relationships

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

Ron Johnson appreciation, communication, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

“I’m sorry:” a very important statement. Very, very important. Most people should be able to express these words at least once a day, and possibly several times a day. But what does “I’m sorry” mean, or more accurately what can it mean? For some reason “I’m sorry” has fallen into disuse in America, and perhaps it was never part of our character the way it seems to be in most every other culture. There are many aspects of “I’m sorry” that I would like to tackle in this humble piece, but let’s start with different kinds of “I’m Sorry.”

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

I have continued to put “I’m sorry” in quotation marks because “I’m sorry” does not entirely equate with apology, nor should it. There are at least the following meanings of the expression “I’m sorry:”

  • Apology. When I apologize for something, this is a personal acknowledgement that I have failed in some action, although this apology could also be for some inaction on my part, namely something I have said, something I have done, something I have failed to say, or something I have failed to do.
  • Shared grief. This is an occurrence where I express this statement to someone with whom I share the grief that the person is experiencing. I may have caused this grief or the grief may have come from another source.
  • Disingenuous statement. This occurs when someone says “I’m sorry” with an important caveat…BUT. Hence, this is the frequently occurring, “I’m sorry but…,” then to be filled with some kind of justification or disregard.

Apologies

It is an extremely important element in human-to-human interaction, to be able to apologize when one has erred in what s/he did or said (or as noted, when one has erred in failing to say or do something). For example, it is important to say “I’m sorry” when you might have:

  • Stepped in front of someone in line, probably by accident
  • Failed to remember an occasion that was important to the other person, while it might not have been important to you. Likewise, you might be late for a dinner engagement even though you are not a person known for being prompt.
  • Making a statement that was offensive to someone, perhaps by using a swear word that is common to you and to your community but not common to your friend.
  • Bumping into the car in front of you.
  • Raising your voice in a discussion that led to an argument rather than a debate
  • Failing to express yourself when you had an important opinion that might have served the community but caused you to be disliked by someone
  • Disregarding someone’s preferred way of table manners because you didn’t think that such things were important.

Most of the time I have offended, hurt, or harmed someone, I have done this unintentionally.

I didn’t mean to do it

Of course, you didn’t mean to do it. You offended someone in some way, such as the ways I have noted above unintentionally, which is a very important fact. Once you get this concept in your mind, namely that you didn’t mean to hurt someone, you will have achieved the first and most important element in being able to apologize.

I often note that the Hebrew Scriptures’ book of Leviticus is comprised of about 450 “rules” of life. Notably, every one of these rules has to do with “sin,” but more importantly for our purposes, every one of these rules begins with, “If you sin by…. (fill in the blank) unintentionally, you must make amends for this sin by….” For instance, if you sin by sleeping with your neighbor’s wife, you must make amends in some way….  The essence of this matter of sin and the result is twofold: you have caused some harm to someone, and you need to make amends for this harm in some way. Most importantly, however, these “sins” (we do not have time to unpack this interesting biblical word) are all unintentional…with the exception of one “sin”: intentional sin. For all these 400-some sins, Leviticus (Actually God speaking in Leviticus) suggests that there are ways for atonement or reparation. I believe all of these “sins” are ones what involve offense brought to another person in some way. But there is one “sin” that is quite different: “If anyone sins intentionally…,” the situation is quite different. Such a person is to be thrown out of the community. Now, while I might not quite understand or even agree with throwing someone out of the community, whatever community that might be, it is interesting to me that all but one of these 400-some sins are unintentional. I believe this is the case for most things we do that offend, hurt, or harm other people: we unintentionally bring harm to someone. Sadly, I can recall scores, if not hundreds, of times when I have brought offense to people over my nearly 77 years of life. You might read my blog of a few years ago on my regrets for some examples of my errors in life, which are many.

