Dictionary
So my long time friend (he pinned on my butter bars when I was commissioned in '01) came up to DC for a family trip and to be in a wedding and I had a chance to meet up with him yesterday. LtCol Carlen Charleston, USMC (Ret) is also probably the biggest inspiration for my blogging – other than my wife of course! Last year, around this time, I guest blogged for him on The Big 3 Zone while he was starting his restaurant. I hope to repost some of the ones I wrote back then on this blog, although his blog is hard down right now with some technical issues… But I digress…
My point of bringing up Carlen, other than to show what an awesome time we had at the park tossing Gideon around, is to talk about elevating the level of communication a bit more. And yesterday was a perfect example of two old friends who haven't seen each other in years, getting to spend some “Level 3" time maintaining a “meaningful relationship."
Carlen and I spend a lot of “level 1" with each other on the blog scene by posting stuff for the masses to read, and we have also elevated to “level 2" by commenting on the blog posts or emailing back and forth. I've even had a few brief phone conversations with him over the past couple years… As with many things for me recently, I could prepared a bit better by spending some “level 3" time communicating with my wife, as well as some more “level 2" with him yesterday would have helped ALOT so I could get more details of his visit… but that's a post for another time…
What I mainly want readers of this post to take away is this: My “Level 3" time yesterday with Carlen and his wife and 2 daughters and Gideon all grew out of the time we had spent on the lower levels of communication. And while I was in the moment with him and Gideon asking “now YOU throw me up in the sky!!!" I was thinking to myself: “this is it!" and to me that realization only made the moment better.
Maybe you find this interesting, maybe you find it unnecessary, but I would encourage you: next time you are spending time with a friend, think about the investment made on ALL the levels of comm: whether texts, or voice mails, face book posts, or blog comments… See if all of that which has been elevated before makes the moment more meaningful now. I believe it will. It sure did for me!
Peace,
Adam
