Several Years ago I was sunbathing on the swim dock floating on the lagoon at the Seabeck Conference Center. Peter Eliot-Wooten, who is quite a bit older than me, lay a few feet from me flanked by two young women in bikinis, both quite a bit younger than me. I was far too relaxed to get uptight about the situation, but I was thinking about the patent unfairness in the distribution of dock-mates as Peter spoke.
He may said many things, but I only recall one. The dock rocking gently to people moving about I remember his words floating over me with the breeze. "There are three levels of communication. There is past-time as in 'Hi! How are you?' There is informative as in 'T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land in 1922.' And then there is the intimate. I try to spend as little time as possible getting past the first two."
Appreciatively, I realized that the young women were sitting at Peter's feet because he was wise. I learned a lot from Peter's lesson that day. His lesson continues to speak to me. He has taught me that all of us, women and men, aged and youth, all directly and indirectly seek connections at depth with one another.
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