The times when people intentionally hurt one another are almost always in reaction to having been hurt. I wrote a blog entitled, “Hurt People Hurt People,” borrowing the title for a book published 30 years ago. When someone intentionally says or does something to hurt or harm the other person, these are times when one has been hurt her/himself and has had a kneejerk reaction to “hurt back,” usually not knowing that the original person who inflicted hurt on you did not hurt you intentionally. So I won’t waste much time with this intentional kind of hurt, which should result in an apology with the words, “I’m sorry.” When we hurt someone who has hurt us, this is a reaction of anger coming from having been hurt, much of our (unintentionally) hurting someone comes from fear. These are tough situations that we all find ourselves in our human relationships. It behooves us to realize that when we hurt someone intentionally, it is almost always in reaction to having been hurt. Much more frequently, however, we have hurt someone out of naiveté or ignorance.

Hurt inflicted out of naiveté or ignorance

The mistakes of our youth should largely be classified as those of naiveté (or ignorance), feeling, “I just didn’t know that if I said a certain thing, I would hurt or offend someone.” Growing up should include maturity in understanding the effect of what I say or do. Extraverts like me can look at the things we said that were hurtful that we shouldn’t have said, whereas introverts more likely will see things that they should have said that could have been helpful. Doers like me will see things that we shouldn’t have done, whereas dreamers will see things that they should have done. I shouldn’t have got married (the first time). Several people I know would say that they should have got married. These failures of youth are understandable and forgivable but some such mistakes have lifelong results. I know a lot more people who shouldn’t have got married than I do people who should have got married.

It’s not only young people who say or do things that hurt someone else. We do that all the time. Deb and I devoted an entire chapter in our recent book to the central concept of hurt. If we really knew how often we hurt people, we would all be a lot more careful if what we say or do, but then we wouldn’t be human if we watched everything that carefully. As noted above, introverts tend to watch so carefully what they say, that their errors are usually in not saying what they feel. This whole matter of our hurting one another frequently and being hurt just as frequently is not to be taken too lightly. We just need to be able to see that we have unintentionally hurt someone and be ready to say so. This does not mean we go around being apologetic all the time, but rather being able to simply see what something that was said or done (or failed to be said or failed to be done) out of naiveté needs to be seen, understood, and apologized for. But it is hard to do so.

Why is it hard to apologize?                                                                     

I didn’t mean to do it. This is the whole matter of hurt being unintentional for the most part. I often say to patients, “Of course, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and you need to apologize.” Not many men take kindly to this advice.

She shouldn’t be hurt by what I said. Again, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and the most important emotional element is not what you said, meant to say, or thought you said, but what she felt.

I feel ashamed of having hurt someone. This is the largest part of the difficulty in apologizing and it exists in every person I have ever met. The shame level that exists in most people in tragic, and it comes out when we are “caught” in some way, very often caught in having hurt someone. I don’t have time to deal with the shame element more here, but you might look up the blog on shame and guilt.

I am afraid. The essence of shame is being afraid, namely being afraid of being wrong or being criticized. Unfortunately, there is a terrible fear in most people of being wrong, of making mistakes, or being criticized. True maturity, especially emotional maturity, is displayed with someone being unafraid of mistakes or criticism. I don’t know anyone who has reached this level of emotional maturity…including myself.

The other person doesn’t deal well with it. While some people graciously accept an apology, there is an odd phenomenon that occurs with the offended party when the offender offers an apology: they then say all the other things that the offender has done. So, if you apologize to someone, be prepared for an onslaught of criticism of all your other mistakes in life.

You said or did the right thing. This is real important. There are times when you actually say or do the right thing, but this right thing still hurts your friend. This phenomenon is clear with children whom we chastise, limit, or punish but then feel sad because we know that our child is suffering. This having done or said the right thing that hurts someone is not limited to children. Good leaders, whether professional, familial, or professional, need to challenge, hence criticize from time to time. It behooves a good leader to know that however true the challenge is, the person hearing the challenge will be hurt. And if you’re a leader, you need to say “I’m sorry” to them. This brings me to the second kind of “I’m sorry:” shared grief.

