Distance Of Authority
Why Geoffrey Writes In The Third Person
On a website devoted to such a personal and intimate practice, the use of the third person might appear an odd choice. It suggests detachment — a tone seemingly at odds with connection.
Yet for the Practice of Peace, the choice is both deliberate and essential.
By writing about himself in the third person, Geoffrey is not hiding behind formality; he is using a linguistic tool to create clarity, objectivity, and trust.
The distance it introduces is not a barrier to intimacy but its quiet foundation.
Fostering a Voice of Trust
In a practice built around one man’s experience, credibility must rest on objectivity rather than self-assertion. Writing in the third person removes the immediacy — and the potential self-consciousness — of I.
It allows Geoffrey’s qualifications and philosophy to be presented in a calm, professional tone that reads as informed rather than self-promoting.
This journalistic perspective lends the practice a sense of being reported rather than declared.
It invites the reader to consider Geoffrey’s decades of experience in silence, touch, and attention without the distraction of ego. Authority arises not from self-reference but from precision and restraint.
“Objectivity, in language as in practice, is a form of respect.”
Centring the Client
The Practice of Peace is not a biography. Its focus is the man who seeks it.
By adopting the third person, the narrative turns outward, toward the reader’s own experience.
The emphasis shifts from “what Geoffrey does” to “what the practice offers.”
This subtle reorientation ensures that the man arriving at the website feels himself to be the subject — not the audience of someone else’s story.
The perspective empowers him. It says, in effect: You are the centre of this process. Geoffrey is your guide, not your example.
Separating the Practitioner from the Ego
The stylistic distance also serves Geoffrey himself.
By speaking of his work in the third person, he describes achievement without inflation.
This separation between the practitioner and the ego protects the integrity of the practice, reminding both guide and participant that the process is not about performance but presence.
It mirrors the ethos of the Practice of Peace: to engage without self-importance, to act without adornment.
What matters is not who speaks, but what is conveyed.
The Integrity of Distance
The third-person voice, then, is not an affectation but a structural choice — a form that enacts the very values it describes. It builds trust, clarifies authority, and keeps the focus where it belongs: on the man entering the work.
Through this respectful and purposeful distance, intimacy becomes possible. The voice itself models the practice — measured, grounded, and selfless — proving that sometimes, the surest way to closeness is a little space.
Being in the Blue Mountains, you can’t help but feel small. My problems, my ego—they just seemed to dissolve against that backdrop. The nature here isn’t just scenery; it’s a silent partner in the practice.
