Did You Hear?

            Last Saturday at the Royal Medieval Faire, we reconnected with the friend we made there last year. At one point throughout our many conversations (he spent much of the day at our tent) he mentioned that, having read last year’s blog in which he featured, he had been impressed with how I had actually listened to what he’d said.

            He went on to explain how he finds that people are frequently misunderstanding, misrepresenting, and misquoting things he’s said (that’s a lot of missing). Yet, he felt that my recollection of what he’d said, and the meaning of it, to be quite accurate.

            Now, there’s every possibility that I could have brushed this off as a unique occurrence, except that this wasn’t the first time I’d had something like this said to me. Within the last few months, Colleen has expressed something very similar to me. She has informed me that she has gotten frustrated conversing with other people because of how often she needs to explain herself several times before she is understood. She feels like people don’t actually listen.

            Having heard this, I could recall experiencing the same thing on occasion, and it brought to mind a quote I’d come across some time ago. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” (Stephen R. Covey, I believe) It is a most insightful quote and, I fear, very accurate.

            Why is this, though? Why do people put more of an emphasis on replying to what is said than they do on understanding what is said? I suspect that a big part is that there is an assumption that they have understood. When we hear something said, we immediately form an impression of the speaker’s meaning, and we assume that first impression is correct. And, if we are assuming we are correct, why would we bother putting in the extra thought process to examine what we heard for additional meanings? It is much easier to simply stick with the assumption.

            To that we must add that nasty piece of human existence called ‘social expectation’. Silence is often considered awkward, and as such it must be avoided. Therefore, while conversing, it is important to avoid silences by filling them. This means replying as fast as possible, thus relying upon that initial assumption. On top of that, it is assumed in our society that people who think faster are more intelligent, meaning that people who respond faster must be more intelligent.

            If you have any doubts about our social expectations, just imagine a public speaker. When they present what they have prepared, they come across well, but what happens when they are asked questions they aren’t prepared for? They respond right away – and sometimes they answer the question incorrectly and get called out on it later, but all that matters in that moment is that they have an answer. How would your opinion of that public speaker change if, when put on the spot, they fell silent? Or pulled out their phone for a quick Google search to make sure their facts were correct?

            So, the speed at which we reply is of utmost importance to us. However, there is one other key factor in people not listening properly: the imprecision of language. Language is a way of expressing thought, but thoughts are often too complicated to be encompassed by language. Speaking (or writing) is like trying to draw a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional piece of paper. You can give an impression of what you’re trying to draw, but it does not actually re-create what it is you’re seeing. Likewise, two-dimensional words can only hint at the extra dimensions contained within the thought process behind them. Even worse, everyone has their own personal interpretation of the meaning of words – slight differences in interpreted meaning can completely alter understanding what someone is trying to communicate.

            So, my trick to actually listening? Stop to consider what was said before replying. Allow those silences to exist while you replay the sentences in your head. But don’t just try to understand the words, try to understand the intent behind them. The better you know a person, the easier it is to understand how they think – use that decipher the true meaning of what they said.

            Accurate communication is incredibly important. Misunderstanding is what leads to a majority of conflicts – pausing to make sure you understand correctly is worth it in the long run.

            Plus, it feels awesome when people come along and tell you how great you are at listening.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Templeton

            So, remember how, around last Christmas, I told you about Squeakers the black ops mouse? Well, a little over a week ago, Colleen and I noticed some rodent activity in the kitchen. Naturally, we set out traps, but they were unsuccessful. One was set off the first night they were out, but didn’t catch anything.

            This was when we started to notice how clever this particular rodent was. For starters, it avoided going after the same source of food twice. It avoided the traps. It removed the steel wool we used to plug its entrance, so we had to hot-glue it in to keep it in place. At which point in time it found a new way in. Rather than gnawing through the plastic wrap covering a dish, it lifted up the edge. I was actually tempted to write a note to our uninvited guest to see if it could read.

