Real-Time Attunement

When everything's a symbol but only some are symbols of significance, discovering which symbols are important (and when) is a multilayered attempt at constant attunement.

Every person uses a sort of interior shorthand of symbols, sometimes they're words sometimes images or ideas or complete abstracts, to think about, organize and represent their interior experience, and no one sees or experiences this symbols language but this one person. Even so a person naturally uses, renews, attunes their interior symbols so as to adequately match their situational experience.

Expressing yourself in adequately enough, for own yourself, is a process of taking those internal symbols and finding exterior symbols which when properly attuned and fused together you feel accurately enough convey your meaning and situational experience. We don't wait for someone who can understand us before we express ourselves; we talk out loud, we doodle, we keep journals, we talk to our pets, we create art and music and symbolic shrines in places for no one but ourselves.

Then of course there is talking to people when we attempt to find exterior symbols that we think adequately convey our meaning in the situation at hand, and are symbols we think they will understand in the situation at hand. And in a relationship two people can use exterior symbols to increasingly (re)attune other exterior symbols until they have created a highly functional symbol set accurate and adequate for the meaning and significance that they experience in their relationship.

And when we listen to our partner, by searching for clarity of symbols, by constantly comparing their symbols to what we understand of the meaning they're trying to convey, we glean more of their meaning, more of their interior experience. And so it is by intently focusing on understanding our partner's symbols, by maintaining constant real-time attunement to our partner's meaning and experience, despite the inevitable obstacles and distractions, we gain the most intimacy.