Staying At Altitude

Caroline Watkins
Caroline Watkins

I learned this expression while having a “water cooler” moment with my friend and co-worker, Sue. Conversations with her are more like being beside a fountain of (living) water rather than a mere cooler. Nevertheless, we were discussing how we attempt to take the “high road” – in our speech, spoken and written – both professionally and personally. Her husband is a pilot in fact, and the expression used in their family to describe this “phenomena” is “staying at altitude.”

Easier said than done, that’s for sure. In a sermon by Dr. Ken Baker I recently read, he talks about our “failed inhibitory ability.” How true! We blurt, we accuse, we argue, we interrupt, we grumble, we complain, we punish. All with our words. Body language too, of course.

Author Frederick Buechner writes, “In Hebrew the term dabar means both ‘word’ and ‘deed.’ Thus to say something is to do something. I love you. I hate you. I forgive you. I am afraid. Who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone. Something lay hidden in the heart that is irrevocably released through speech into time, is given substance and tossed like a stone into the pool of history, where the concentric rings lap out endlessly. Words are power, essentially the power of creation. By my words I both discover and create who I am. By my words I elicit a word from you. Through our converse we create each other.”

The problem in our digital age, however, is we create not each other but images of each other that often are not real but who we want people to think we are…in our well-constructed texts and e-mails and carefully chosen photographs on social media. MIT professor Sherry Turkle has closely examined the toll such technology is taking on our relationships.

Brett and Kate McKay reflect upon her work in an article entitled The Power of Conversation, A Lesson from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien:  “Tech-mediated communication may make conversation more efficient, but it also makes it more superficial. It shrivels our empathy and feeling of true connection – states that are predicated on our being able to hear each other’s voices, read each other’s body language, and see each other’s facial expressions. We not only lose out on insights into the lives of others, but into our own as well.”

Our quickly fired-off words can really do more to disconnect than connect, can’t they? Have you ever felt punched in the stomach by something someone has said in person or via text/e-mail? I have, and I have learned the key to “staying at altitude” is to WAIT to respond. You’ll be less likely to discharge your own pain on someone else, I assure you.

Not surprisingly, I searched for a TED Talk given by an actual pilot to understand the aforementioned metaphor more completely. I discovered a very short one given by a survivor of Flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson River in January 2009, Ric Elias, who was subsequently given the gift of living his life differently. The pilot said three words to the passengers before the plane went down, calmly and unemotionally: “Brace for impact.”

How many times could these three words be the introduction to something we speak or write. Our words can be spirit crushing or life giving. They can burn bridges or mend them. Take care with them. Good care. Get face-to-face whenever possible. And when all else fails, be kind. Honest, yes – and kind. These terms are not mutually exclusive. One of the kindest gestures just might be not talking at all, but listening. I mean actively listening. Listening “with your entire being” as my niece, Nancy, once wrote to me.

Listen to others. Listen to your life. Listen to the One who gave you life.

And you know what? You won’t even have to try to stay at altitude …

You’ll already be there.

Caroline Watkins

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