The Stress of Communication

So, I think it's about time I made my umpteenth blogpost on communication, since the last time I beat this dead horse, it didn't come back to life. (Figured, why not try again, you know?)

Communication stresses me the hell out. For like... eight reasons.
[Actually, that's good, let's run with that:]

1. Humans are fallible. Most importantly, humans make mistakes, lie, cheat, steal, and avoid. Confrontation is stressful, so we worm our way out of doing it through justifications, procrastinations, and cathartic release.

2. Words are inadequate. We can express so much with language, but still so much is left unsaid. Emotions that don't have words. Ideas that cannot be expressed.

3. I don't take charge. I hate feeling like I have to own up and be the initiator of communication or else ensure that things will be swept under the rug. I suck at taking the reins, though I suppose it's good that I learn how at some point.

4. Stuff slips through the cracks. Inevitably, in any conversation, and especially the ones in which few words are exchanged, information tends to fall by the wayside, only to be forgotten. We can forget to tell someone something important. We might forget a piece of information ourselves. Combined with the imperfection of words and the fallibility of humans, information gets miscommunicated (if communicated at all) with relative frequency.

5. Sometimes we have to accept a lack of closure. Given the above elements, there are things that cannot or will not be communicated, no matter how much you need or want it. These items wherein we cannot obtain closure or finality are specters that loom over us, making us doubt ourselves. We have to let these things go. Even though it hurts like balls, and even though closure appears right around the corner, constantly taunting us.

6. Thoughts are complicated. We have so much on our mind; logic that conflicts with emotion, emotions that conflict with the emotions we want to feel, instincts that are based on nothing. With all that piling up along with our constant stream of life experiences, there's little we can do except hope that we're appropriately conveying the thoughts we wish to convey. We are predisposed to err between our thoughts and our words given the complexity of thought and motivation itself.

7. People don't want to communicate. It's not worth the strain. Even if we weren't prone to communicating improperly, we would still tend to avoid the communication itself. Saying what you feel is difficult and the potential rewards are not something we can accurately measure. So, in lieu of extremely convoluted cost-benefit analyses, we just walk away from the problem.

8. We are frail. With our mixed bag of emotions, inability to communicate effectively, propensity to miss details or avoid details, it makes active discourse nothing short of dangerous for us. We feel bad when we hurt others, and we want to avoid being hurt ourselves, so the easiest way to stave off these twin problems is to avoid their surface cause; communication.


Together, this adds up to people ignoring each other, lying and avoiding conflict (either with good intentions or bad), miscommunicating, hurting each other, not getting the closure we need, and overall feeling inadequate about ourselves.

This is the curse and blessing of human intelligence, and I'm trying to at least own up to my end of the communicative hassle. It's difficult and it sucks, but I think this is how to grow.
Unfortunately, this is not a sentiment shared by everyone, so my need for communication may be at odds with someone else's need to avoid the stress of communication.
For this, I don't have a solution. A compromise is the best option, but many people are not willing to entertain that much work for gains that are imperceptible. I cannot blame them. My decisions are only mine, and I have no right to control how others live their lives.

This shit is complicated...

-
Waddles