OSHER 240 - Interpersonal Communications: Words Are Only Tools

What is a word? And what happens when we see that words can't adequately hold the serious heaviness of negativity that we so often put with them? How does it feel to carry a sense of honoring for what is - rather than the conditioned responses of judging, evaluating, criticizing, or disliking? This course explores how words are pulled out of reality to provide shortcuts for communication, including the limits of what words can do, their nature as tools, and the stress generated by misusing them. We will explore a sense of being that is beyond words, including affection for people, animals, plants, and things created by people such as art or music or literature.