Communication Breakdown

I’m sorry I’ve not posted in a while. So you know, I have been working on an essay about how it is to be single, but that’s going to have to wait a bit. I felt I was concentrating too much on me, and nobody wants to read that; I need to make it a bit more general. So, in lieu of writing about my mundane lifestyle, I decided to take a break from thinking too much and just rant about something that chaps my ass as few things do.

Unless you’ve translated this page, you’re reading it in English. It’s the only language I know fluently. I’m assuming, though, that the subject of today’s diatribe is not limited solely to English, but afflicts each and every tongue spoken on this planet. It is my sincere hope that I’m not the only person who grits their teeth when the one thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, the most basic tool humans use (and if I may be so bold as to say it), the ONLY thing that allows us to thrive is…utterly ignored. What could it be? Why, it’s communication, of course. I’ve found that while we all do a lot of talking, we are rarely communicating. Let me give some examples.

At lunch today, I got some pizza from a restaurant I’d never patronized before. I’ve only been in this area for a month, so I assumed some of my co-workers would have already tried it, so as a way to make small talk during lunch, I asked one of them if they had ever sampled this particular pizzeria’s fare. My exact words were “Have you ever tried the pizza from (this place)? The immediate response was, “They have excellent pizza.” Do you see the problem here? I don’t mean to sound snotty, but I didn’t ask what they thought of the pizza, I asked if they had ever tried it. The listener in this case assumed that I wanted to know what they thought of the food, which would probably have been my next question. My beef here is the assumption. What if I wasn’t going to ask what their opinion of the food was? And more importantly, why did my first question get ignored? This may seem nit-picky, but I told this story so you would understand when I tell the next one.

Not too long ago, some friends and I were discussing (OK, gossiping) some of our neighbors. During the course of the discussion, I mentioned of one of an acquaintance, “For an ex-cop Jesus freak, he’s a nice guy,” and you would have thought from the reaction of some of those I was speaking with that I had called his mother a whore and kicked his dog. The general consensus was, “Just because he’s a religious ex cop doesn’t make him an idiot!” If you’ll re-read what I said, you’ll see that I said he was a nice guy. I didn’t call him an idiot; in fact I complimented him on NOT being an idiot. Oh, but I had a hard time convincing some others that I was being nice. Evidently, as soon as they heard the words “Jesus freak” and “ex cop”, they reacted to what they thought I meant and not to what I said. And that, my friends, is a very foolish way to get through life. I have found that I can save myself a lot of embarrassment by listening to what is said and not what I think the speaker means. I once heard a saying that has stuck with me since the day I heard it: “You have two ears and one mouth. That means you should listen twice as much as you talk.” Words to live by.

Although conversations with friends can provide endless examples of non-communication, advertisers are, aside from politicians, the absolute worst offenders when it comes to butchering the language and making it seem acceptable to do so. Here in Florida, there has been a radio commercial running lately for female knee replacement. Apparently, male and female knees have subtle differences, which makes perfect sense. In the commercial, a male voice is speaking of knee replacement surgery, and is repeatedly interrupted by a female voice who shrilly blabs what the male voice was going to say anyway, as if hearing about female knee surgery from a female is more convincing. I say, fine and dandy and I agree that women might feel more comfortable hearing it from someone of their own gender. My problem is that by interrupting the male voice, it is implied that those stupid men couldn’t possibly understand a woman’s physiology, and their voices should be drowned out as soon as they start speaking. Well, not only is it just plain rude to interrupt when someone else is talking, but from my (possibly myopic) viewpoint, those who interrupt should be given no credence whatsoever. I wonder what board of executives agreed that rudeness, especially when it comes to medical procedures, is a good way to attract customers.

How I would love to continue to provide examples of our abysmal failure to communicate, but you get the picture. I often wonder how we have managed to get as far as we have given the deplorable state of our spoken interaction. Do me, and more importantly, yourself a favor the next time you are talking to someone. LISTEN to what they’re saying and if asked a question, ANSWER IT. You might think you know what the person wants, but chances are they probably just want to know what they’ve asked. It’s really not very hard.