“I’m sorry” as an expression of shared grief

This may be the most important of all “I’m sorry” statements, but it is the hardest to grasp, especially in some circumstances. It is sometimes easy to share grief, sometimes difficult, and sometimes very paradoxical. If done honorably, honestly, and clearly, it can be one of the most profound interpersonal experiences that we can have.

Sometimes easy: in a previous blog I related the several experiences of having someone share the grief that Deb and I experienced after the death of our daughter. Some of these experiences were simple, like the Starbuck’s barista hearing from Deb of our loss immediately coming the counter and giving a Deb a hug…along with a free espresso, or the many simple expressions of grief that people have shared with me over the past 15 months, sometimes after these 15 months have passed because I hadn’t had the chance of seeing someone for that period of time. Other expressions of shared grief have been quite profound like the woman we met by chance at the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota, the woman we met by chance at the top of the learning tower of Pisa in Italy, or the woman we met by chance not far from our up north cabin on a hike that Krissie, her kids, and we used to take. In all of these circumstances, when we made a simple comment about our loss, these previously unknown women cried, hugged us, and said those precious words, “I’m so sorry.” I hope you have experienced this kind of shared grief, whether on the giving or the receiving side. It is easy to give and it is easy to receive…but not always.

Sometimes difficult.

It is often difficult for people to share grief because they simply do not know what to say. Some people say too much while others say nothing. Our “up north” neighbor heard of our loss while we happened to pass each other on the lake we share. This woman must have said, “I don’t know what to say” a dozen times within minutes of hearing of our loss. Interestingly, she shared how she had lost a young child 40 years previously. Another person whom I know quite well is yet unable to say much of anything because he also lost a son, not six months before Krissie died. His grief is so great that he has a hard time even mentioning our daughter by name, much less the name of his son. It was difficult for a new patient I saw just a few months ago, and he said nothing when I made reference to “loss” in the context of my hearing of his losses in life. Later, he told me that he “didn’t know what to say” because he didn’t want to sound disingenuous. He later said, quite simply, that he has never been particularly good at expressing any emotion aside from anger, a plague that many men suffer. The difficulty that people have with saying “I’m sorry,” whether for someone’s loss like our recent loss, or because they have causes some hurt, is often due to a combination of not having emotional words at their disposal, but more often due to their own lack of personal emotional groundedness. Personal groundedness is hallmarked primarily by knowing how you feel, expressing these feelings when appropriate to do so, and frequently knowing the feelings but wisely keeping the feelings to oneself out of propriety. Simply put, one can express shared grief if one knows and values what he/she feels. If this is the case, one can share the love of shared grief without hesitation. Sadly, many people do not have this personal security.

Sharing grief that is paradoxical

This is one of the most important times that we can share grief but it is rarely experienced because of its very paradoxical nature and because it takes an immense amount of personal security. Sharing grief with someone who has suffered some kind of loss is easy if you can easily find some kind of human connectedness, but it very difficult to share grief with someone who has suffered a loss that you think is a good thing. It is hard to share the grief that I child has when you discipline him or her. I just talked to the parents of a child for whom I did a psychological evaluation. One of my suggestions was to replace the shame-inducing rhetorical questions, like “what’s wrong with you” with statements of being disappointed. One of these parents then said, but our child gets so hurt and sad when you say that you are disappointed. Better that you and your child feel “disappointed,” which is tantamount to feeling sad, then you’re being angry and your child feeling ashamed.

