Road 2 Human is a blog about the interpersonal perspective stepping stones that make up this journey – our journey to find our way, to impact others, and to live a meaningful life. My primary focus directs attention to the human interactions and relationships that drive communication through the consideration of perspectives. Road 2 Human is about our steps and our moments, as much as it is about our successes and struggles.

I have been considering and gathering information for this blog all my life, and recently, I have been burdened by an unusual irony: as much as I think about and talk about “the journey,” my least favorite type of book to read is one that involves a real journey, that is, a geographical journey. For some reason, that type of reading leaves me disinterested and unsatisfied. Between Homer’s Iliad, about the fall of Troy, and the Odyssey, where Odysseus travels home to Greece, I’ll take the Iliad every time because I don’t want to read about that long journey. One day, that disconnected irony jolted me to a pause, and I had to figure out why I felt that way before I could continue writing about the interpersonal journey of developing effective communication with other humans.

I appreciate and learn from the journeys of others. I am inspired by those who meet health and fitness struggles with dedication. I am awed by the drive and fierce determination of regular people who push through obstacles and failure to achieve monumental success in business. I am comforted by the strength of those who battle through loss and brokenness to change and mold their spirits back to a tolerable health and happiness. I’m touched when people recount their efforts to set a goal and achieve a task like running a marathon, getting a new job, or getting out of debt.

Our journeys, individually and collectively, run simultaneously toward our end and what lies there for us. Our roads wind together and drift apart; they climb and they descend; sometimes they stop without warning. But we cannot stop. For even our idleness is a decision and another step toward who we are and what we want out of our lives. The journey is critical to our character and our humanness. It gives us meaning and purpose. It is the combination of all our moments and experiences, our decisions and indecisions, our relationships and our individual versions of self-worth. Everyone has a journey, but how we choose to engage it is where we learn our values and our value.

So why does this writer, who appreciates a good journey (and all types of ancient Mediterranean culture), not want to read about Odysseus’ epic journey to return home to Ithaca? It was surely a puzzlement for me. After much thought and searching, I finally came to understand what it was about the Iliad that held me captive, while the Odyssey set me off to sea. The Iliad is, more or less, a snapshot in time. In those ~52 days of the 10+ year besiegement of Troy and then the very short Trojan War, we learn about the personal interactions of Achilles, Agamemnon, and Hector, and why they do what they do. Often, the reasons that people make the decisions they make hold more insight into their character than the decisions themselves. The turning-point journeys in the Iliad come from within those men, and those stepping stones are the focus of the journey that give me the best perspective and teach me the most. Thus, for me, developing strong communication and understanding interpersonal relationships are best achieved by considering the respective perspectives.

Perspective is the interrelation in how one looks at something; it is being able to understand that there are relationships and conditions that affect how a situation is, well, situated. It can nudge us in a direction; it can open a door; it can bring new ideas; it can be a revelation of understanding; it can invoke compassion or professionalism; it can be objective or subjective. Perspective helps us see that there is always another way to look at a situation. Considering the perspective of others helps us understand better what other humans need in life, and how we can communicate with them more effectively. Perspective is an important tool in our personality toolkit that can change our lives if we are willing to employ it when interacting with others. I’m not saying that we should abandon our principles to engage another person; I’m saying we should consider their situation to help us engage them. If you know that someone doesn’t speak English, you would have to speak to them in a language they do understand if you want to communicate with them. If you try to explain the cost of a computer to someone who doesn’t have knowledge of your currency, you have to try again using a currency the person does understand. Understanding a perspective is being able to take another step, seize another moment along our path. Perspectives are not always right or wrong – they are pieces of information that can help us grow stronger in our own awareness, and in the relationships we forge with our other humans.

With bachelor’s degrees from the University of Tennessee in Psychology and Latin, and a master’s degree in Classical Languages from Vanderbilt University, I invested my educational career – and it was a long one – in learning about people and their interactions, and how culture develops through language, literature, arts, humanity, war, commerce, and architecture. I finally started my adult-get-a-job career as a Latin teacher, then transitioned to Human Resources as I struggled to find a second income to pay bills. Soon after that, I moved into a full-time role as HR Director, and have spent the rest of my career in that capacity. My entire professional life has focused on working with people, either teaching them in school or helping them develop in their careers. I’ve worked with executives and company management through all aspects of hiring, firing, training, counseling, compensating, and guiding workers in all types of roles. Everyone is a student and a worker – hopefully both (in some respect) for the entirety of their lives. Every student and every worker is a human being with hopes and dreams, with a family and friends, and with ideas and emotions. Each one has a perspective that drives them in learning, work, and relationships; being able to understand that perspective helps make them more understood, appreciated, and successful.

My offering to you is a collection of interpersonal perspectives along this road, stepping stones, times to learn, maps to guide, approaches that may impact business or personal interactions, and observations on self-awareness and self-teaching that lead to better communication and understanding.

Every step we take, every person we meet, every thought we have, and every situation we encounter is a stone on our path – they’re all important, and capturing them, to seal up their value and learn from their placement, is how we build our own path, our own Road 2 Human.