LOOK THROUGH ANY WINDOW

I’ve just got a new pair of reading glasses, slightly stronger prescription, different frames and it set me to thinking. Firstly I knew that my family would go “don’t like the frames” as they always do. It occurred to me that having new spectacles involves two different changes, the positive change for me is that I can see more clearly, being long sighted, small print has gotten more difficult as I have aged so a plus for me. For those looking at me I have changed, the glasses either suit or don’t suit. One event two changes.

This photo has nothing to do with anything in the post, i just like it.

This set me to thinking about an old exercise I had recently encountered again, the Johari Window. It was developed by two Americans in 1955, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram-hence the Jo-Hari moniker.  The aim is to help people to better understand their relationship with themselves and others. Luft and Ingram developed the exercise when working with people with mental health issues.

The lower left hand window is information that you keep hidden. Things you know that others do not. Information about your life you do not want to share with others.

The lower right hand window is the unknown area, the part of you that no one knows.

Borrowed from Tita's Playground (http://esduren.multiply.com/links/item/20/Titas-Johari-Window)

Basically there are four panes to the window. The upper left hand pane is what everyone may know about you: how old you are; the colour of your hair; your job; your interests, facts that are out in the open.

The upper right hand window is things that others know about you that you don’t; for example how those new glasses just don’t suit you. How when telling a story you always say “He turned around to me and he said...” How you wave your hands around when you talk. Those things an observer might notice that you do not.

The lower left hand window is information that you keep hidden. Things you know that others do not. Information about your life you do not want to share with others.

The lower right hand window is the unknown area, the part of you that no one knows. 

In the exercise you choose how much you want to share and as you and the other people interact there is a greater intimacy. It’s can help people to see how others perceive them and to learn how to safely disclose. One person I used to work with uses it annually when he is training new youth workers. It allows them to experience how the people they work with feel when they share information.

Anyway I have been wondering today whether this model could be effectively used to describe characters? Ok so you as the author, know all there is to know about your character, open, blind and hidden. But the characters discovery of their blind area and how they disclose and learn about the unknown area may give their character arc. What do you think?

I am going to see if I can use this window on the characters in a short story I am writing at the moment. Watch this space.

Anyway on to poetry. I have been struggling with this poem for a while now, essentially it is a political poem, generated by my anger at the financial mess we are all in courtesy of the greed of bankers and governments too scared to regulate them. But enough.

ANNOUNCEMENT

They announce we must sell the carriage clock,

The one that has sat on the mantelpiece,

Our grandparents bought a lifetime ago.

They tell us there is no choice, it has to go.

Our garden too, they say must pay.

All care and nurture must turn a profit.

They have set to altering the climate of the heart,

The heart hardens, the weather is wilder.

What will be left tomorrow?

I went through many rewrites to get here. The poem became shorter as I cut away the political rhetoric. What do you think?

I am going to end with a youtube video of The Hollies, a 1960’s beat group from Manchester, famous for having Graham Nash in their midst before he decamped to California and fame with Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Have a good week.