Hard as it is to share grief with a child that is necessary, it is ten times harder to share grief with an adult who has suffered some kind of loss that you think is good for him or her. This is hard to explain so allow me to give you an example. Just yesterday I heard from a good friend of mine with whom I share just three years of life, namely those of being in the same fraternity house in college. I didn’t see Jack for more than 40 years until he somehow found me on LinkedIn about 10 years ago, leading to occasional get-togethers and a rare time playing golf. It was easy to reconnect with Jack because we share much the same faith (while not exactly) and are both outgoing and expressive. It was hard for Jack to hear that I intended to vote for Hillary four years ago and even harder for him to hear that I intended to vote for Biden this year. Jack is part of the 70 some percent of evangelical Christians who vote for Republicans regardless of anything else aside from their political persuasion. Jack and I have had some forthright, but challenging email connections over the past few months due to the huge emotionality in the country over the recent election. His most recent email expressed his dismay over Trump’s loss. I found it a challenge, but also honest for me to tell him that I was “sorry” for his loss and shared his grief. I must admit I had some consternation over saying “I’m sorry” to Jack because I was so relieved that Trump did not get reelected, but I acknowledged my own joy at this defeat privately to myself while also feeling a genuine love for Jack and feeling compelled to share his grief. When I told Deb what I had written to Jack, she was a bit concerned how that might seem that I was sad that Biden won, which I most certainly was not. I suggested that this was an example of paradoxical sharing of grief. I could feel joyful that Biden won on the one hand, while on the other feel great sorrow with my good friend for his having to put up a forthcoming Biden presidency.

I do not always act or speak so generously, but why would I not do so? Only if I was unable to free myself from my own self-interest and be more interested in my friend. Consider this most difficult situation, this paradoxical situation, where you are glad that something happened, but feel a shared sorrow for someone who feels quite distressed about the same event. This can seem ingenuous, but it is not. There is, however, a truly ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

Ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

The key identifying words to ingenuous apologies are “Well” and “but.” Let me explain. An ingenuous expression of “I’m sorry” begins with one word soon to be followed by the other, e.g., “Well, I’m sorry, but….” Do you know what I mean? This is the expression that many people, you included, I included, have said when we are not sorry at all. Rather, we use “I’m sorry” meaning quite the opposite. Had I been ingenuous with Jack, I could have said, “Well, Jack, I’m sorry but Trump is an idiot.” I have said such things, but happily many years ago, and now I am ashamed for that must egregious indiscretion and lack of love. I won’t now to choose to spend much time with ingenuous expressions except to note that they also originate from one’s lack of genuine self-esteem and certainly a lack of an ability to reach beyond one’s own feelings to understand the other person. With my experience with Jack, I can reach into my recovering Republican nature and see much good in conservative politics, but more importantly, my love for Jack is more important than my feeling of joy with Biden’s victory.

I leave you with the suggestion that you consider saying “I’m sorry” in the more positive ways and feel the joy that comes from honest apologies and shared griefs. By the way, you don’t actually have to say these exact words, I’m sorry. You might prefer “my bad,” which is all the more contemporary, the mea culpa that is classic, or other cognates of the feelings that occur when someone is hurt, mistaken, or criticized,

You Taught Me How to Love You

Ron Johnson appreciation, Feelings, mindfulness, relationships, Spiritual

I knew a therapist who composed a song with this title in reference to his own therapist. This song reflected how his therapist had, indeed, taught him how to love. Recently, I had an experience with a patient that reminded me of a person who served as a therapist for me albeit in a somewhat informal way. This person was Dr. Vernon Grounds, a professor of pastoral care and the president of Denver Seminary where I was finishing my last year of seminary before I went to graduate school. The academic year was 1968-1969, which might stir some memories of this important time of life in America with assassinations, the Viet Nam war, protests against the war, and the sexual revolution. It was an important time for me because I was coming to a formulation of what I believed about life, God, people, and myself, a project that has continued over these ensuing 50 years. I had thought to some degree about these important matters somewhat during my previous 25 years but nothing like I did during this year. It was a year of great learning, great thought, and sorrow. For some reason Dr. Grounds invited me to breakfast one morning, which then turned out to be a regular invitation that he made for me for the entire academic year. These many breakfast meetings always had the aforementioned elements in our discussion: life, God, people, and me. I consider these hours as ones of personal therapy although I didn’t realize that at the time. Dr. Grounds remains the kindest, most intelligent, most integrated, and most deeply spiritual person I have ever had the opportunity to know although I have also had the opportunity of known many other significant figures who have been instructive in my life. These would include other therapists, professors, religious leaders, relatives, and friends, but none has touched my soul as did Dr. Grounds. Having recently been reminded of the song written by someone I knew many years ago, “You Taught Me How to Love You,” I realized that Dr. Grounds did just that: he taught me how to love him, and in so doing, he taught me how to love. I offer the following humble words with deep appreciation:

He taught me how to love him.

