My wife went to a high-profile communication trainer’s presentation, out of curiosity, to see what other people emphasise about communication and how they do it. She came home in a state of shock. This guy – the communication expert – was preaching that communication was a war, a struggle and that it was all about being better and stronger than the other one, that it was all about getting to a higher ground, having power over the other in order to finally crush them down. And win the battle. While preaching this, he was, with his superior rhetoric abilities, humiliating people in audience who dared to ask questions, making fun out of people not present, using the losers – winners distinction all the time… He was the absolute winner, of course.

When my wife described the scene to me, I was in a state of shock too. Wait a minute; this is what this communication trainer is teaching? That it is all about fighting, winning over, crushing down? I understand communication as coming together, you know, the communion, connecting, achieving understanding and then working together on finding the ways for meeting everybody’s needs, for cooperation and coexistence… And, pardon me; this is what I teach at my communication trainings.

Up to now I was living in a romantic world, I can see. I believed that every communication trainer saw communication, more or less, in the very similar way: connecting, getting together, and achieving understanding. I believed every conflict-resolution trainer perceived conflict resolution within a basic framework: achieving true understanding and respect of each other’s needs and values, then working together on finding strategies that will meet everybody’s needs. I believed we lived in the same world. How naive, how very naive of me.

I will continue teaching what I believe communication is all about, of course. But I will be less surprised when observing political arena in which everybody speaks and nobody ever listens. Because I will know that they have been taught, by their high class communication trainers, to attack, to humiliate, to make fun out of… They were trained to not listen, to not understand, to not move and to not be influenced. They were trained to fight and to win over.

I will understand that they are just being good students.

And then I will continue my fight with the windmills.

When I first started this blog, I asked for topic ideas. My good friend Robert asked me to compare high school and college. I decided I would wait until I had a little experience before writing it.

First I must thank God. He blessed me with great professors, all of which I would take their class at any moment.

I am now one final exam short of completing my first semester. So here are the differences:

First I only went to college 13 hours a week compared to 35 hours in high school (excluding lunch). I also only went Mon-Thurs, 8 am-10:45 am everyday instead of Mon-Fri 8:50 am-4:05 pm.

I spent a lot of my studying time at the NVC (Northwest Vista College) library. Speaking of the library, they have very few picture books here. I needed a simple book on planets, and everything they had was like Astrology or “Is Pluto really a planet?” I ended up borrowing a high school book from a friend. Thanks Bethany

I think I wrote more papers in high school (journalism) but it would be close. i finished this semester writing  about 25 pages on about 8 assignments. i enjoy writing so it was no big deal.

Something that was completely different was for two days i was up for 36 hours most of the time writing a paper. At one point during that time, i started at 9 pm, went to sleep at 5:30 am, woke up at 7:30 am, showed up at NVC at 7:55 in time for my 8 am class. I NEVER STAYED up past 12 am studying in High School. I must admit, I enjoyed every second. I felt like an official college kid.

I also went on 3 times the field trips in one semester at NVC than all my years at Stevens High combined! I finished this semester attending about 18 field trips.

A thing that is hard for me to comprehend right now is the friendships. NVC encourages professors to allow their students to work in groups. Saying that, I built good friendships with students these past 16 weeks. It was hard saying goodbye to them. Almost like my last day of high school. 

I NEVER thought I’d say this, but i actually enjoyed my first semester. I start the spring semester with 25 hours. i am looking forward to the 15 hours I plan on taking.

Marshall Roseberg, in his writings on Nonviolent Communication, lists seven categories of needs we all have: autonomy, celebration, integrity, interdependence, physical nurturance, play, and spiritual communion. Under these come a number of needs. One of them is “contribution to the enrichment of life.”

I have been volunteering at Easton Mountain since 2003 and a full-time volunteer-resident since 2006. It has fulfilled my need for contributing “to the enrichment of life” by working for the welfare of gay men and all humanity. The years I’ve been here have been the richest and most satisfying years of my life. I’ve worked with many men who have volunteered for short of long periods – as well as men on the paid staff.

Men volunteer at Easton Mountain for many reasons. Most want to be able to contribute to the mission of Easton – to create a world where gay men can live in an environment that supports them. But often volunteers also have personal goals. They want time to reflect in an atmosphere that supports their spiritual growth. They want to explore new paths of spirituality or have time to explore their personal path.

