How to Talk About…Everything

Happy New Year. I wasn’t sad to say goodbye to 2025, but I’d say 2026 isn’t starting off with any fewer challenges. 

Challenges or no challenges, though, we can set our personal tone. How about 2026 for a tone of kindness? What if we commit to talk, write, and post, one-on-one or to our ten million followers (or 460, in my case), without causing harm, or lying, or being unkind?

I don’t know what if – what happens if we do that. But let’s try it. It won’t be too hard because probably most of us are being kind already. For those who are, and also for those who aren’t, may you be safe in 2026. May 2026 be a year of kindness and safety and ease for all. 

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #515. Happy New Year!

Before the holidays, we’d been walking the Noble Eightfold Path. We’d looked at Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration, the three “Samadhi” steps of the path, or the steps of settling and focusing the mind. Now let’s look at the “Sila” or ethical steps, which feels appropriate for the new year: Wise Communication, Wise Action, and Wise Livelihood, starting with Wise Communication.

The premise of all three is the same – the premise, or the aspiration- which is non-harming. Another way of saying that is, the invitation – to us, to the legal profession - is to communicate, act, and work in ways that are non-harming. 

Can we do that? The law is an adversary system. There are other ethical rules, like the Rules of Professional Conduct. Can we practice Wise Communication, be committed to non-harming, and not break our ethical rules? I think so. 

But first let’s look at the size of the cloth, as Naomi Shihab Nye says, because there are so many ways we communicate that weren’t even wildly imagined in the time of the ancient teachings, when Wise Communication was first offered. 

We still talk (that’s a good thing), but we also Zoom, call, text, chat, email, and in some cases we still write letters. We also post, on social media, on blogs, on places like Medium and Substack, and in comments sections of online publications, and on our organizations’ internal communication platforms. It feels endless, the ways we reach out or put our views out there, now. And we listen, too, or we or try to. Maybe we could do better, or I could, but we listen, and we read what’s been written and texted and chatted and posted. 

So we do all of this, and the premise wants to be that we’re doing it in a non-harming way. To me that means, or that only works when, we set the intention to not cause harm before we put communication out there and also before we take communication in. 

Combining some of the classical lists for Wise Communication, here’s an acronym I’m liking right now: Think(ing) Cap. For the ways we communicate outwards, Think (the “ing” just makes it work) stands for true, helpful, interconnected, necessary, and kind. For the ways we take in communication, Cap stands for curious, attentive, and patient. 

Starting with putting things out there, or “THINKing,” the first thing is, everything wants to be true. True, because if we lie we’re causing ourselves moral injury, and who knows what harm we may cause others? Even if the truth has to be, “I can’t say more,” I feel like it’s incumbent on us and also in a way obvious that we need to be telling the truth. 

But not the whole truth necessarily: the H of THINKing is helpful. What if we only said things which were helpful? In fact, what if we warmed our hearts a little before we opened our mouths or lowered our fingers to the keyboard – this would be part of intention-setting – or said some metta or practiced a little compassion - for the person or people we were about to reach? Then I feel like wouldn’t probably be anything but helpful. And wouldn’t that change everything?

Next, I, for interconnection. Interconnection is a way and also a why: it’s setting the intention to remember that the person across the table or room or courtroom and I are connected; the deported person, the woman who was murdered yesterday, the ICE agent who shot her – all of us interconnected. Everyone is our siblings, our parents, our children, our colleagues, our side, the other side, and we are theirs. We’re all in this together, like it or not, acknowledge it or not. This is one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s great teachings: we inter-are. Can we talk that way? Can we walk that way? Because we really and truly are all in this together.

And then I love the N of THINKing, which is necessary. Remember the portable practice of WAIT, “why…am…I…talking” or texting or taking action? Is it necessary? Or is it filler? Or is it gossip? What’s needed and what’s not? What if my words aren’t needed at all? Can we keep our own counsel? Or an even better English idiom: if it’s not necessary, can we hold our peace? Such a nice way to think about it…

And finally, T-truthful, H-helpful, I-interconnected, N-necessary, and K: can we be kind? We imagine our immediate audience, one or one million, and we intentionally summon kindness. Whether they’re friends or adversaries, we do that. And we wait until kindness arises before we speak, write, or post: kindness, towards our audience and also towards anyone they’re connected with. And also, kindness about everyone. That’s important, too. In other words, our whole attitude wants to be kindness. 

So that’s putting communication out there, and then taking it in, THINKing CAP, starts with C, curious. Can we be curious whenever we take something in, which for me means, nonjudgmental, interested, having a don’t-know mind. Not freezing the person speaking writing, or posting in some frame from long ago or even from a moment ago. Not knowing what they’re going to say – in fact, letting go of thinking we do – and definitely not trying to finish their sentence or tell them we already know what they’re going to say. 

And A, attentive, which for me means, no, I can’t check my texts and listen at the same time. There is no such thing as multi-tasking, so if you’re reading emails right now, go for it, but we’re each only doing one thing at a time, and it’s our pick. 

And P, patient, which maybe belongs on both sides, on the THINKing and on the CAP, but it only fits on the CAP side of the acronym so it’s here. But speaking as someone who is constantly in the process of trying to cultivate more patience, patience. That quality of relaxing the body, smiling, and letting the listening or reading or seeing, take in what it takes in, slowly, in a relaxed way. And taking in so much more because we’ve given ourselves the gift of patience.  

That’s Wise communication in a nutshell. Except for one thing: we want to be communicating with and listening to ourselves with these qualities, too. We do.