He taught me about God

He taught me about people

He taught me about life

He taught me about myself

 

He taught me how to think,

He taught me how to feel.

He taught me how to speak.

He taught me how to love.

 

He taught me these things with the purest of love for me.

He loved me so perfectly that he didn’t have to say it.

All I noticed when we parted was that was somehow different.

The difference? I was loved

I didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t pay it back. But I needed it.

 

He taught me how to love him “because he loved me first.”

 

 

We therapists have a tremendous privilege, something that is often in my mind and frequently something I say when I am with a patient. The privilege of people’s stories, their thoughts, their actions, and most importantly, their feelings—this is a very special opportunity for all of us in this odd trade, which is composed of mostly listening and then a measured response. How many times have I heard, “Well, I’ve never told anyone this….” And the things that they have never told anyone are not largely those of facts or actions, but of feelings…”feelings,” that undefined central experience of being human. I hear feelings in the form of silence and chatter, of pain and pleasure, and of thought and action. But when I hear these real feelings, often something the person has just discovered, felt, and said, I am moved. I am privileged. These many hours of therapy—but not all—are ones where I have the privilege of loving someone in a special way because I have heard, seen, and felt the person’s feelings.

It has occurred to me, much due to a recent therapeutic hour that I had with someone that I have also had the privilege of enlivening a person’s own capacity to love. This most recent encounter was with someone who said, “I love you Ron” and then quickly added, “No, it is more than that. I love you so much.” What a privilege to be loved by someone, a love that I don’t deserve, can’t pay back, but something that I need. Yes, need. I don’t need to be loved by a specific person, a mistake that many people make, but I do need to be loved. It is always humbling. It is always special. It is always godly. And I never expect it.

I leave you with this thought for your consideration: who has taught you how to love? Whom did you find yourself loving because he/she first loved you?

Wordiness, Wordlessness, and Wordness

Ron Johnson communication, Feelings, Personality, relationships

Many people have trouble with words. In fact, it is my belief that every human being has trouble with words despite the fact that words are so central in human functioning and seemingly essential in interpersonal relations of any kind. We might say that the (scientific) difference between animals and humans is that humans have speech, whereas animals don’t (while we might suggest that the existence of self, soul, or spirit might also differentiate us from animals.)

I had a conversation this morning with a man who speaks easily and freely, so much so that he sometimes stumbles and tumbles over his own words as he is desperately trying to communicate what he feels and thinks. Several times during this morning’s conversation, “Jim” (as I will call him) said, “I just don’t know how to say what I feel” or “I just don’t know how to say what I think” and then follow up with some kind of self-criticism because of his difficulty of finding the right words. Jim is by far not the only person who I see that has trouble with finding words for his thoughts or feelings. Many were the times when someone said, “I just don’t know what to say” when they heard of our daughter’s death a year ago. What could they say at such an event? No words would do justice to the feelings that people often had although the best words were always, “I am so sorry.” But there were people who said all kinds of things, people who said nothing, and people who just looked at us with faces full of feelings but no spoken words.

The matter of words is more than the phenomenon of not knowing what to say. There are many instances where words are insufficient to express one’s feelings or thoughts. The title of this blog, “wordiness, wordless, and word-ness” is a reflection of some of the problems with words, and they all have to do with inadequate communication:

  • Wordiness: People have too many words and fail adequately communicate
  • Wordlessness: people have too few words and fail to adequately communicate
  • Wordness: people make up words but fail to adequately communicate

