Language of the Crossroad

Within any relationship, business or personal, we find ourselves at crossroads we don’t always have the language in navigating with the individual we find ourselves.  One wants to continue straight the other wants to ponder the other two paths.  Maybe we have even survived many other crossroads with the same individual or team.

Keep in mind both parties have an end game that is shared.  But the crossroads opens up a choice that intrigues one and the other is not wanting to veer off the path of this shared destination.  With this, we need a language that helps us understand each other while within the crossroads.

I am not referring to that language of “why”, the conversation of how each is wrong according to the other.  I am referring to the thoughts each is having concerning the behaviour of the other.  The picture each is painting in their mind as they experience the crossroad together.

Typically we begin to use language about the differences and from this newly forming perspective we see each other slightly different. Maybe just for a moment or worst it's adding to a bag of rocks that have been brought forward from previous crossroads. Maybe words like, hasty, simple, indecisive or other words come up in our mind. These words as they enter our perspective, begin to shape how we see each other.

Add to this a multiple of crossroads and before long we have shaped a view of each other from words as mentioned above.  Different words within our perspective could make them a life long partner in our personal or professional lives. Each crossing adds to the confidence and trust or adds to a distancing perspective.

Dave Worthen book, "Marriage, Merriment, and Madness" takes a look at how crazy our perspectives can get when we traverse the crossroads of life.  This somewhat satirical view is true, funny and engaging.

https://tinyurl.com/y89csllo

In the book he discusses a married couple who have entered many crossroads and found themselves separated by the challenges of each crossing piling up into an unsustainable language.  Creating a self fulling prophecy at each new crossroad.

I don’t think this is limited to just marriage.  With each professional challenge we learn a little more about our team and form perspectives.  More importantly Dave makes us aware of the millimeter wedge that each crossroad has brought to any relationship.

Given the time and effort we put into each other in our professional and personal lives.  The book offers a way to find that trust again by using language that helps both people understand what has happened with so many crossings in the past. Those things that over time have added up to “Spiritural Distance.

I really enjoyed the following from chapter two of his new book.  Distance or “Spiritual Distance” that space that he describes so well.

Distance.
Not physical distance.
Spiritual distance.
WTF is spiritual distance.
You know, like when you have had a slight tiff with your partner before going to bed, and then in bed you are physically right next to them but this tiff created distance.
He or she could be on mars as far as you are concerned.
You might not want to even touch them.
Yeah, that.
That’s spiritual distance.

The first three chapters has been a very thought provoking journey and funny as you seem to realize that Dave is actually talking to you/me.  Almost as if he has been peeking in the life of many relationships i am engaged.

Picking up on the language that Dave is walking you through, gives new words and perspectives within the crossroads. The words that can hopefully keep the choices within the crossroads and not allow our perspective to change beyond the crossing.