Recent Musings:

Let's communicate!

Friday, December 9, 2005

So I'm rereading a college textbook from my communications class (don't laugh! I have friends who do the same thing!) and even though I'm not even through the first chapter, I've been fascinated with something I've learned.

First, I've learned that although we can communicate verbally and non-verbally, intentionally and non-intentionally, we are always in a state of communicating with others and they with us. To further this, we determine a lot of who we are as people by how others respond to our communication. If I make a joke and my acquaintance doesn't laugh, I interpet that response as a reflection on myself - I'm not funny, I told the joke wrong, I'm not capable of telling jokes, I must have missed the punchline, etc. This concept fascinates me.

I'm fascinated because even if I have an extremely strong sense of self and may not be deterred by one person's response, I will still interpret myself based on each response I get. I think that if a person doesn't respond the way I'm hoping, eventually I'll move past that person to find someone who will respond the way I want them to.

Moving along, I would dare to say that if a person repeatedly doesn't respond to me the way I hope they will, eventually I'll stop trying to communicate myself with that person altogether. This would not be because I dislike the person, but rather this would be because it's more important for my sense of being that I receive a positive response.

I don't think that any person, myself included, has the capacity to receive negative responses again and again and again without being affected by them. Perhaps the reason we get hurt in relationships is because we keep trying to get the positive response from the people who only give us the negative.

There's so much more involved with this, but what strikes me most is the importance of positive responses for our self-identity; we almost need to regularly surround ourselves with people who respond to us in the way we hope they will - the positive way, the response that encourages us to be us. Without a positive and accepting response from those we interact with, we begin to doubt the identity of our self.

Think about this when you interact with people. Think about which type of people you share yourself and your thoughts with and how they respond. Do they respond positively and consistently? Do you feel better or worse about yourself when you interact with them? In turn, how do you respond to their communication?

I dare say that if we could find a balance between the positive responses from people, which allow us to feel accepted, and the negative responses from people, which force us to keep our inflated egos in check, we'd all be a lot more well-adjusted in the long run.