thus, mothers are the direct first-line-meaning that we give to words.

During our visit, my Mother urged us to teach our children to read.

“The new generations aren’t reading” she said. “We must insist that they read, so that they can develop the capacity to re-create images and project them in the imagination”.

Reading, undeniably, stimulates neural activity and opens mental maps to new ideas. But I would add…we must teach children to think..to question…to want to ‘know more’; ‘why’; ‘what for’… We must teach them to read ‘vertically’ between the lines, to see what is unseen, to intuit. We must teach them to contemplate and meditate so that they can ‘read meaning’ into their lives and not just read words. We must teach them to contact ideas first-handedly so that they can appropriate their meaning and make concepts of their own.

‘Re-cognizance’ comes when we break out of the molds that define ideas with the concepts created by mothers, and reach out to ideas, first-handedly. When we develop introspection and explore our own understanding, reassigning personal meaning to the ideas we contact, we create new concepts.  Blogs allow for such liberal exploration. They set the matrix for ‘re-presentation’ of ideas, their shared understanding and the possibility or re-creating joint meaning through interactive synergy. On internet, this networking through the ‘web’  creates cohesive bonding within communities of shared understanding.

Although ‘Ideas’ are absolutes, their experiencing is relative and individuated. Blogging gives us each, the opportunity to broaden our outlook to conceive a fuller Truth, through  shared kaleidoscopic ‘realities’. Thus, ideas become more important, even, than ourselves. You and I, and others like us, are all re-creating ideas through our imagination, our subjective interpretation and our personal experiencing, as we fill in the cells of this conceptual ‘Mother Matrix’, in the web. Finding and assigning new meaning to ideas is the revolutionary way to transcend both the literal ‘here and now’ and the local ‘me’. On the blogger, I cease to worry about the roles I have to play and the ‘persona’ I have to be, for acceptance….When I blog, I feel more authentic, because of the freedom to express my ideas.

The meaning we each give these transcendental  ideas, will allow us to re-create concepts and network through bridges of significance, to reach others. Shared understanding is the cohesive link that will transform the world.