Explicit, tacit, and choosing to stay put
Thursday, May 8th, 2008Of course in my last writing I focused on explicit planning in relationships. Most of my work focuses on explicit planning in relationships and then getting the plans done in surprising ways which emerge in the moment. When you come out of a hike in the woods and come out on the highway, you can choose to go left or right, and sometimes having an explicit map to show the way is desirable.
Sometimes, like hiking in the woods, I want my way to be tacit. I want to follow my senses without even thinking about where I’m going or why or how or when. This is kind of blissful for me. But when I get to a point where I don’t share connection with the woods any more, or when I’m in a relationship where we’ve lost our way and don’t know why we’re together any more, that’s when explicit communication and planning helps.
Of course, there’s the third way. I’ve had times in my life where I’ve gotten out of the woods, seen the highway racing by, not known what to do, and stopped. I’ve sat down by the side of the road. And sometimes that is okay. Sometimes that is what we want. Sometimes we don’t know what to do, and we don’t even want to know what to do. Sometimes we want to be in that place where we don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know how to make it better, and we don’t want to do anything.
What I’ve learned over the last year is, that being wherever we’re at without having a way forward is sometimes what we want. And when that happens, well, sometimes I like being okay with the not knowing and not wanting and being caught up in despair, or separation, or whatever it is. But sometimes I want to do something.
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