            Then, on Thursday night, I heard a gnawing from downstairs. Colleen and I went to investigate. That’s when we caught sight of him – not a mouse, as we assumed, but a rat (almost as big as a squirrel)! He skittered across the counter (from where it’d been eating an onion) and down behind the stove.

            Colleen headed over to her parents’ half of the house to see what could be done about this new plot twist, while I stayed to watch over the kitchen. After a while, I heard a skittering behind the stove. Sure enough the rat, henceforth known as Templeton, was coming back. He hauled himself up onto the back of the stove, looked up, saw me, and almost did a back flip in his hurry to scurry off.

            Well, we got a live trap set up. The next day I was sent out to get a trap that’ll electrocute Templeton if he can be lured in. However, we’ve had no luck so far. We still notice occasional signs that Templeton is still around, though he doesn’t seem to have been eating anything. I suspect he’s lying low, aware that we’re trying to get rid of him.

            While I can’t stand having such a pest living in the house, I wish we didn’t have to try to kill him off (I can’t even bring myself to kill bugs). I mean, if we could establish communication with him, I wouldn’t mind cohabitating – as long as he’s willing to wash his paws. Alas, the language barrier is fairly large and we must tolerate Templeton terrorising us until he is caught.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Faraway Friends

            One of the great opportunities we have in our modern society is the simplicity of communicating through the internet. We take it for granted now, but just a couple generations ago, it didn’t even exist. If you wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the world, you either wrote a letter (and waited forever for the response to return) or made an expensive phone call (although, if you go back just a little further, even that wasn’t available).

            Now we just pop open the internet and within moments we’re having conversations with people all over the world. Marginalized groups, who previously felt alone in the world, have a way to discover they aren’t as alone as they thought.  People who otherwise would never have met become fast friends.

            Having spent much of my younger life playing online games, I’ve been lucky to have many such friends. More recently, though, my online friends have come in the form of my writing support group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders. We started out as a group focused on giving constructive criticism on each others’ writing, but grew into something much more – a group of good friends from around the world. We even published an anthology of short stories together.

            This week I had the great opportunity to meet one of those friends in person – she was on vacation nearby and she suggested we could get together (last month she had met up with a number of the others in the group who, like her, live in England and previously had met a number of others around the world as well). Opportunities like this rarely arise, so even though it meant leaving my house (blech!) and driving to and in one of the largest cities in the country (blargleblech!!!), Colleen and I decided to go meet her.

            After arriving late because I’d only planned for half the bad traffic we encountered, we the three of us hit it off fantastically. I think we actually got along better in person than online. I had expected that we’d visit for maybe an hour, but we ended up chatting for over three hours an everything from writing to social issues to plotting global domination (forget I said that last one). My first meeting with an online friend was a huge success.

            For me, it highlighted the wonderful opportunities afforded to us through the internet. It had the marvellous capability of bringing together people who, in a past age, could never have met. What’s so great about this? The discovery that all the people across the world aren’t all that different from ourselves. Previously, all we could go on for picturing people of other nations was derived from meeting a few here and there, maybe travelling, and hearing from other peoples’ descriptions of then. This, of course, all gets simplified down into the stereotypes that still survive today.

            Yet, now, those stereotypes are tempered by the ability to go online and talk to almost anyone. We can really meet and find out about each other; discover how similar we are. In spite of the people clinging to the past – insisting it’s us against them – cultures from around the world are being brought closer and closer together.

            What a wonderful potential this has for changing how we view the world.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Communication

            I had a thought today. Well, okay, so I have thoughts every day, but this one stood out as one I’d like to share.

            Whenever we are communicating with others, we are functioning under the false assumption that they can understand us. The reason I say it is false is because all words have slightly different meanings to each person.

