When communicating/relating with others, the first and primary goal should not be worrying about not offending them, but to communicate (commune), to make a connection. Sometimes to truly act in the best interest of another — which is a definition of acting in love — we may unintentionally hurt or offend the other. Obviously we should not want to hurt others as an end goal, but shouldn’t the objective be, when we communicate, to connect with and “love” the other?
But continually creating and updating a complex set of partially known rules to communicate with in order not to offend or make the other uncomfortable, or to push personal agendas (worse yet, to carelessly submit to trending questionable ideologies) can and does stand in the way of this ideal, and introduces fear and a superficiality which confuses the communication, as well as wastes time and effort.
Though words and semantics are very (and sometimes exceptionally) important, the most important part of communication is the senders intended MESSAGE*. When receiving another’s message, don’t we bear at least some responsibility to purposefully discern the message and intention of the sender, if we truly seek to understand and know the truth of the senders intention, as opposed to first and foremost critiquing, looking to take offense and parsing out the semantics thereby missing the point of communicating? Let’s be forgiving with people’s imperfect speech.
*the message is always determined by the sender, not the receiver. The sender may lie or deceive, or make a mistake in what they say. They may not even be aware of what they’re unconsciously messaging, while the receiver may know. But the message, “correct” or not, starts with the person deciding to create and send it, so logically that is where the true meaning is generated and determined. (We’re not talking hypnosis or MKULTRA here)
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