Thumbs Up If You Can Hear Me: The Lost Art of Communication

You know, you learn a lot of tricks from working with kids.  For instance, if you have a class of kids under 10 who are all talking over you while you give instructions, you might try yelling “thumbs up if you can hear me” to get them to respond to your desire for them to refocus.  Thumbs will go up around the room, and kids will be as quiet as kids can be.  It’s an imperfect science.  

To be very blunt with you, I kind of wish I could do that with adults sometimes.  Sometimes, all the time.  

I answer LOTS of emails and phone calls every day.  This week, HUNDREDS of emails a day.  Not exaggerating, hundreds.  So when I send out a few important personal emails for myself and family members, can’t people just respond to them for me in a timely manner?  Like within a week, at most?! [Can I get an amen?]

I don’t want to resort to being the person with the read receipts on emails.  I just want to know that the people I email care about getting my questions answered.  I would sadly even settle for them pretending to care.  

THUMBS UP IF YOU CAN HEAR ME.

A couple of months ago I was hanging out with my friend, Bryan, and he did something completely foreign to me… he didn’t look at his phone for the entire 4 hours we were together.  (Yes, people, I pay attention to things like that).  On one hand, maybe his phone died.  On the other, maybe he was entertaining a social experiment in which he was clocking how long I could talk without stopping and had to throw the towel in at four hours (because newflash blog readers, I can talk FOREVER).  Maybe he thought I was crazy and was afraid to move.  Regardless, we can all admit that kind of listening is sadly absent from our media obsessed culture, and more personally from our friendships.   [And we can all admit that Bryan sounds pretty cool].  

THUMBS UP IF YOU CAN HEAR ME.  

Nothing feels better than being heard, am I right?  My Pastor always says that the simplest way to make someone feel loved is to just listen to them, and my 6.5 years of college coursework suggest that, too.  

So maybe, just maybe, this week we can all try to put our phones away when we’re spending hard-to-come-by in-person time with our friends and family.  And maybe just maybe when we get desperate emails from people, we can answer like we’re desperate to help.  

They say the art of communication is dead, and that may be true, but can’t we try to revive it?  

I’m in if you’re in.  

Thumbs up if you can hear me.  

Pleasant Lack of Filter

My beloved friend, Jon, is always coming up with unique ways to tell me that I am completely odd but loved anyways (to which he would probably say, “yeah, we’ll go with that”).  The most recent way that he communicated this was when he told me that I have a “pleasant lack of filter.”  To which I, too, say, “yeah, we’ll go with that.”  He loves me, I swear he does.  [I love him, I swear I do].  But secretly- don’t tell him- that’s actually probably the exactly perfect way to describe me.  At least, I have to hope it is.

Love.

Thankfully both of us have become more stylish in

the 5 years since this photo was taken.

I have always been aware of the possibility that I may have somewhat poor social skills and disclose more than people would care to know (this is confirmed by my best friend’s husband, who gets sick of my intense play by plays about EVERYTHING).  Luckily, this potential character flaw that Jon claims to find endearing bodes really well for blogging.  For dating, no.  Heck no.  But for blogging, yes.  I only have to reign it in the teensiest amount from time to time. 

To be a decent blogger, you have to learn to be translucent (you know, the word you learned in 5th grade science class that means in the middle of transparent and opaque), and you have to be okay with some people thinking you are a little weird.  

To take the sugar coating off, at least once a week someone from work/ church/ a frienemy/ someone-I-haven’t-seen-for-a-million-years/ etc. will very sweetly bring up something I’ve written for RCG or Girlish-- triggering an internal response of “they just read that one, huh?”  It takes some getting used to.

Actually, I am still very authentically surprised when anyone reads anything I write.  I’m 30ish blog posts deep right now… maybe I’ll get used to it by 130.  Maybeeee?!

In the past few months since I started RCG, several of my talented friends have come out of the woodworks to disclose that they have top-secret blogs, or have top-secret ambitions to start writing a top secret blog.  [And then they usually ask me to read said secret blog and it makes me feel so honored and happy].  I just hope that one day they each get the cool experience that comes with making those quirky private thoughts public.  If that comes to fruition, you should probably read their blogs and not mine… they could each best me every day. 

Anyhow, what I always tell them, and what I’ll tell you, is this: I have come to find that sometimes the things that make you feel the most weird are the thoughts and ideas you are too afraid to see if other people are thinking, too.  If you stop over-editing yourself and finally share those thoughts and ideas out loud, you can have the amazing opportunity to connect with people and realize you’re not that weird.  Or, maybe you are, but you’re in good company!

I just have multiple academic degrees in feelings though, so what do I know?  [See what I did there?]

The summary is this:  have the audacity to be your own weird self.  Shed a tiny spotlight on your secret thoughts.  Befriend someone like Jon who makes you question your sanity at their amusement… it’s all very good for you.  Promise!  It’s this non-doctor’s orders!