            For example, the word “yell”, defined as “to say something very loudly especially because you’re angry, surprised, or are trying to get someone’s attention”, inherently has multiple meaning. Yet, to each individual person the word has a different connotation. To some people, a yell is inherently negative, while to others it’s entirely neutral. Some people even use it to describe speaking angrily, even without the volume mentioned in the definition.

            The reason for this is really quite simple: it all depends on the context the word was used in when the person learned it, as well as the exact definition they assigned to the word for themselves. You see, no matter how hard we try, we can’t accurately teach what a word means, because we teach the word using other words. The result is that even someone learning words directly from a dictionary assigns their own understanding of the word to their own definition of the word.

            In the end, we can’t actually accurately communicate with each other. We can get a decent idea of what someone means when they say, “I'm happy”, “This sandwich tastes good”, or “Are people actually able to communicate?” but we can’t know exactly what they mean if we don’t know their personal definition for all the words they used.

            It’s often a minute difference in definition, but because of this, I've heard people having arguments where they were both saying exactly the same thing, only in different ways. Other times, people get upset because their definition of a word has a negative connotation while the speaker’s has a positive one.

            We can only ever do the best with what we have – obviously there’s no way to sync everyone’s definitions. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when communicating, though. Do your words mean the same to you as they do to your listener/reader?

            Did you understand any of that?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Words

            Have you ever taken a moment to stop and think about words. I mean, really think about them. Not the meanings of words, so much as the existence of them. They’re amazing!

            It’s so fascinating that we have this in-depth method of communication. Humans wouldn't have accomplished anything close to what they have without it. Yet, if you stop to think about it, words are downright weird. We make nonsensical sounds with our mouths and vocal cords and, somehow, when we hear them, they have meaning for us. How did this come to be?

            I've thought about this a lot, as I've worked on writing my own languages. Most (if not all) spoken languages these days are built on the blocks of previous languages. Words and grammar have evolved and become so natural to us that we take them for granted – at least until we find ourselves wandering in a foreign country where no one understands what we’re saying. How did it start, though? What was the very first word?

            My theory is that the first word would have been an order, such as “Go!” or “Get!”. That seems the most likely place for a primitive language to start. You want someone else to do something, so you create a word that, when accompanied by a gesture, can convey your meaning. A language has started.

            But, by telling someone else what to do, we recognise that we are different than them. We start calling them “You.” Then, since we have a way to address someone else, we come up with “Me” to refer to ourselves.

            From then, it snowballs onwards, with the language getting larger and larger. We come up with more commands and, for clarity, we come up with words for objects as well. That way, we can tell “you” to “get” a “tree”. Poor you will have a hard time of that, but at least he understands what we want.

            Then, of course, names for people come into existence, so we can distinguish all these “you”s from each other. Plus, if everyone is “me”, we feel like just another “you”, so we want a name to use for referring to ourselves.

            Armed with our new language, we charge into the future, teaching these odd sounds we've made up to our children, and they to theirs, until the vocalisations become second nature and no one even thinks about how remarkable words are. In fact, we even have squiggles to visually represent words.

            The squiggles are taught to us as sounds that string together into the words we know, but eventually they take on a life of their own. We see a word and, even if it’s spelled wrong, we know what it means just as well as if we heard it. It truns out taht as lnog as the frsit and lsat letetrs of a wrod are in the rhigt pacles, it deosn't eevn meattr waht odrer the rset are in! W3 c4n e3en r3pl4c3 c3r74in l3773r5 wi7h numb3r5 4nd 57ill b3 4ble t0 r34d. I wouldn't be surprised if I ardshfu tunboef slinwy guwisju and you still understood what I was talking about.

            Yet, all this time, it is still just random sounds we make or generate in our heads. Sounds that, more than likely, would sound incredibly stupid if we didn't know what they meant (some sound stupid even when we know what they mean). Somehow, there is a transition in our brain where the sounds and squiggles that represent a “tree” turn into a tree.

            Aren't words incredible?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.