Wordiness

The “Jim” noted above had too many words for what he was feeling. He spoke over and over again about how he was feeling but he was having but was never satisfied with his words. So, he did what wordy people tend to do: he spoke more, he spoke louder, and he repeated himself. Jim’s situation was quite simple: his wife said that she wanted a divorce, and “it came as a complete surprise” although he admitted that he knew that “something was wrong” in the marriage for some time. I tried my best to help him say what he really felt but with only a modicum of success because he was so inclined to repeat himself over and over again, usually with intermittent statements of “I just don’t know how to communicate.” I tried, largely in vain, to help him feel the real emotion that he felt, which was simple sadness, but he was so inclined to rattle on, mostly about his wife and her alleged “problems” that I didn’t succeed in this endeavor. Of course, complaining and diagnosing his wife wouldn’t help him, but he didn’t know any other way to express his feelings. This is so often the case with wordy people: they don’t know when to stop talking, when to start thinking, and when to speak again when they have found words that adequately communicate their feelings. Wordy people rarely feel, then think, and then speak. Rather, they speak furiously because they depend on a flurry of words to communicate their feelings. Sadly, they often fail in this endeavor, which makes life even harder for them because they have done all that they know to do. Jim was largely covering the feeling of sadness with his wordiness. The more he said, the worse he felt and found himself in this downward cycle.

Wordy people tend to be extraverted but wordiness is not entirely in the realm of extraversion as we might expect. In fact, Jim is quite introverted by nature. You may know some introverted people who, when they have a kept audience, tend to rattle on about something. I recall a good introverted friend who, when we entered her house, would immediately meet us with a flurry of words, so much so that we were quite overwhelmed by the words, if not entirely by the content. Yes, extraverts can also dominate a conversation, but they tend to need a larger audience. Introverts dominate the conversation when they have you alone. I recall an incident with my younger daughter, who is by nature quite introverted, a time that Deb and I were taking her to some church event. Deb and I both remember how Jenny seemed to rattle on about one thing or another, then at one time said, “Listen to me; I’m just rattling on, aren’t I?” and then just as quickly went back to rattling. We enjoyed the moment.

Wordy people also tend to be feeling-based, which is a reference to the Jungian concept of how people make judgments. “Feeling-based” people “feel through” things, including their thoughts, emotions, and actions. Feeling-based people tend to have good intuition, especially if their intuition is not dominated by emotion. Often, however, feeling-based people have many more feelings than they have words for, so they can be found to say words over and over again with the hope of communicating the feeling they have. But wordiness is not only in the realm of feeling-based people. The individual I just noted who would typically greet me at her door was also thinking-based. Thinking-based people are always looking for someone to talk to about what they have read, experienced, or thought.

Whether introverted, extraverted, feeling-based, or thinking-based, wordy people tend to push into the conversation as many words as possible. I suspect they know that they have but little time before the audience will lose interest so they cram as many words as possible into the space where there should actually be fewer words.

Wordlessness

Wordless people have fewer words. Sometimes they have no words at all. There is a great place to say nothing. We would all do well to consider that there are important times to say nothing because there are times when nothing needs to be said. These are times when simple presence with a friend is important and simple quietude alone is important. There is certainly nothing wrong with being silent as Desiderata begins with “go placidly among the noise and haste of the world and remember what peace there may be in silence.” But let’s look a bit deeper into the wordlessness that troubles so many people.

Many people have suffered in school because of their lack of words. Most of the men I see in my office have suffered because they were not “word people.” Their lack of words may have been a genuine dyslexia but more often than not they were not “auditory learners,” which is learning based on words shown in reading, writing, and speaking. There are even people who were good at reading and speaking but couldn’t seem to put two words together on paper or people who could read and write but were terrified of speaking in class. School does no service to people who are not word-based. I didn’t like reading until well into college but I was good at writing and speaking, so I got along pretty well. Furthermore, my “learning style” is predominantly “auditory” (word-based). Equally good, but substantially different, are people whose learning styles are kinesthetic or visual. These would be the musicians, artists, and athletes in school who “go to school for their friends and activities” but abhor the reading and writing that dominates school. School was good for me because I am primarily word-based but I see kids in my office all the time who are good with art, music, sports, dance, and social life but hate reading. Oops, school is reading (and writing and speaking).