I take an interest in helping volunteers have the experiences they seek and in reaching their personal goals. I’ve taught one man to crochet; I’ve helped several men learn techniques of meditation; I’ve given free sessions in Energy Healing; I’ve helped some men develop their own abilities as healers; and I’ve assisted some in exploring erotic spirituality. If their goals are outside my expertise, I have them connect with other residents and staff who can help them.

If you are interested in volunteering at Easton for a weekend, a week, a month or a season, please contact me for more information.

I feel weighted.  There is such a responsibility in learning, isn’t there?  I mean, pleading ignorance is one thing, but once you’ve become aware of or learned something new, it’s really difficult to pretend that you didn’t it.  I just can’t do that…  This NVC training as I’ve now talked about 3 times was so…deep.  I feel like it kicked up so much emotional sand that I’m really not sure where to go from here.  I’m inspired and motivated, but also terrified and overwhelmed.  Sigh.  I need a solitary retreat is what I need and unfortunately, my trip up North isn’t exactly going to provide that.  Yes, there will be many solo nights, but there is also a mountain of urgent work that has to be addressed and so, any attempt at zen-like reflection time will be tainted by fevered whispers telling me I have too much to do to be musing at length about feelings and needs.

Partially due to a related in-law family discussion last night and partially due to my total lack of giving a crap-ness about it this year, I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on Christmas.  Does anybody truly relax and enjoy the holiday season?  And by anyone, I mean of those who choose to “celebrate” it.  In my mind I want to believe it’s a time to enjoy each other and eat well and share connection, but really, I just experience a lot of stress, money-spending, and social pressures related to it.  And it’s not so much the in-the-moment times of Christmas, because they can be really beautiful, a lot of it has more to do with everything that builds up prior to Christmas and then having your time split here there and everywhere with varying degrees of expectation attached.  If you’ve discovered the secret or have some magical fix (that isn’t alcohol because of course that’s already my coping mechanism of choice) please, please share it with me.

Yup, still feeling quite drained.  I just have no idea how to create proper balance in life it seems and until I’m really honest with myself and the people around me about my limits, I just don’t think I’ll ever get there.  Yet another thing I’m wondering.  Is balance even possible?  It seems like a thing that can be achieved, but only at the expense or loss of something else completely.  So, limits again I guess.  Argh.

Last evening, my 7 year old son, started crying and it was quite unusual for him, the crying continued and he became more and more agitated…. tears and words were flowing non stop. I had no idea what triggered the outburst, but there he was blaming everything and everyone – sister, friends, teachers, mother – the whole world was at fault. I stopped and sat with him and started listening to him, except that this time, I decided to put into practice what I was learning. I started listening to something deeper than the words, I was listening to the feelings and needs behind the outburst, without blaming and judging. It took him exactly three minutes to vent out and come out with the original need – all he wanted was a toy aeroplane and once he said that, the need disappeared and so did the crying.

It was a conversation, where I put the focus back on him and all I did was listen with all my heart – and it was exhilarating for me.

I was able to put into practice the process of receiving empathically.

Today morning, there was another difficult conversation that I was part of and I was so glad to handle it the way I did.

NVC is described as a process of communication or a language of compassion, but it is more than a process or language. On a deeper level, it is an ongoing reminder to keep our attention focussed on a place where we are more likely to get what we are seeking.

“Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. We often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.

In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs and requests.

NVC helps us connect with each other and ourselves in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish. It guides us to reframe the way we express ourselves and listen to others by focussing our consciousness on four areas: what we are observing, feeling, and needing, and what we are requesting to enrich our lives. NVC fosters deep listening, respect, and empathy and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. Some people use NVC to respond compassionately to themselves, some to create greater depth in their personal relationships, and still others to build effective relationships at work or in the political arena.

You can read more about NVC at their website.

If you have been practicing meditation, Sudarshan Kriya or any other allied techniques to still your mind, I think it becomes much easier to put NVC in practice. Go give it a spin.

