Talking to each other is no longer what it used to be …

Middle School:
I remember being on the phone in middle school for hours, talking about anything and everything. From the upcoming school dance to zits, to what so and so said to me the other day in class, it was like exploring uncharted waters to find safety. Then when three-way calling became the next best thing, phone conversations took on the role of a lie detector test. Anytime a friend called and asked me a question, I never knew how to answer, because god forbid the person they were asking about was on the other line. This was especially difficult when it came to boys. “Do you like Michael?” “I don’t know, yes.” Laughter ensued and suddenly, “Cyn, Michael’s on the line.”

High school:
By the time I got to high school, three-way calling about boys was out and talking with actual boys was in. This was when I would be on the phone for hours asking maybe hundreds of questions to understand the life of a boy I was talking with. I wanted to know everything about him, so much that sometimes I would give  quizzes from Seventeen magazine just to see where he stood on important things like: kissing and crush worthiness. I remember the first time I fell asleep on the phone with a boy; it was amazing to feel so close to someone like that.

Phoning friends was also really important. It was almost like if I wasn’t listening to someone talk than I was missing out on an experience I would later want to have.

College:
When I got to college, phones weren’t really a part of the equation to getting to know someone anymore. There were phones in the dorm rooms, and cell phones were just moving out of the “in case of emergency” realm and into daily life. Overall, people communicated by being in each others presence. If I wanted to chat with someone I’d stop by a room and hang out. It was liberating to live within walking distance to people that in high school I’d have to call to chat, but here, well, I could talk to someone in person whenever I wanted to.

I had access to people. Instead of calling to see about catching up with someone later in the day I would leave a note on a car or a door, or maybe I would run into them on the path to the cafeteria. Then instead of a phone call we would talk face-to-face. This was when conversations started to change for me. Talking in middle school and high school was really about experiencing what I didn’t know because I had never been through any of it before, but when I got to college conversations became more about learning than experiencing. I talked with people about ideas, history, and the impact of x on y, social issues, and really asking questions about life and relationships, human interaction. Conversations became a way to learn more about the world I lived in from the people in my life.

After College:
Face-to-face time gets pushed to the backseat and the cell phone gets shotgun. Everyone is now scattered, living in different areas of the same city or the world. It goes back to how it was in middle and high school, the only difference is now the phone is no longer a conduit for discussion but it is how to exchange information. I can’t forget to mention the computer, because this is really when e-mail becomes more like the old phone conversations I used to have. Because e-mail is now the new phone conversation, texting becomes the notes you’d leave on doors and cars.

Today:
I have these modes of communication and I use them all throughout the day.  Then I meet up with the people I’m communicating with during the day at a bar at night. Once again the conversation has changed. Whereas in middle and high school it’s about experience and in college it’s about learning, now, today, I’m trying to understand the point of conversation at all.

It feels like when I meet up with people there’s nothing mindful about it. To put it bluntly, I’m not really sure why I’m meeting up with them. Almost like there’s nothing to talk about anymore. Or if it’s talking, it’s the same conversation over and over again. Everybody goes to work and then meets at a bar, and because I’ve already talked with these people multiple times during the day what is there to talk about now? Do people have anything more to talk about?

I think about how much wasted time it is to go and sit at a bar and talk about things I already know, and then I think about the reasons I’m there at all. Am I there because I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts? There’s so much talk about self-medicating with television and alcohol, but what about talking? I know people who chat during the day, post to Facebook, Skype, and then afterwards text and talk, then meet up for dinner and go home and fall asleep to Netflix. Not once are they alone with themselves for one minute during the day.

So there are a couple elements being juggled here, but one ball that I just thought of is communicating with the self.  All this time, I’ve been looking at communication with others, but what about with me? If I’m feeling like I’m no longer experiencing or learning through conversations with others, what is it about me that’s changing and what kinds of conversations do I want to be a part of. How do I want to communicate? I start thinking more about this idea of being mindful and respecting my interest in communicating and talking in general.  Because the more I go on without thinking about it, the less I respect the act itself.

I want to choose who I talk with and what I say to them. I think that’s why I’ve never known how to deal with people who retell the same story to me over and over. At first, I thinking about how to let the person know they’ve already told me this story, and then I wonder, wow, if they’ve told me this story four times that means they’ve likely told other people the same story as well. What makes this special for me to hear? Is everything they’re saying something they’ve already said to somebody else? What about this conversation right now is customized?

For the last month or two I’ve changed my hanging out and talking habits, and have noticed a big difference in the way I communicate. Being more mindful of what kinds of conversations I want to be a part of and customizing my approach has helped me to remember it’s purpose.

The six tools of mindful speech in Buddhism:

• Speak slowly
• Enunciate clearly
• Listen to yourself
• Listen to others
• Regard silence as a part of speech
• Speak concisely

I look out my window and see the wind blowing the trees. It’s so beautiful. I love windows. The inventor of the window and I would have been friends.

