Please ensure your own oxygen mask is fitted before helping others.

Onboard Flight Information

Yesterday I wrote about overcoming the concerns we may have, about whether what we write or say is important, significant or clever enough, by allowing that others may be helped by what we have to say.
Today I consider the part that the reader or recipient plays. The reader or recipient can receive whatever wisdom, help or meaning they need from whatever they hear or read, and they can always discard what is not useful or disagree with what is being said.
As illustration, as I read the flight information on my journey home, I was instructed to ensure my own oxygen mask is secure before helping others. If I wish, I can read this information as a modern parable: Self care, attention to our health and well-being puts us in a place where we are more able to help others. I read it this way because that was the best use of the material for me at that point on that day (I’m glad I didn’t need to use it as practical information!).
So we see that the writer of the flight information did not even need to intend to enlighten me in order for me to find their writing helpful or supportive.
Given that I can find personal meaning in simple every day signs, maybe this takes the pressure off me as writer or as speaker. When I consider that the wisdom is located in the recipient as well as the writer or speaker and I find yet another block to writing is lifted.
I hope the reader of my blog, similarly can find what meaning is right for them at the time.