So the Spring Catalog came out for the 2010 semester at Napa Valley College. I haven’t even been able to finish this week of classes before my mom is on my ass about knowing what classes I’m gonna take. First of all I really want to take a lot of my classes with Claudia this semester since that would essentially be the only time I would get to see her. She comes back from El Salvador tomorrow. Gosh, she has such an amazing life and I don’t think she even realizes it. I mean think about it…she has 2 brothers who are always on her side (for the most part) no matter what. She has overprotective parents, but they love her and she is still as free as someone could get. She’s got all this family around that doesn’t make her feel like they are choking her. Now that’s probably because she doesn’t have quite as many people in her family as I do and one of her brothers is on the other side of the U.S., but still. The thing I admire most about her is that she has a job and a best friend she can count on whenever she needs someone to talk to (Bee) and she also knows what she wants to do with her life and she understands the college world and the people in it and she is surrounded by sooo many friends I’m almost jealous of her. I honestly do wish that my four brothers cared at least a little like they do in the movies where the brother and sister who are close in age are really really good friends….that doesn’t really happen in real life does it? I mean I’m not saying that my brothers are my enemies….they just aren’t really my friends like those movie-brothers are with their movie-sisters. Also, the movie-best friend. The person who somehow is actually able to leave whatever they are doing and go to their best friends’ aid whatever they need. Most people don’t have that ability and they are just stuck in whatever place they are just worrying and waiting…..I really hate worrying and waiting. Anyway it’s early…wow 1:30am…hmmm I really am worried about my life, which is probably why I can’t sleep. I’ve done nothing, but gone to school, hung out with Bee, and done my homework every school day until present. I have never had to do anything else so when I left Trinity and into the scary world of NVC, I did it alone because for some reason I don’t have the physical ability to be that person who can go to their friends and just talk to them about whatever is going on in your mind, even though I will gladly listen when they need to. It’s not that I don’t love my friends cause I really do I just don’t feel like I can talk to them about some things and then I don’t like talking to my parents about anything or my other family members. So at the end of the day all I have is me and no one else around to be that movie-best friend who waits on your front porch with a carton of your favorite ice cream and a sad movie on a hard day. Who will stay with you until you fall asleep and the one you know will always be there no matter what they will literally be right there beside you…..always. Thanks for listening

Sara

Conflict occurs in all areas of life.  Have you ever thought about seeking additional training to deal with difficult (or even ordinary) conflict?  If so, register now for an opportunity to be trained in basic mediation! 

The Community Mediation Center, located at 4801 Colonial Drive, Columbia, SC  29203, is offering a 24 hour course “Basic Training Mediation“,  from 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM on January 26th – 28th of 2010 (you must attend all sessions).  The 24 hour training will prepare anyone — including parents, educators, business and human resource professionals — to begin mediating conflicts. 

An additional bit of great news is that the $150 registration fee will be waived for participants who are being sponsored through community organizations, including churches.  All that’s required for this discount is that the individual receiving church sponsorship must agree to act as a mediator in the future for members of their neighborhood or community as part of the Community Mediation Center’s Community Mediator Initiative. 

Questions should be directed to Timothy or Dorothy at the Community Mediation Center, phone 803-714-1176. 

If you’re interested in attending this training, the time is now to block out the days on your calendar and to ask your church to sponsor you! 

A few months ago, one of our most active Sangha members did a small workshop on nonviolent communication (NVC) as something different to do. Since that evening, I often return to what was discussed and presented there as a method to help me on a good path to Right Speech.

As silly as this may sound, it is just so easy to let ourselves be taken by the ego’s natural response to difficult situations, in particular in intimate relationships. As I am no exception, I often find myself wishing I had acted more skillfully when someone needed comfort or support of some kind. Unfortunately, more often than not my ‘gut reaction’ to such situations tend to be of either helplessness or worse, annoyance.

This is where I think NVC can help, not for others but for myself, to help me be a better, more caring person. So recently, I did some research and found a good introduction by a Marshall Rosenberg. His book “Nonviolent Communication: A language of life” is available for preview on Google books and many of the concepts presented there echo some of the things I’ve been pondering myself such as culturally programmed behaviour,equality, and the inappropriateness of language in certain situations.

So I’ve now ordered the book and hope it’ll help me on my quest.

Starting with an NVC check in.

