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Once upon time, in a company far far away, I was conducting a hiring interview. Everything was going well. One of my tasks for that particular interview was to assess the candidate’s mindset and behaviour around mistakes. In order to do that, I normally ask one of my favourite interview questions: “Can you please share a moment where you made a mistake? A situation where things didn’t go as planned… and there was no one else to blame but you”.

I like this question. I can gauge, within a few seconds, how professionally experienced the person on the other side is. Truly experienced employees will have plenty of examples to choose from – the idea is that “the more someone is working, the more someone is trying something new, the more mistakes they will make”. Some of the experienced folks immediately brush my question off with “how many examples do you want?”

“That’s not what I meant”

A funny thing happened the moment this candidate started to answer: “well, I wish I had been going to the gym more often”. I had to collect all my strength to not burst out laughing… The risk here would be that the person could interpret it as a laugh at their expense. It wasn’t. I just immediately realised that I didn’t communicate properly. My assumption was that the professional context would be clear… but I never limited the scope of the question in an explicit way. So I was truly about to start laughing at my own incompetency and the irony of the situation – since I was the one making a mistake, “live”.

Good news is that the person did well in the interview. We were able to course correct, and they were hired. I also started making it clear to candidates that the question is related to a business context (lesson learned).

Communicating is hard!

Semiotics is the fancy name of the field of human knowledge dedicated to understanding communication. When we’re trying to convey meaning to someone else, there’s likely to be a percentage of accuracy… and there will be also some mistakes and distortions. How many times have you found yourself saying (or hearing) – “That’s now what I meant”.

Imagine a situation where you need to describe a specific chair to someone else. Some people would immediately mention the width, the height, the breadth… the materials, the colour… whether it is comfortable or not, and other aspects of it. If you truly want to see how many attributes a chair can have, do quick visit to some online store and so a search. We can filter the results by so many of them!

The challenge in abstract concepts

Though it might take some time, though different people would consider more or less attributes and give a more or less accurate description… describing a concrete, existing, and material chair is challenging in some ways: it requires a bit of patience and some observational skills. Now… when we want to change the task from describing a concrete object to describing an abstract idea or concept, the challenge increases significantly. Imagine that we want to help someone that has never seen a single chair to understand what a chair is. Not a specific chair but the “concept” of a chair.

It’s very tempting to say “well, it’s just something you sit on”. Well, we can also sit on beds or even on a table. Some chairs have armrests… some chairs don’t. Some have four legs… some have two and some have three. Is it a bench or a chair?

In short: conveying abstract concepts is usually more challenging than describing concrete objects. The communication around Spirituality is prone to errors of communication and interpretation. Exactly just like so many other fields of human knowledge.

An exercise in imagination

If you’re willing to participate in an experiment, try to imagine a table. Only come back and continue reading this text once you’re done imagining a table with all the possible details – when you’re back, answer:

  • What are the tables dimensions?
  • Does it have fixed dimensions or is it extendable?
  • What material is it made of? Is the top made of the same material as the rest of the structure?
  • How many legs does it have?
  • Is it a dining room table? A corner table? A work desk? Can it play different roles?

Now a final guess for all of us to wonder: considering the audience of this blog post – how many people do you think described tables that are identical to each other in all possible characteristics? I’m guessing very few. If ever.

“Tables” are not considered a particularly sensitive topic (unless your father is a carpenter…) – and we can easily imagine how many different tables we each remember or imagine in our heads. Consider the confusion that spiritual topics that are much more abstract than a table can cause.

“I don’t believe in God”

The resistance to the word “God” nowadays has become so strong that people will try to label God with whatever alternative they find more approachable… some people call God “the universe”, “the source”, “the energy”, and possibly a dozen more names that I’m not yet familiar with. My personal opinion about that, is that it doesn’t matter but I am interested in the “why” – which reasons made a significant part of humanity decide to distance themselves from the more traditional label “God”.

I have a few hypothesis as to why that happened. Some religious people believe in a definition of God that I find extreme weird and unappealing. From the “bearded dude, seated on an actual physical throne” to some sort of vengeful and quick-to-anger tyrant… there are all possible flavours and interpretations that alienate many.

God is impossible to define, to contain, or to describe in a complete and accurate way. As much as I fully believe in this, I also believe that there’s value in trying – that each one of us can develop our own personal definition of God and fine tune it, year after year. That doesn’t change “God” in any way – but that does relate to the development of our own consciousness and spiritual maturity.

Key Takeaway

I will need your help and understanding. My intention is to spark curiosity about spirituality in a lot of people. In this process I am bound to make mistakes. And I appreciate your feedback. If  you can point out some ways that I can:

  • do better
  • communicate better or in a clearer way
  • be more inclusive

I promise that I will evaluate it carefully and, when appropriate, put it to good use. And that’s also why each blog post in this website has a form for comments and feedbacks. You can also reach me directly through email.