To live in a world without windows would be dark and musty. To live in a world without windows, well, it would be hard to see much of anything. But a window isn’t only a sheet of glass. A window can be anything that makes me see something that before I couldn’t. Writing is that way for me. When I write I create a window to see what’s going on inside. I look inside to shed light on what’s dark, so I can witness it.

I’ve started writing a new book project. It’s about my life from age 18 to now. And I’ve been going through all my old journals. I found a piece I wrote when I was a CIT at Camp Tanamakoon in Algonquin Park. It’s from 1994 and the window into myself looked something like this.

I find splendor in things unknown. I look into the sky and see all the colors of the light spectrum. I look at the lake beneath me, so calm and unclear that I stare and try to make sense of it. I try too hard that my eyes grow tired. I look away from the unclear mystery of it all and relax into simply gazing at its beauty.

I sit on my rock and look into the beauty while thoughts flutter close. The lake is moving in an upward direction now, flowing to the beat of my heart. The trippers are paddling off  into the wild, the breeze smells like old wine, and the voices in the distance sound like a recorder playing a far off tune.

Today I am supposed to be drawing, but I want to write.  I am here to teach, but I want to learn. I am tired of running around and wish to just sit and write about what I see, feel, and hear.

The sun hasn’t broken through the clouds yet and there is a light mist glossing the sky. The birds are singing their morning praises while the geese welcome the new day in silence.

Beauty is wonderful. It makes many things appear inside my head. It makes me love the way everything is in this exact moment.  A moment, but just one that lasts for a second but feels like forever. And I want it to be forever but then I realize that if it did stay forever it would no longer be a moment.

I haven’t been back here in three years, but everything is the same. The smell, the beauty, and the feeling of life. My heart beats stronger and my mind breathes without intimidation. Life is who I am in this beauty.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

– Anthony Robbins

Remember being young and coming home week after week with tons of artwork in hand? So many drawings and paintings that if your parents wanted to hang them all up they’d have to dedicate an entire room to them? Now, can you pinpoint when the drawing stopped? When the verbal mind took over and the visual mind became less and less a part of education. We might not be able to remember the exact date this occurred, but the fact is that over the years text has become more important than visuals to communicate, well, anything.

If I were to ask how many people draw on a daily basis to express a concept or to communicate with others I’m sure the show of hands would be slim. And of course it makes sense because we’re taught that the verbal mind is more powerful than the visual mind. The verbal mind is focused, analytical and practical while the visual mind is flighty, unsystematic, and unrealistic. Well, I along with Dan Roam, believe otherwise. Dan Roam is the author of The Back of the Napkin, Blah-Blah-Blah, and other titles – and what he suggests is that to solve problems and to communicate more effectively having a balance between the verbal and visual mind is what we should strive for. There comes a point where the written word can only take you so far and you need to express what you’re feeling, thinking, through other forms.

From reading his books I’ve been able to see how getting back to what some may call child’s play can help teach and communicate harder topics with ease. Roam describes the verbal mind as a fox and the visual mind as a hummingbird – the whole point, is to have a balance of both; however, we’ve been out of touch with our hummingbird for so long that training might be necessary.

The other night I was listening to NPR and there was a very smart scientist on the show talking to Ira Glass about global warming. I sat there with my pen and paper and started to draw what the smart scientist was saying. Was it a piece to be hung in MOMA, no – but it had the earth with an arrow pointing toward the sun, showing that it gets warmer, and then an arrow pointing away from the sun, showing it gets colder. Yes, I could understand, somewhat, what the smart scientist was saying, but when I put it into a visual it was much easier to digest, really getting to the guts of the point instead of trying to understand all the words.

I’ve started doing exercises like this to train my inner hummingbird, to get her singing again and I’ve noticed it’s also changed the way I speak. Whereas before I may not have used a concrete / visual example to describe a situation, now I’ve found that by doing so I don’t have to repeat what I’m saying to others as often.

Try it out: Find a book on your shelf. Open to any page. Pick a paragraph. Try to draw what the paragraph is saying. Can you feel your mind working differently? Then ask someone to read the paragraph and tell you if it makes sense. Then have them look at the visual representation. Which communicates more effectively? Does expressing the paragraph visually make the concept easier to understand and more interesting?

As an editor of computer books, showing through a visual rather than telling through text has made what once were dense and difficult topics to teach much easier not only to contextualize but also to remember. Areas where you can use the visual and verbal mind together are endless, assuming you have the elements you need. You can try it

- When expressing a difficult / abstract concept.

- When problem solving.

- When thinking about a process, system, or architecture.

- When comparing one thing to another.

- When brainstorming sessions aren’t flowing.

If we look at a problem or concept using all of our brainpower, we might be able to come up with a better, easier, solution than if we only used one side of our brain.