Chatting with Your Inner SELVES: Unpacking Your Generative Communication Choices
September 23, 2023
Unity Through Diversity with Generative Communication
February 25, 2024
Happy Generative Holidays to YOU!
The holiday season is upon us! It began with a day of Thanksgiving leading us to Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, and the celebration of another New Year.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward men. . . women, children, queer, rich, poor, downtrodden, satisfied—PEOPLE everywhere!
This is the time of year when we choose to find moments to stop and reflect on our lives, our aspirations, and the degree to which we’ve met them or fallen short. We plan time to be with our friends and loved ones. We take time to give thanks, to send greetings, to make and give gifts, and to express our generosity to those in need.
We are called from someplace deep within our souls to express the essence of our humanity: to care for one another, to nurture our relationships, and to recognize our interdependence as we aspire for a more peaceful and humane world.
We seem to be able to hold these “holiday season” ideals within the contradictory backdrop of hideous happenings in our world. Presently, this includes the war in Gaza; the holding of hostages; the travesty in Ukraine; the increasing devastation of human-caused climate change; the epitome of consumption as we race to cash registers on Black Friday; and the lies, cheating, and disrespectful behavior demonstrated by too many of our elected officials and those running for office, as well millions of people who appear to support them (and even emulate their behavior).
The basic premise of Generative Communication asks if we can express our humanity by caring for one another, nurturing our relationships, and recognizing our interdependence in our everyday acts of communication? How would our ability to communicate intentionally— first with ourselves, then with others in our immediate surroundings and expanding to the larger world around us—enable us to build the sufficiently respectful relationships needed to face our challenges and disagreements with acceptable solutions?
Three human sentiments come to mind as I think about the spirit of the holiday season:
- gratitude
- loving kindess
- meaningful connection
Other virtues may come to your mind, but I’m betting the results are the same: if we examine living out—expressing—the seasonal attributes we hold dear, we can quickly recognize they are manifested through our interactions with others. We generate these virtues, sensations, and experiences, together with other humans. There’s no other way!
Gratitude
I rarely hear from my grandson James, who is in Santa Cruz finishing up a research project at UCSC. A few days before Thanksgiving, I received a surprise text:
“Hey mama bah! we should talk on the phone later this evening if you’re free! Thanksgiving’s coming up and i’ll be in california with friends, but i’ve been thinking about how wonderful thanksgivings with you are! I’m thankful for you and pops!”
I remember the tradition we started as the grandchildren came along and we hosted family Thanksgiving dinners in our home. My request to everyone around the table was for each person to express one thing for which they are thankful. Answers ranged from “my mom” or “my Lego set,“ to “my friend, Charlie” or “the food that I’m smelling, and about to eat!” As the family grew larger, we decided to maintain the tradition by expressing our “one thing” during the meal rather than before eating so the food wouldn’t get cold!
What a joy it was to receive that text from James. I was filled with gratitude, not only in that moment, but for the years of relationship we had developed together. That simple text exchange prompted a sense of gratitude in me. And it was an example of not only intergenerational communication, but also of Generative Communication, generating something good, positive, and rewarding for both of us through our interactions.
Loving Kindness
Expressions of kindness come easily at holiday time: making cookies and giving them to the neighbors, writing letters filled with wishes for happy holidays and a prosperous new year, or just letting the other guy merge into your lane when traffic is hopelessly backed up.
We instinctively put aside our self-interest and our need to be right or first or most important, and think about the other person instead. We give people the benefit of the doubt, or are quicker to forgive and forget, and we notice how good it feels to have a generous spirit during the holiday season.
Many people carry that spirit of loving kindness, respect for others, and generosity of heart every day—at least with the people they know and love. But what about the people we don’t know or love, but share space with in our workplaces, communities and planet? What would it mean to communicate generatively with people we don’t know, don’t like, or just plain disagree with altogether? What if we found a way to communicate generatively with people we claim to hate?
Generative Communication asks us to examine our own beliefs and assumptions as we open ourselves up to other points of view. It requires us to take responsibility for managing ourselves, without compromising our integrity, in the context of difficult interactions. We find an inkling of loving kindness in the form of respect for another human being and how they perceive their world, no matter how “wrong” we judge them to be.
Meaningful Connections
My husband and I just celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary. (I’m not that old, so now you know we were married very young.) We produced four amazingly brilliant children, each of whom is absolutely unique unto themselves. And they with their spouses produced eight grandchildren and three step-grandchildren. Our children and their families, thankfully, now all live in the U.S., but have settled in years past in places as far as one can imagine from our home base. Rarely are we all together at once.
Thank goodness for FaceTime, email, texting, Zoom, electronic picture frames, the U.S. Postal Service, online shopping, and all the other advantages of the modern era. We stay pretty well connected in spite of any distance apart.
But this year is special. We are spending our Christmas holiday week together in a coastal town in Mexico. My, oh my—planning for this gathering has been in the works for three years at least: finding accommodations for a large group close to the beach, saving our pennies, updating or securing passports, requesting time off from employers well in advance. It’s coming together!
It’s been 10 years since we were all together (see photo to the right). I remind myself that none of us is the same person we were yesterday or last year, much less a decade ago—or, for Ron and me, 60 years ago! We’ve grown older, wiser, and (some of us) a bit slower. Although we will miss absent loved-ones from our collective past, we eagerly anticipate welcoming new friends and learning about the ever-evolving identities of our children and grandchildren. So much exploration, growth and changes among us. Where has the time gone?
We’ll be a complex aggregate of 18 individually complex people. We have only one thing in common: we’re members of a family seeking to reconnect in meaningful ways. Who can predict how we will be together? We’ll rediscover one another and our family as an integrated whole in the moments we are together. And will do so through our interactions. My hope is that our communication is generative, but I know I can’t control the actions of others. I can only manage myself and my intentions for being genuine and fully present with each family member I’m with.
Everyone experiences the holiday season in their own way. Many of us become keenly aware of our relationships with each other and the meaning they hold for us. How might we each communicate with others in ways that express our gratitude, loving kindness, and search for meaningful connection? How might we hold on to these seasonal attributes all year round as we seek to find generative ways to be with one another, to learn, grow, create positive change, and resolve the challenges we’re bound to face every day?
It’s only through our conscious, everyday Generative Communication that we can create the realities we aspire to—together.
Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward PEOPLE everywhere.
Happy holidays!
Mary
2 Comments
Loved this Mary. It was very interesting and informative. You have a special way with words and a special family.
Marcia (Thompson )Martin Cecchini
In addition to your wonderful suggestions, one thing that helps me is sustaining positive visualizations for world peace, so desperately needed now.