My last blog—Holding It All Together— got quite a bit of attention. Apparently it struck a nerve that a lot of us are feeling right now, which is one of the reasons I write. To help me process the complexities of life, and to invite others to process with me.
Apparently I struck a nerve of a different sort as well, judging by the feedback I received about how difficult it is to read the blog on an iPhone, and lots of other devices as well, because the font is too small and too faint. In some cases, there is a fix for that, which I attempted to explain it in the text chain on my social media accounts. It’s sometimes possible to convert a blog to a Reader View, which utilizes a larger, darker font. The feedback continued. Some folks could convert it, others couldn’t. This is not the first time I’ve heard about this problem. My husband has said the same on several occasions, but because I love the font—Nixie One—and because I can be a wee bit defensive when challenged, I simply chalked that up to his cataracts, and kept the font.
This morning I was nattering on to him about the feedback I was receiving as we sat on our front porch with our coffee His response? “Why would you want to write something that people can’t read?” That instantly translated in my head as criticism. As if I was trying to make life harder for others, or didn’t care about them. So of course, I got defensive and shot back, “That’s not my intention. Of course I want people to be able to read it!”
It was quiet on the porch for a while.
A couple of things to unpack in this blog about a blog:
How do we communicate with the people we love?
How do we receive feedback as a gift?
In his poem, Start Close In, , David Whyte says:
“Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.”
The first step, the one close in and that we rarely want to take, is to be willing to look at how we are relating to the people we love. We do this by revisiting painful and/or difficult conversations, rewinding and reflecting together on how the conversation felt, how we each internalized what the other person said, and how going forward we can practice doing it differently. That is what the two of us did this morning, and it took all of about ten minutes to find our way to more understanding, compassion, and love. In this case it was a quick trip from criticism to compassion, not because the two of us are so amazing, but because over time we’ve cultivated the practice of starting close in. Learning to communicate differently is rarely as hard as most of us make it out to be, and with practice it can even get a little easier.
Feedback is a gift. I say that to my coaching clients, other writers, and in training classes, and I totally believe it. In principle. It’s a little harder in practice. Feedback is a gift, not because it is always true or accurate (although sometimes it is) but because it provides a perspective other than our own. The primary reason I write is to help me make better sense of life, and hopefully to help others make better sense of it too. If I want people to read what I write, why wouldn’t I make it as easy as possible for them to read it? That, in a nutshell, is what Tom, the biggest champion of my writing and message, has been trying to tell me. I think that is what everyone else was trying to tell me too…
We want to read what you have to say.
Please make it easier for us.
Thank you.
I will.