Wordless people might also be introverted or thinking-based. These folks work diligently to find the right words so often that they have large gaps in what they say in a conversation. This gap-ness is not the sole domain of introverts and thinkers, but it is most common among them. My brother used to look at his wife, who was both introverted and thinking, and say, “I’m sorry, my dear, I didn’t hear what you said” when she had not actually “said” anything. She would say, “Oh, that’s right. You can’t read my mind.” This looking at someone intently, perhaps with mouth agape, arms swinging in the air, or grimacing is a time of wordlessness that usually fails to communicate. I recall many instances when someone has looked at me when we are in a conversation, opened his mouth as if to say something but not with any words, then came closer to me and was right in my face, yet without any words. Such a person is attempting furiously to communicate without using words. Rarely do they succeed in that endeavor. “There is a time to keep silent, and there is a time to speak” as Solomon said in the Jewish Scriptures’ book of Ecclesiastes.

Wordness

What I call “wordness” is the creating of words for the purpose of communicating something that standard dictionary-based words are insufficient. We have many words that are added to Webster every year, like “texting” a few years ago. While every language adds words to the usable vocabulary every year, there are also times when people create words that will never be a part of Webster, much less common use. I recently read an article that was based on Buber’s I and Thou book and the concept under the concepts of I and Thou. This author talked about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her discussion of Buber’s concept of I and Thou. (For what it’s worth, Buber’s simple, yet profound suggestion is that we need to understand how we relate to one another, and the way we need to do that is understand how we think and feel followed by understanding how other people think and feel. This theologian found it necessary to talk about “I-ness” and “Thou-ness” in her dissertation. Yet I found it difficult to understand what she was talking about and sometimes found myself wondering if what she was saying was even important. Perhaps other readers have been fascinated by her use of these created words. Readers of theology, and somewhat in psychology, will be more familiar with these hyphenated words, like God-ness, Satan-ness, sin-ness, and creation-ness words.

Created words are not the sole property of theologians. Note that I used the word “gap-ness” above. I created this word. Many people will create words that have even less meaning than the likes of “I-ness” and “Thou-ness.” These are times when people may actually use some vocalism, like a grunt in an attempt to communicate. Or they may find some combination of words that seems to make no sense at all, something like babies do when they are trying to communicate their feelings but don’t yet have a vocabulary. Similarly, adults can yell, scream, grunt, murmur, or cry when they want to say something but can’t find the words to adequately communicate their feelings. While wordiness can be irritating or boring, and wordlessness can be frustrating, wordness can be awkward at the best and dangerous at the worst. Many physical fights have come about due to the wordness that has miscommunicated.

The danger that can come about due to wordiness, wordlessness, or wordness sometimes leads to undue cursing. Cursing has always been a part of this culture, and seemingly of every culture, the increase in the frequency of cursing, now beginning as early as age 5 or 6, seems to be a symptom of people increasingly unable to communicate themselves adequately. We know, for instance, that while speech is largely a “left-brain” phenomenon, cursing is a right-brain phenomenon, the right side of the brain being the housing for emotion as well as much of what we perceive in our five senses. Cursing can be conceived as wordness and created words. It is interesting that the “f word” can be almost any part of speech.

What’s it all about: wordiness, wordlessness, and wordness?

It’s about insecurity, namely feeling inadequate in expressing what I want to communicate. Thus, people talk too much, talk too little, or make up words in attempts to communicate. But what are they trying to communicate? Feelings. Deb and I finally published our most recent work, I Want to Tell You How I Feel, which should be back from the publisher in a week as well as being available for download soon. In this book we first admit that we will “never successfully communicate our feelings” while proposing that we can improve in communication if we realize that it is impossible to communicate perfectly. Nevertheless, this task of feeling something, trying to communicate it, and finding some modicum of success is something that few people master. I encourage you to continue to work at it.