yay for vacation!

Today was nice! The kids started [and Daniel finished] cleaning the porch, I started cleaning the bathrooms and then got excited and de-calced all the faucets, Daniel and Caroline built a rabbit stall, Christopher and I went on a non-essential outing to buy Pokémon cards and treats, Caroline and I went to church, we had yummy meals, the weather was lovely. Success!

Result of non-essential outing: one definitely non-essential but remarkably delicious Fasnacht (aka Carnival) chocolate-cream-filled donut.

And I listened to the 22-minute audio recording for the first week of the How to Communicate Like a Buddhist course. I registered for this class last year in something of a backwards way: I'd decided to sign up for a class on nutrition; I liked it so little that I actually wrote a note to complain (I never do that!); DailyOM's customer service was unexpectedly pleasant about it and offered a refund or an exchange; and I thought, well, I could also use some help communicating, let's give this other one a try. And then...I read the first page of the course materials, saw that the second of the four "elements of right speech" was "don't exaggerate" and thought nope, not willing to give that one up yet...

But here we are a year later and maybe I am up to it this time. In the first week's recording the instructor says that the purpose of communication is to help alleviate suffering in ourselves and others. That's sounds so...gentle and loving! I'm in. The homework for tonight is to fill in the blanks after a whole long lists of prompts, which would take me all night and then some, but here are a couple:

If I were 5% more honest in my relationships... I think of myself as a pretty honest person, so I'm not sure this would change anything, but I'm intrigued by the idea that a 5% change could make a difference. I'm definitely plagued by the notion that I have to do new things perfectly the first time. But five percent. one time in twenty. sounds remarkably achievable.

If I were to stay silent when I don't want to talk... is not a good theoretical question for me, I almost always stay silent when I don't want to talk. Not least because I know from experience that forcing myself to talk usually leads to embarrassment. But: if I were to stop beating myself up about staying silent when I don't want to talk...or - here's a crazy idea - if I were able to explain why I often stay silent when people think I should be talking...that would be pretty radical.

If I stopped talking about people... I wouldn't have anything to say! No, darn, there I go breaking the second rule of right speech. "Don't gossip" is the third rule of right speech, and another one I'm definitely going to have some trouble with. I have some baggage around this. When I was a teenager I'd often try to drag information about relatives or friends out of my parents during family meals, and my dad would scold me with, "Susannah, remember: great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events; little minds talk about people." From which I concluded - and believed, for a long time - that I had a little mind and if I were *really* smart I'd really want to discuss...strategy in the Peloponnesian wars, or whatever, rather than asking how my step-cousin Frankie was doing with his alcoholic mother. I'm convinced, though, that my dad was wrong. I'm not small-minded for being interested in other people. And "not talking about people" was, in our family, very much a way to make sure we kept up appearances and avoided talking about conflict, shame, mental illness, sexuality...all those elephants in the room that needed to hide behind the Peloponnesian wars. I'm not sure I'm ready to stop talking about people, is what I'm saying. But I'm definitely open to learning how to talk about them in a way that alleviates suffering. So, onwards.