The Art of Speaking, the Art of Feeling
Heading out this morning, I got into a black car. The leather seats and everything inside were black too. Looking around the whole car, the only spot with a soft colour was a pair of Hello Kitty hooks hanging behind the back seats
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I took a moment to feel into it, then asked the driver:
"These two hooks are the softest colour in the whole car!"
"They don't match at all, do they? I bought them more than ten years ago. They weren't broken, so I figured I'd hang them up here"
"You have a daughter?"
"I do. She loved Hello Kitty when she was little"
"Ah, so looking at those hooks reminds you how sweet she was back then"
"Ha, true. Not so sweet now"
"How does she feel to you now — more ___?"
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He thought for a moment, then said:
"It's not that we don't get along. I just have no idea what she's thinking. She often says we don't understand her. I guess it's a generation gap"
"Mm… if you imagined you weren't the father and she wasn't the daughter, what would you feel? Would you want to say anything to her?"
"Ha, am I allowed to do that? I'm not sure… I do nag at her, and I know she doesn't like it, but… is that the reason?"
"What you really feel is that you want her life to be better than yours!"
"Yes. You feel that deeply, don't you — that's exactly it! But you can't really say that to your kid, can you?"
"Of course you can. Want to give it a try?"
The driver laughed and said:
"Is this what they call the art of speaking?"
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I think it is the art of speaking — and also the art of feeling
Between people there seem to be fine threads drawing us to one another, tying together everyone we already know, everyone we have just met, everyone we are about to meet, and everyone we will never meet in this life, forming an extraordinarily complex web
In that dense network of relationships, a change in any one person can bring about a change at another point in the web
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If one person steps out of the original script, sees that the barrier which looks unsolvable on the surface has no distance to it once you return to feeling, and is willing to choose to listen and speak in a different way
Then the other points on the web naturally have a chance to shift in response, spreading outward layer by layer
Just as, in feeling the words the driver had not yet said to his daughter, I could also feel my own father's heart towards me; and just as his daughter may one day, inside someone else's story, feel that her father's nagging was really the confusion of a man who could not find a way to communicate, wanting nothing more than for the two of them to understand each other
This is how relaxation and feeling spread
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▍Taichung Regular Relaxation (May)
5/7. 21. 28 (Thu) 15:00-16:00
⊹Venue:
Taichung Shixian Yoga Elysian @10_sian
2F, No. 499, Sec. 1, Fuxing Rd., South Dist., Taichung
No registration, no fee — just come
Bring warm water,
wear something comfortable; there is no yoga class,
just one thought of relaxing, flowing breath, and good rest