I judge that I am making a new breakthrough in understanding and developing an ability to communicate my developing understanding of the relationships between people and the Universe of which we are a part. I have a strong urge to devote the rest of the day towards this.

I feel excited and anxious.

My needs for understanding and being understood are being met. My need for personal care is not.

Since I am aiming to meet all of my needs – I observe that following my urge to do a lot of reading and studying to follow up what it is that I have been reading */to the exclusion of other activities/* will not meet enough of my needs to maintain my health (or wholeness).

The request I therefore make is to conduct a review of my needs and how best they may be met.

Wow! This is exciting. I now find myself where I was when I started this blog with a bottom-up approach to what I might do to meet my needs. NVC meeting GTD

For the first time it feels intuitive to do something positive with the great big pin-board wheel shaped plan of my life that I abortively started many months ago. It also feels good that this should happen in a balanced way – dealing with it in just the healthy way that is the reason for doing it in the first place:

- Fifty-five minute hours with the */spare/* five minutes for house-keeping activities.

So I start with saying yes to another coffee; and ordering lunch

Thanks for all the great ideas for NVC at the meeting, guys! I’m really excited about the potential of this project

Returning to the earlier post on reactivity and pants. For starters, I believe it is never  really about them pants or whatever becomes a trigger for our reactivity, although in the situation when it actually occurs it can be very hard to see it.  We so much want to believe that the root of our discomfort lies outside ourselves that we start believing it and acting on it. For me the question is not whether to pick up the pants or not but rather what I can learn from my reactivity around it:  why and how matter more than what.  This is not to give myself yet another reason to beat myself up over something but to see what underlying beliefs run the weather of my emotional and mental landscape.

If you don’t realize the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow

Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching

For starters I look at the questions like:

• What happened here?
• Why was it so important to me?
• Why did I get so angry?
• What is the belief I am holding on to?

And finally I want to know:

• What would my life look like without that belief?

NVC is not the only model that holds that expressing our needs and having them met is important for us. In one of the podcasts on Just for Women the guest was advocating direct communication and advised already on the first date  be open about one’s needs,  “These are my needs. What are yours?”.  I scratch your back if you scratch mine. Nothing wrong with the business-like exchange of this kind if both parties are aware that the relationship is based on this sort of transaction rather than on emotional connection where you like the person and not what they can do for you.

This is where I started wondering: how often do we actually like the person and not what they can do for us? How reasonable is it for me to assume that others will volunteer to help me satisfy my needs or will do it long enough to keep me happy? How does this belief influence my relationships?

Looking at the history of my own relationships (romantic as well as friendships) I realised that time after another I expected people to be a certain way (so my needs would be met?)  Needless to say it never was as I expected.  People did not want to, didn’t have capacity or didn’t know how to make me happy (and isn’t that the implication of having one’s needs met?) and I often would end up feeling let down and abandoned.  There was no understanding on my part that knowing and respecting my needs and making others responsible for meeting them would never make a ground for a healthy and sustainable relationship not to mention it had nothing to do with the unconditional love.

Do I know better now? I hope so! Still I can notice the contraction when a friend says no or when a lover asks for more space. I feel my ego cringe. What am I attached to here?  The whole issue of needs leads me – again! – to the subject of self and no self (or true self) and those masks (personas) we wear and identify with when we hold on to a particular belief. It all seems to be evolving around the same topic – identification, the me-ing.

Photo: Josef Verbok

Routine has been difficult to establish. Sitting down to do work isn’t so hard except for that sense in the house that there is always something else that needs doing.  But I finally reclaimed my desk space.  So I have a better dedicated space with fewer distractions.

Math and Me and God and Ph.D.s and logic and oh my head hurts.

I was recently laid off or RIF’d (Reduced in force) or outsourced or some such by my employer of seven years. So among the other duties is thinking about and acting on replacing my paycheck with more than unemployment benefits.  But I also want to work in an industry I have respect for.  So I am being careful and choosey about whom I apply with.  Of course with the employment market being what it is that might be a poor strategy. But I really do not want to find myself taking a job that I dread going into everyday.  So I am attempting to be deliberate and measured in my search.  All this has little to do with school work except that it factors into my day’s organization and “stuff.”

