Communication. Yes, it was my major in college. Why? Because I liked to talk. Seriously. At one point, I wanted to be a broadcast journalist, like Katie Couric. However, after doing a mentorship at the local t.v. station {WLFI}, I learned I would have to do my own hair and make-up and edit my own tapes. That was kind of a deal breaker for me. {Sound a bit like a primadona, eh? It's ok, I was.} So, back to communication. It's interesting how we have so many ways of communicating these days ~ phone, texting, email, facebook, instagram and lots of other modes I'm not even aware of but have heard rumblings of.} Yet, at the same time, we don't seem to know how to communicate with one another. There have been a few interesting communication scenarios that have happened in the past week that have really surprised me. The more time and reflection I gave it, the more I realized how flawed our communication really is with each other. Which then leads me to wonder how that impacts relationships?
I'm the type of person who prefers to be told the truth. I suspect most people don't like to be lied to, correct? Or have information withheld from them? Or have someone be dishonest with them? Or not be told something upfront? The whole beating around the bush scene? Yeah, not so much. Yet, it seems like all of those things happened in these scenarios. As I look back on them, if the person had been upfront, open and honest from the get go, a lot of frustration could have been avoided on both sides. It seems like we are very good at burying how we really feel about something, yet, when that happens things "come out sideways." This is exactly what happened. It is perfectly acceptable to say to someone, "you really hurt me when you did xyz, I was hoping you would have been upfront about the situation from the get go." Or "my feelings were hurt when abc happened." It is ok to have an open, honest conversation if/when someone has hurt you. Or, if you think you have hurt someone to go to them and say "I am sorry if I have hurt you. I'm under the impression that perhaps you are upset with me. Will you please forgive me?" That solves things in such a healthier way than pushing it down, letting it come out sideways and being nasty at off times because you've buried the hurt and anger. Eventually, it comes out, so why not deal with it from the get go? What would our world look like then? Think we would have the anger issues? The violence? I don't know, just a thought here. It seems like we aren't educated on how to communicate with one another in a healthy way. How to process our feelings and work through them. Why is that?
The other thing that I'm noticing is people doing things that affect others without saying something to them. A good example would be someone borrowing your car without asking or without your knowledge, yet when you go to get into your car...it's not there! Um, hello! Everything we do affects someone in a positive or negative way. Please think through the ramifications of your actions and words and how they impact others. A lot of times people don't intend to hurt people and I understand that, yet a lot of times that happens.
Part of me wonders if this is due to the fact that we don't really know how we are feeling. We are so busy, so go, go, go, go that we don't take time to stop and think before responding. We simply react before thinking things through. Is part of that is because we are so unsure of our own feelings/thoughts/etc. that we don't know how to handle our own, let alone others? Have we not taken time to work through and process our own issues? Could that be part of it? We respond to situations based on our own wounds and hurts? Just some food for thought here as I've been processing some communication scenes that have impacted me recently.
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