I don't really know what this post is going to be about, hence the title. I'll start by rambling slightly and see where it takes us.
So if you know me only through this blog, you first of all wouldn't know me all too well considering this is only the third post, but you might also be inclined to think i don't have very many thoughts that i consider worth sharing. This is not necessarily true. While i have many many thoughts that certainly aren't worth sharing, you would be underestimating the number of random things i think about. A more accurate assessment might be that i have many thoughts that i don't think are worth it to share. This is a whole different issue. Most of my thoughts that are "worth sharing" are not worth it to share. I often find myself thinking about controversial topics and just feel that sharing would not be worth the trouble that might come from the sharing. For example, if i were to share some thoughts on homosexuality, psychological disorders, abortion, politics, finances, parenting, marriage in general, or how any of these relate to Christianity... well... wow, wouldn't that open up a can of worms. As the case may be, all of these topics have been on my mind a lot the last couple of weeks. The problem is that i have no way of simultaneously communicating my thought processes and preventing a reader from taking something out of context (both the context of the blog post and the context of who I am as an individual). While considering this I have come to the conclusion that people really suck at helping other people understand their point of view. Maybe that's what i'll talk about instead of my opinions on the above topics.
This is nothing new. People suck at communicating. If you go to almost any school or institution of learning you will observe this. If you go to any religious institution, you will observe this. If you see two people sitting on a bench talking in downtown, you will observe this. To be honest, if you are around even one other person, you will observe this because it is you and this other person sucking at communicating. I'm bad at it too. Although many of us get to a point where we have someone who we think we communicate well with, i would imagine that most would be hard pressed to be able to tell you what it is about that relationship that allows for some semblance of successful communication. I think it is quite simple: you care enough about the person to actually listen and put value on their opinion.
Think about when you are having trouble communicating with someone... it usually isn't a problem with them telling you about their situation (with a few exceptions, one of which is a rather good friend of mine. Lets call him Arnold.). Arnold really just has a hard time talking. He is a very expressive person with body language a blind man could read, but couldn't verbally convey a message if his life depended on it. Its not just forming thoughts into phrases, sometimes it's actually saying the words themselves. Especially if those words are foreign names or long words with silent letters. I've known Arnold for something like 5-6 years now and have learned how to "interpret" what he's saying. With him, in order to understand what he's trying to tell you, you have to be able to understand his body language and who he is as a person (the "context" of what he is saying). A while ago, he came to me with a question about something that i was doing. The way he brought it up wasn't exactly delicate, he was rather upset about it and it came across as accusatory. Now, had i not known him and known that he was genuinely concerned for me and had my best interest in mind, i probably would have blown him off and brushed aside what he was saying. This demonstrates two different aspects of a successful communication that are connected.
The first is that i knew his character and was able to put what he was trying to tell me in context. Had someone walked up to me who i was unfamiliar with and approached me about this particular issue, I would have straight up ignored them. Or, even worse, i might have attacked back. In this case, i was able to understand and appreciate Arnold's message because i was able to put it into the context of his character.
The second is that i was able to read his body language to understand what he was actually telling me. While what he said was quite true, it wasn't the point he was trying to communicate. While he was saying that something was wrong, his body language showed concern and an interest in understanding (shoulders back, eyebrows up, eyes squinted slightly, head tilted. Someone who is attacking generally has their shoulders forward, eyebrows narrowed, eyes wide, head forward). What he was trying to tell me is that he thought what i was doing wasn't very good and that it might be damaging to me as well as those around me and that he wanted to understand my thought process. It was the second and third parts that were a little difficult to decipher, but that his body language was saying.
I have been rambling for a little bit here, but i want to get to my point. It is that the reason we don't generally communicate very well is that we are terrible at balancing our selfish goals in conveying our message with our interest in understanding what the opposite person in the communication is trying to contribute. That sounds complicated, but i think it is a necessary way of phrasing it. The reason is that being totally selfless in a conversation is just as bad as dominating the conversation. If you are only interested in what the other person has to convey, you are being an audience. If you are only interested in conveying your message, the other person is being an audience. While audiences have their places (movies, speeches, lectures, diaries, even counseling at times), in daily life you are not so likely to encounter this regularly. More often than not, there needs to be 2 way communication. So there needs to be this recognition and constant assessment of how much you should be contributing and receiving information in communication.
I had lunch today with an old friend, lets call her Anne, and our conversation was a rather nice example of good communication. The conversation varied between familiar banter and each of us talking at length. At various points, we encountered a topic in which one of us needed to convey a message. The other recognized this need, through body language, knowledge of the person's history, or some other fashion, and appropriately received this message. There were other times that we were able to be talking somewhat equally on a particular topic and could go back and forth with each of us contributing to a conversation. Not unlike that common children's story about stone soup where people from all over a village contribute unique ingredients to a communal soup and the outcome is fantastic and couldn't be achieved without all the ingredients.
I guess what i'm getting at is that most of our communication issues come from this imbalance of our selfish needs with the amount we value the other person's contribution. In many cases the issue is that we're being selfish and not listening. In other times it's that we do not contribute to the communication and therefore information is only going in one direction. While this has its values, in almost any interaction there has to be some sort of two way communication.
Disclaimer for today:
10. I have an additional grammar disclaimer. I really like to shorten probably to probly. This is a direct result of texting, and i have a terribly hard time not doing it while typing as well. So, i'll probly revert to using that in a blog post here or there. (See what i did there!!)
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