 So last night I sat my butt down and got back to the Bayesian probability world.  I had decided to continue into the book even though I was not convinced I understood the logic behind the entire Bayesian theorem yet. I would just accept it for the moment.  Maybe it would get clearer as Unwin continued.  Maybe he would explain in a new way and maybe something would click.

 Not yet. And I started having more questions about the way he was handling the evidence. I have a feeling there is something about the way mathematicians work that I am missing.

  I mapped out on poster board all the pieces I am learning as I understand them and then came to a full stop at the first part that I don’t get.  If you happen to be reading the book it is on pages 50 and 51.  I am not sure I understand why.  But I gave in and moved on to play with the theorem and then followed on to Unwin’s logic in using the evidence he put forth.  That is in chapter seven. And I hit another wall.  Why is he building on one piece of evidence to determine the probability of God’s existence and then using that probability as a factor in determining the probability with a new piece of evidence and so on until he gets thru all the pieces. Why not figure them all individually and then average them out.  What am I missing? 

 So I stopped for a while and have sent a question or three on to my advisor.

Non Violent Communication

Another part of my weekend involved working on a curriculum for a theatre workshop I run through the recreation departments in my communities.  I have run this workshop in one form or other for about nine years and have finally started formalizing the curriculum for several reasons, but recently was asked if I could supply it to one of my fellow Goddard buddies…  As I was writing away on it last week I realized my reading on Non Violent Communication fits in completely with the workshop. That is wonderful I will have a practical way to use it from the start.  Here is my roughed out description of the goals of the class.

 Goals of a Theatre For Kids Workshop

1. To stage a play over the course of 8 weeks of classes meeting once a week.
2. Offer children an early experience with performance. 

This is just a jumping off place for a child who might want to go on from here.  Be prepared to refer parents to professional theatrical programs in your area if their kids want to take this further.

1. Provide opportunity for class participants to recognize and improve skills they use in performance as well in life.

• Awareness of their space and speech.
• Presentation
• Interacting with others

1. For kids to experience success in their endeavors and recognize that even a little work can be some fun. To paraphrase Cyndi Lauper, ~kids just want to have fun~, but they also want to please people and to see success from effort.  This curriculum is designed to provide something for each participant to reach for within their means.  While children will have stumbling blocks in the class and in their lives, there is something successful in getting from the beginning of a process to the end.  While not every child will be class president or get an “A” in math, they each should find some value in (they won’t be able to express it) the experience of not knowing what they will be doing on day one and finding a point of completion on day eight. It is doable, it is measurable and it is healthy. 

Not a bad weekend. Just a busy one.

Happy Monday All!

Leaving to meet Andy Mason in 15 mins. I have wobbly feelings regarding my role on the Brighton Unemployed Centre Family Project’s board of Trustees. I have unmet needs. Good solid Nonviolent Communication territory.

However, what I felt was that the organisation itself had unmet needs. My question to Andy is whether an organisation can have unmet needs? If so, how might that work? Lots of questions

Time to leave on a quest to meet my needs.

Listened to the show with Alissa Kriteman on Just for Women, on which she shared about using the NVC model in daily communication because she now could make sure her meets were met. As an example Alissa gave a not entirely unusual situation in which the partner leaves his pants lying on the floor. She approaches him saying something in the line of , “Honey, would you be willing to put your pants in the laundry basket?”. As I understand, in the NVC model we are to express our feelings, voice a request but also say what need this request would meet and why it is so important to us. In the example above Alissa did not do those steps so in fact the request was formulated in the usual way, not following the NVC model. In the partner’s place I might simply ask her “Why would I want to do that?” and carry on.

Say I were in the same situation and actually used NVC. What kind of need would I expect to be met in this case? Possibly the need for the house to be tidy. For starters, can we really see that as a need? Secondly, what if I before turning to the parner with my obsession about keeping the place tidy, looked at this so called need of mine and asked myself, “Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?”  I’d encourage myself to not accept any fluffy answers but really look into the “why” behind.  After all, I am interested in the truth. This is how the inquiry could go (easy to imagine as I used to obsess about things being “in the right places”):

- Why is it so important for me that the place is tidy?

- Hmmm… Because I feel very uneasy when I see things lying on the floor.

- What is about it that you experience as uneasy? (The reformulated why).

