The Art of Communication

I feel like I need to make a disclaimer that I am writing this on 0 hours of sleep so my attempts to proofread before posting will likely be futile due to exhaustion and the magnetic force of sleep. First off, this article pretty much exactly captures my beliefs on texting. As a child of the technology age, I will be the first to admit that texting is definitely a time saver. Who wants to spend ten minutes in a conversation when you can convey your thoughts in ten seconds? I remember getting charged money (probably five cents or so) in order to send and receive text messages. It really made me consider and think twice about who I was texting. My whole point is that somewhere along the way we’ve lost the human connection. Texting someone who you know well is different than texting someone you just met due to the fact that there is already an established relationship between you and your friend.  You are aware of the nuances that come along with how he or she phrases their sentences. It’s so much easier to read between the lines because you know what they are trying to say and what they actually mean. I recently had the most unpleasant experience of having an extremely awkward conversation via phone. I was talking to this individual who shall remain nameless, and I felt at a loss. I remember thinking to myself that this individual must be an avid texter because they just could not talk. And by saying this, I mean that they did not have the art of holding a conversation–at least over the phone. Being a therapist, I’m pretty good at asking questions that invite people to open up and to tell me what is really going on in their lives. However, asking questions to this person was akin to pulling teeth. Slowly. Without anesthesia.  Most annoying thing ever. I would ask a question and the answer would be non relevant to the question. The information that I was able to gather was confirmation that this individual’s number would soon be collecting dust in my phone so I simply acted on the inevitable and deleted the number after that first conversation.  Plus, this person did not know me well so I was not as concerned about building rapport. I just wanted a decent conversation but it was not to be.  While I am definitely more of a fan of texting than calling, there comes a time where you just need to pick up the phone and call someone. There are few feelings as great as having a great face to face or phone conversation. You just don’t get that through text messaging. So take some time to give some people an actual call. Build your communication skill-set. Just remember that you miss a lot when you text so take some time and give some old friends a call instead of texting them.