The Difficulty of Communication

A lot of times, it's hard to communicate well. Even for people who try to communicate well like I do, it can be a challenge. The first struggle is figuring out what to say. What do you want to talk about? What are you feeling? The second struggle is saying it in a convincing way that best gets your point across, so that misunderstandings are minimized.

It's like music. A few days ago, I listened to recordings of my junior and senior recitals. The big difference between the two was that my junior recital lacked convincing melodic lines, while my senior recital had some melodic lines that were convincing and others that were not.

A lot of the improvement between the two recitals came from me thinking about what melodic lines I wanted. Then, I had to listen to myself as I played to try to determine if what came out of my viola was the same sound that I wanted. But even after I had done those two things, the recordings show that I didn't always know how the music sounded to my audience. Since my vantage point is right next to my viola, I only know what it sounds like there. It's hard for me to know what it sounds like to an audience at a distance.

But as we know, there is more than one pathway to achieve something. I think my problem of not sounding convincing all the time is because after I play for some time, my posture starts to deteriorate and my bow is not always in the string. If I work a lot on keeping my bow in the string, that makes it easier to create convincing melodic lines.

Not only that, but it has to do somehow with the timing of everything. It has to do with whether my mind and body are in sync with each other. When I think in my mind, "make this melodic line now," my body has to cooperate. There has to be an efficiency of motion with the bow and with my left hand fingers. Not only do the motions need to happen at exactly the same time, but the motions have to be correct (they have to be suitable in getting across my melodic idea).

So communication is very difficult in music, and I don't think it's any different for verbal communication. Sometimes the first step-- figuring out what you want to say-- is hard enough and takes a long time. Maybe you don't know how you feel. Maybe you do know how you feel but you don't know why. Maybe you know how you feel and know why, but the other person is not interested in hearing what you have to say.

But it appears that the next step-- saying what you want to say in a convincing way that best gets your point across-- is even more difficult and requires even more work. First, you have to convert everything to "I feel" type statements so that the other person doesn't feel like you're attacking them. Second, you have to fully explain why you feel that way, to help the other person understand.

But that's not enough. Sometimes you do that, and it makes sense to you, because you are still present in your mind. But that doesn't mean that it will make sense to someone else. It's like when you write a thesis paper and everything makes sense at the time, but then you go back and read it again in a few months and you think, "what the fuck was I on when I wrote this? It makes no sense anymore. There was more in my mind than I wrote down."

Also, the person can misunderstand what you say based on their own personal experiences. There's no way for you to fully know if this will happen, because you do not know what it's like to be that person. But you should always look out for something like that-- usually they are just misunderstandings that can be corrected. Or like in music, you can never play Bach and please everyone. Everyone has their own opinions on what is a good performance of Bach. If you stay true to your own opinions, the other person decides if he wants to hire you. So with good communication to others, if you stay true to yourself, the other person decides if he wants you in his life or not.

Then, maybe all the information you are saying is good, but your body language is bad. Maybe you're making hand gestures that contradict what you say. Maybe you're yelling instead of talking calmly. Or maybe your information and your body language support each other, but they are not efficiently in sync with each other.

Good communication takes a lot of work. And we are not taught any of this in school for some reason. We're left to figure it out for ourselves. It's no wonder most people suck at it. How are we supposed to get all those factors right every time? It would take like 300 years.