the SILENCE is what kills me

or as I've taken to calling it lately, the sound of one hand clapping - don't know if that koan (is that the right word?) means what I think it means, but that's how I use it. Afraid I may be repeating myself already, even though this blog is only - what - a week old? Something like that. Feels like I've been writing along this continuum my whole life, the only difference being that now I'm not making excuses for other people any more.

So, the silence:

A stone drops into a pond, but leaves no ripple.
Shouting into a canyon, but no echo comes back.
Hitting something with all your might with a baseball bat, but it leaves no dent.

Basically, feeling like you have no effect on the other people in your life.

How is this achieved, pray tell? Because they say nothing, they act as if nothing has happened, nothing has changed.

And yet, my brother has surprised me repeatedly lately in that he's actually heard what I'm saying and has actually acted on it with respect to how he treats his daughters/my nieces. Which is really cool! And a bit surprising, I was getting so used to having no effect that it was making me careless, making me lash out with that anger indiscriminately, feeling like it wasn't making any difference anyway, so might as well just bust loose.

Hm. That one feels like it wants more thinking about, now that I've pinned it up there on the ol' laundry line to flap in the breeze.

Realizing I need to close the thought loop, connect some dots here: So, I'm finally noticing that my brother's actions are changing. And I'm wishing that we'd actually talk about what's happening more, so that there's more of an alignment between what is said and what is done. It also closes some kind of 'reality' circuit in my mind/heart/soul, to have this stuff actually verbalized.

But it feels good to recognize that there is some forward motion, there is some progress, after all.