I look at you and I hear you. I understand your words and I perceive your body language. All the sounds that come from you, the tone, the gestures and… the feelings. I can get agitated or nervous or calm, just by watching you.
But it is not you the one that says what I hear. Your words, you expressing yourself, has to go through my „landing modules”: I receive the information and I unpack it and use it according to my dictionary. What you say has a meaning to me only based on my dictionary. I will never be able to translate your message outside my definitions, just because for now, my imagination is unaware of those possibilities.
But the same happens with you. All the things you tell me are coming already prepacked by your own dictionary. The words you use, your gestures and tone, everything comes fully packed based on your needs, wishes, desires, loss. You also cannot express something that is not familiar to yourself. You will always speak your words, knowing exactly what you meant, while I will be listening to you, considering I fully understand what you wanted to say, but following my own decripting code.
In the case stated above it’s almost as if you tried sendig a boat (because that is the only transportation mean you know) to an airport (as that is the only receiving method I have). Although both boats and airports have to do with sending and receiving packages, I need a lot of immagination to make these work in the same registers.
So, we have the following situation: a boat can’t dock in an airport, but there has to be a way to make this work. Of course, if you don’t care too much about the other person or anybody else, per se, there is no need to look more in deep. But it is stil a good exercise if you want to learn more or just to be able to communicate (not speak!) with as many people as possible.
Taking these from an engineering point of view, the first necessary step is to realise the issue with the boat, airport, garage, car, etc. What I mean is that you have to realise there are a lot of things that can be transmitted using exactly the same words. First you have to become aware that your way of communicating, or other people’s, is not the only way. And is not wrong! Whatever communication method you have, is OK, as long as you are aware of it.
The second step would be to realise other people’s communication method and to try to decode it. That usually goes with asking a lot of questions, with no feelings involved, stating from the begining your clear objective that you would like to better understand the other one. Try decoding as much as possible, but be aware that the other person might not know exactly how he reacts, when, why, and might not be able to explain you their dictionnary. Or they might do it, considering they did an awsome job, and fail miserably. I will explain why, a little bit lower.
The third and final step would be to constantly do maintenance on the your boat-airport kind of relationship. That means that you have to fine tune it, keep up to date and invest time in all this communication stuff.
That’s how it goes in logical, everyday, real life. But that is, most of the times, based on Ego. So that means that everything you or I say, everything you or I understand, will have the first mission to save our own Egos. The rest, is the actual truth, but the main communication is triggered, maintained and insisted upon, in order to protect and make flourish our Ego. Again, this is not a bad thing, as the Ego is just a tool in our hands. The fact that we use it, despite and against others, is a totally different thing. The Ego is simply our survival interface in this world. But it’s perception affects our lives in full mode. Wether it was hurt or just considered it was, it will always assume its own survival depends on thriving inspite anything else, sometimes even inspite of other human beings. It’s main purpose is to keep us alive, just that sometimes it makes us even lose control and do awful things in the name of survival. It is just a tool, but one of which we should be aware and learn to use.
The thing is that unless you are aware of this, you have no idea what triggers and what sets you up. As I said above, some people think they have explained everything perfectly and deem the other one to be an idiot by not undersresting their message (words, intentions, gifts, etc). They don’t understand that what they send as a message, is totally triggered by their hurt Ego, emotions, past experiences, things hidden in the deepest corners of their mind. And that the same happens to the receiver, that understands everything based on his personal experiences and conclusion. Maybe the first one may raise their tone, because of how their boss/parents/tutors did in order to make them pay attention, and the second one might understand he did something wrong, because he was yelled at only when he got in trouble. The words heard by both of them are the same, the messages… far away. Without understanding that the ones speaking and understanding are not their true selves, and without trying to adjust the communication code so that they fall the closest, there is no way in the world for these two people to get along. And their relationship, in case it has to exist due to outside demands, will fail, bringing them to failure too. They will increase their frustration, lower their self esteem, get tired explaining and understanding, and so on.
We are human beings for now, in a material world. Words and feelings and different ways of expressing ourselves are the only tools we have for now. We can choose to refine them, or go by our survival instinct.
But what if we could see each other’s souls? Would we still talk to each other?
The Chronicles of a Human Being 