“Yeah, yeah, I hear you”

// July 28th, 2009 // Glenn

Recently I’ve noticed a similarity in the books I’ve been reading and the TV shows I’ve been watching.  The similarity is that often, possibly most of the time, when something interesting happens – some twist in the plot, the reason it happened is because of a misunderstanding.  Many times one character is in the midst of explaining an event when they get abruptly cut-off, disconnected or is embarrassed to share all the details.  This causes the listener to jump to a conclusion that is inevitably false.  Sometimes the story is filled with these misunderstandings and that’s what makes the plot interesting.  This also allows each of the characters to continue to be basically “good” people, that were simply misunderstood, which gave them the appearance of doing bad things.

I wonder how often this happens to us in real life.  I know I find it somewhat frustrating and tiresome to see these misunderstandings occur in stories and I know that this rarely, if ever, happens to me, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I am a good communicator.  So it stands to reason that many others have this problem often due to poor communication skills – along with a  fear of embarrassment which causes them to “hide” things in their lives.
I suppose my advice here is for you, the reader, to consider whether you are an occasional victim of this problem as well.  Do you find yourself cutting people off before they finish their explanations – figuring you “know” how they were going to finish?  Or do you have people always telling you things like “you didn’t let me finish”?  Or do you give short explanations to hide your embarrassment about some past events?

Regardless, think about the problem that is happening – identify it, and it is half-way fixed then.  I’m sure you can see that taking time to clearly understand and be understood will allow life to be more stable.  As the famous saying goes “information is power”.

One Response to ““Yeah, yeah, I hear you””

  1. terry says:
    July 28, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Every stimulus that a mammal perceives is interpreted by that mammals brain. The interpretation depends on the individual history , perhaps , call it experiences . From conception , an organism learns stimulus and response . Later in life a peer attempts to communicate by making audible sounds , -call it a language if you like. It is my guess , that contact fighting , wrestling , even tackling in football is a communication. In the case of language propagated by voice , we assume that the receiver has the same look up table. That is unlikely.
    I often chuckle about a twenty month old boy getting hell from his mother because he repeatedly digs the soil out of a planter and the mother is yelling “You are killing the plant”. In my small mind , I ask myself, If I was twenty months old , I also would want to know what killing the plant means, and would repeatedly dig all the soil away until it, the response occurred. A twenty month old boy may know two hundred words. A sentient mother would realize , let him dig or just pick him up and smile. Someday give him a bean plant and his own small pot of soil , and try to explain the process in his words.
    To scale this back up to two twenty year olds, -Yes , the above is a communication problem , but the older we get the more likely we are to jump to the conclusion. Two sixty year olds use different words than two twenty year olds. Any other difference like male – female , french – english , east coast — west coast complicates.
    We are quite successful at communication because facial expression , and other factors communicate also. If you mention religion, there are black holes of communication. This what the first article talks about. . It is not possible to understand a voice stream if one of the words violates the receiver’s religious code.
    The communicator continues assuming that the words are neutral when in fact the words are now poisonous. Humans use body language , facial expression , eye contact , smell , physical contact , just like any social mammal does. Social mammals have evolved a communication method. We are social mammals and we have enough brain power to remember every single event from conception to death. We continue to invent new communication methods. In closing , I do agree that we should try to listen until the sender finishes , but often our devices have battery failure.

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