- Hmmm… I feel guilty about not looking after the place.

- Why? (Where does the guilt come from?)

- Because my mother used to tell me how that “nice girls” always had their homes tidy.

- Anything else?

- Because if one of my friends pops in, they might think I am sloppy! I don’t want my friends to think I am sloppy while it is T. who is creating the mess around here.

(Getting somewhere with but still there is some digging to do).

- Why is it important for you that your friends don’t think you are sloppy?

- Because I want them to like me and think of me as someone who can take care of their home!

This is really hard work, challenging myself to go deeper and see what I am really asking for: it is about me trying to live up to my mother’s expectations of me being a “nice girl” and about my own ego. Are these my values? Do I really believe my friends will stop liking me if they see a pair of pants on the floor? What if they do (stop liking me)?  For me the valuable piece of information in this internal inquiry is how my emotional well-being and a sense of self-worth is dependent on other people’s approval and actions: my friends’, my mother’s, my partner’s. I need to ask myself at this point if I really believe other people can give me self-worth and make me happy?

Also, can we really call this a need? To me it sounds more like a wish rather something that I need. If I do decide this is a need, is it really something I should push for being met? Maybe I can take this as an opportunity to instead of asking someone fix the situation for me,  look at my own reactivity and choose otherwise? Whatever the result of this investigation, it allows me to be more honest with myself and others. Even if I still find that these pants on the floor are bothering me, I can voice the request with more understanding about where it comes from,  “I have this neurosis about your pants lying on the floor in their place and I am working on it. Would you be willing to help me by picking them up and hanging them in the closet?” At the same time, I can see that just like I am acting out my habituated patterns so can my partner be acing out his and this is where I can feel more compassion for him, instead of simply being irritated and eager for him to take on my values (my mother’s values!). So the problem is not my partner being sloppy (they might as well be), but that these pants push my buttons and it’s helpful to know why.

Ok, enough with the pants. While I really appreciate the part of the model where we are to identify and express how we feel about things, I am ambivalent about the motives behind the whole structure: why do we want to become better at communicating in the first place? People often talk about having those needs met and how wonderful it is.  That is I want to communicate better in order that you get to know what it is I need and satisfy my need.  It is all about me and my needs. Is this truly a better communication? For whom?  How non-violent is it? Of course, the model itself is not violent, but I anticipate that in many situations it can result in a subtle form of verbal and emotional manipulation: by telling people why this need is important to me (“It is important that the place is tidy”) I make it more difficult for them to say no to my request and lift something that can be a result of a habituated pattern to the level of a need.

My point here is we should try to become aware of the motives behind our requests before turning to others to fix our problems. One of the greatest needs of all – us feeling fulfilled and happy – cannot be met by others changing their habits or liking us.

What are our experiences of NVC? In what situations using NVC really helped you to resolve the situation?

10:30

- Check and deal with new emails.
- Email Andy Mason re his NVC/assertiveness course at the BUCFP.

Doing this whilst listening to comedy on Radio 7. Finding it difficult to concentrate on my emails – the radio is too entertaining. I guess it should go off. Still listening though! I feel like taking a break till the end of Just a Minute…
11:30-ish

12:00

- Successfully switched off radio
- Swapped to desktop computer for entertainment. I have been listening to Dr Who and the Zarbi.
- Wanted to transfer at least some of my audio book / radio play stuff to my little Eee Pc which only draws about 22W of power.
- This led to exploring Dr Who and Dalek related stuff – ordered the last 2 Dalek Empire IV cds.
- Could only find a tiny 64Mb USB device to transfer files – took a while – resampled audio quality with Audacity so they would fit!
- Now I can switch off power-guzzling desktop pc – but not before getting distracted by wikipedia articles on sub-notebooks and netbooks and low power atom processors to discover whether I want to replace by little asus eeepc 701-4G – the answer is that taking size, weight, robustness, battery-life, Linux friendliness, and cost as primary – the answer is no – I am extremely happy with what I have got.

18:10

Oops, what happened to the time??? Perhaps I should get back to setting alarms for myself – sometimes works.

Still happy, though not a very productive day – only a tiny step toward saving the planet.

