File:Why didn't he ask.jpg

"Why didn't he ask ? " , by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

When people are in for a rather bad time, they may feel completely isolated and solitude is slowly eating their brains. As they can't have a normal relationship anymore, they just walk out on people and have not even the strength or the nerve to ask for a little help.

We may wonder what is going on in the back of the mind and what betides in the mood of some people who live on the edge of isolation and emotional poverty. They belong to life’s outcasts: deserted by affection, deprived of physical or lingual contact and finally reduced to silence. As a matter of fact, they won’t speak or even ask for a little help. Being denied of every sense of community and expelled from any intimacy, they are frequently drinking their way out into total stillness.

When people are solely intersecting, we mainly hear monologues. But instead of soliloquizing we need dialoguing. Good social coherence requires a reciprocal willingness to create space for an open discussion. Plain talk and unbiased listening are the keystones for a healthy sovereign human living together.

Short circuiting any dialogue and blowing up an attempt to come to a compromise, is a bad policy. Leaving the arena of discussion in anger and slamming doors does not solve problems.

On real stage Aeschylus was the first in history to give "dialogue" the leading part (and no longer the "monologue"). His principle is often forgotten on the stage of life. In this respect special tribute should be paid to Aeschylus.

Phenomenon: Communication, dialogue, conversation