A note on authorship: These Observations are developed through an ongoing dialogue between my own ideas and experience and the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a thinking, questioning and drafting partner. I remain responsible for the ideas, content and final version.
My published book, when completed, will explore Chaodynamics fully, and is my own work, based on my long experience of communciations coaching and training, using embodied workshop principles.

The Moment Before

There are moments in life that we all remember. The words that ended a friendship, the email that changed a career, the conversation that quietly became an argument, the decision that could never be taken back. We remember these moments because they seem important, because looking back they stand out like landmarks on a journey. Yet I have begun to wonder whether the real turning point often came slightly earlier—not when the words were spoken, nor even when the decision was made, but at the almost invisible moment when we stopped noticing.

It happens so quickly that we rarely see it. A reply forms in our mind before the other person has finished speaking. Our breathing changes without our realising it. Our shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. We stop listening to the person standing in front of us and begin listening instead to the person we have already constructed in our imagination. Nothing dramatic has happened. Nobody has raised their voice. Yet somehow the future has already begun to narrow.

The curious thing is that we seldom experience this as certainty. We experience it as obviousness. Of course that’s what they meant. Of course they’ll react like this. Of course I know where this conversation is going. Perhaps we do. Perhaps we don’t. None of us can read another person’s thoughts, yet much of everyday life depends upon behaving as though we can. Sometimes our intuition is remarkably accurate. Sometimes it quietly leads us away from reality before we have even realised that we’ve left it.

That is why I find myself becoming less interested in the words themselves and more interested in the moments that precede them. There is often a brief interval, so brief that we hardly notice it, when the future has not yet settled into one direction. It is not a moment of certainty, nor of indecision. It is simply the last moment in which more than one future remains possible.

Perhaps that is where our greatest freedom lies. Not in controlling other people, not in finding the perfect words, and not in predicting what will happen next, but in noticing that, for a little longer than we imagined, the conversation has not yet become inevitable.

Sometimes the future begins with something we fail to notice.

The Moment Before the Arrow Flies

In the previous Observation, The Future Begins Earlier Than We Think, I suggested that the future of a situation may begin to change before we realise that anything significant has happened. Here I want to look more closely at that small interval: the moment when something has disturbed the ordinary flow of things, but before our response has become another event in the situation.

This is where self-calibration can become useful.

Calibration does not mean trying to make yourself calm, rational or perfectly objective. It means noticing the state you are actually in. Before asking What should I do?, it may be worth asking: Where am I, when am I, and how am I?

How long has this been going on? How much time do I have? Where might it be best to begin? What do I actually know, and what am I assuming? What has happened so far, and what is happening now?

Then there is the less obvious question: How am I experiencing this?

Notice your body without trying to change it. Are you leaning towards the situation or away from it? Are you tense, restless, still, hurried? What is happening to your breathing, your shoulders, your jaw? Where is your attention? What emotion is present? Do you have a felt sense that something is right, wrong, uncertain or unfinished?

You don’t have to do anything about these observations. For the moment, simply notice them.

This matters because none of these sensations tells you what the other person is thinking. They tell you something about your own state while you are trying to understand theirs.

That is where embodied social awareness becomes interesting. What are you noticing in the other person? Their posture, movement, voice, pace, attention or mood? Are you becoming more relaxed together, or are you unconsciously beginning to mirror tension, defensiveness or withdrawal? Are you actually listening to what is emerging, or are you already preparing your answer?

And then there is language.

Listen not only to what is being said, but to what your own inner language is doing with it.

They haven’t answered.

That is an observation.

They are ignoring me.

That is an interpretation.

They are deliberately ignoring me.

Now we have added an intention.

They don’t respect me.

Now we have added a meaning.

Any of these interpretations may eventually prove to be right. But notice how quickly something we observed can become something we believe we know.

The same thing happens in the words we speak. They don’t understand me. They’re being difficult. They always do this. There’s no other option.

Again, these may feel completely justified. But listen to what they do to the space between people.

Some language closes possibilities almost before we realise that it has done so:

Calm down and listen.

Are you with us or against us?

There’s no other option.

You’re not making much sense.

What I think you really mean is…

The point isn’t that these words are forbidden. Context, tone and intention matter. The point is to notice what the words do.

Do they invite the other person to remain part of the conversation, or do they quietly reduce the possibilities available to them?

And perhaps this is where we can return to the arrow.

There is usually a moment when we can still do something with what is happening. The first words are the beginning of the journey because they don’t simply describe what is happening; they become part of what happens next.

Our own lack of awareness — of our language, our bodily state, our emotions and our assumptions about the other person — can therefore become part of the disruption itself. We may think the problem began with them, when it may have begun with something neither of us noticed in ourselves.

Then the arrow is shot.

And it cannot be retrieved.

Sometimes it is shot precisely because we were not sufficiently composed — sufficiently aware of ourselves, our language and the other person — to notice what was happening before we released it.

Self-composure is not the absence of emotion. It is the capacity to remain sufficiently present to what is happening while emotion is present.

With practice, that capacity can grow.

This is why I find the sequence understanding → processing → composing → performing useful. First we try to understand what is happening. Then we process what we are experiencing. Then we compose ourselves — and compose our words. Only then do we perform: we let the arrow fly, knowing that once released it becomes part of another person’s experience as well as our own.

The arrow may still not fly perfectly. We are human, and uncertainty remains.

The point is not to eliminate uncertainty or emotion, nor to find the perfect thing to say. It is to become more attentive to that small interval in which something is still possible.

So, the next time you feel that shift, perhaps don’t ask immediately what you should do.

Stay with it for a moment.

What do I know?
What am I assuming?
What am I feeling?
What might the other person be experiencing?
And what, as yet, have I not noticed?

Then listen to the words that are forming.

You may still decide to say exactly what you were going to say.

But now you have noticed yourself saying it.

That, perhaps, is where the practice begins.

Not a method. Not a formula.

Just a way of becoming more attentive to the moment before the future begins to take shape.

This is one of the observations I am exploring under the name Chaodynamics.