OK, finally some time to catch my breath. I am not complaining over the speed of my life in the last few weeks, but I really started to desperately need somebody press the pause button:

• first there was a one-week NVC training in Greece. I can hear you going: “Oh, bastard, I hope he is not going to complain how hard THAT was”. No, absolutely not, I am not going to complain, since it was truly fulfilling, all this swimming in the ocean of genuine connection with myself and with people around me, discovering new worlds within and devouring the beautiful environment, human as well as just simply sun, sea and Greece around. But it was intense, nevertheless.
• immediately upon our return we both dived into a week of leading trainings every day, with loads of work that needed to be done in between.
• in addition to that my blogging mate from down under, Razz and his wife Engogirl dropped by and stayed with us during that week – which meant a lot of inspirational sharing, eating and drinking (Razz is a hell of a cook so I urge you to invite them to your home). He can also teach your kids about photography, his wife will teach them mathematics and engineering, they will do gardening…, what can I say, another cool guests to have in the house.
• in the midst of it all we needed to pack again and off we flew for a week in Norway, to give a nonviolent conflict resolution training (me) and an intercultural skills training (Marjeta) in this inspirational college where we like to go so much.

Anyway, here I am, in this wet and windy Norway, just back from a long run, feeling how my system is slowly calming down and getting ready to start with the workshop tomorrow, with blissful silence and serenity of nature all around.

And in this process of slowing down I sort of remembered that I am actually writing a blog and that it has been getting pretty dusty and rusty, with me not finding time to post things regularly. Which led me to recall how the other day Razz was sharing his weird experience with the flow of visits on his blog. And than this lead me to remember another blogger Hayden, who told me that her blog got enormous amounts of visitors when she once posted a photo of Monica Bellucci. You know, the search engines thing – people searching for naked photos of Monica…

And this thought got my dirty mind going.

In a weird direction.

Toward the dark side of the Force.

And out came a plan, a vicious plan indeed.

So, let me show you some photos. Firstly may I introduce you to the gorgeous and sexy yet not naked Monica Bellucci (notice how smart the wording in this sentence is?)

And here is the photo of equally gorgeous and sexy yet not naked Angelina Jolie.

To be attentive to the female population as well, here comes a photo of the handsome and sexy yet not naked Brad Pitt (I will never understand why some women tend to deny this that he is really cool)

And, last but not least, here comes handsome and sexy yet not naked George Clooney (some of you may remember I have a special connection with him, others will understand too if they only care to dig deep into the comments in this post of mine)

So, let’s see if this shakes the rust and dust off my blog. 

And for all those innocent souls that stepped right into my diabolic trap; this is a nice personal blog, you see, so why don’t you sit back and relax, have a cup of tea, feel at home and click around a bit. You may even find it enjoyable.

In America, and a lot of places I’ve been, it’s acceptable if not expected that you rip on your friends. I tease my Austrian friend Andy for sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger (even though he really doesn’t) and still tease my sister for her tragic “sun-in” hair mistakes growing up. There’s no ill intent here. It’s just good old-fashioned fun.

There’s a guy here, who I’ll call Johan (which isn’t his name, but that’s what I’ve accidentally been calling him) who wanted to understand this American phenomenon, but just didn’t quite get the point. I told him that as we built a rapport with one another, it was natural for me to start ripping on him a little bit, so we’d both have a laugh. I would expect him to do the same.

But poor Johan didn’t understand. I told him that there were boundaries that you don’t cross. You don’t normally talk about family or something that is intensely personal. For that, you would probably be called an asshole or not be welcomed back into a group of friends.  I said, for example, that you would never insult someone’s mother (if one were the least bit classy) and I said if you insulted my sainted mother, I would punch him in the face. I would expect the same treatment. It’s just not cool.

Then, Johan said the unexpected.

“I want you to insult my mother. Every time, I hear something that is called ‘taboo’ I want to explore it.”

“I’m not going to insult your mom,” I said. “Your mother deserves better than that. Obviously she raised a nice guy [to which he agreed] and is probably a very nice person. “

“Yes, but how do you know she would be insulted by that,” Johan asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m insulted that you want me to insult her. It’s not cool, man. Not cool.”

I still can’t believe he would be willing to let someone insult his mother so he can “experience” these so called “taboo” behaviors. That’s just not normal. It’s kind of sad.