Have you ever noticed how often the things that “don’t need to be said” really need to be said? This needs to be said – Building deep relationships and learning to communicate are essentially one and the same. A meaningful relationship may involve many things besides effective communication, but one cannot exist without it.
In Hollywood people may walk down the street and on seeing someone on the opposite sidewalk be filled with the excitement of an instant connection. However, that does not happen in any other town in the world. Relationships are built through extended communication. Attraction or infatuation may not require much investment, but relationships do. If you are committed to the pursuit of a deepening relationship you must make the choice to have deepening communication.
It may surprise you that choice is such a significant part of the kind of communication that builds relationship, but consider how many conversations you have that do not lead to deep relationships. You talk with the clerk at the grocery store, the mailman, the service department employee on the other end of the phone… but none of those conversations are apt to end in a deep relationship.
So the choice to connect deeply and relationally must be consciously made. The other side is that you can at any moment choose to NOT to actually communicate even while talking. Click the link below and take a look at this video clip. It is both humorous and demonstrative of the fact that we can choose not to communicate even while our lips are still moving.
I am ashamed to admit it but my wife and I have had those kinds of conversations, ones where we chose not to communicate. Yuck! The only reason I can admit that is because I know most of you have had them as well. If you want to build meaningful relationships you must make the choice to have meaningful communication. It is a choice to appropriately increase vulnerability. It is a choice to expand risk. It is a choice, but it is not an optional one if you are trying to establish a meaningful relationship.
Principle Based Evaluation: One requirement for having meaningful communication is that both parties must be clear that they share a common understanding of the meaning of key words. It is possible to say the same words and mean entirely different things, but it is impossible to do that and have a meaningful conversation.
For more information on the author, Gary Cake, go to: http://www.mtwm.org/
Simon Mould
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The problem with the twittering text savy generation I think part of what's contributing to this problem of conversation without content is a result of the excessive amount of texting and twittering that is going on among the younger generation where they are training themselves to reduce the quality and the quantity of real communication to something of very little value. In terms of the quality, most of the talk is sheer vanity and is of no concern or consequence to anyone but themselves, and secondly, quantity, text and twitter users are forced to express themselves in no more than 140 characters. And we wonder why we they are finding it increasingly difficult to to communicate effectively. I have addressed this in my classes and the students recognize the problem but find its a its appeal to self-absorption too addictive to break free from. We need a dialogue over this issue, even for our own young people in the church. |
Erin Oostra
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The Effects of Television Relationships on Communication Along with what Simon Mould has said, I also believe that a contributing factor to the lack of communication in this era is the relationships between family members shown on television. There are two categories of relationships shown on tv that I have seen, both of which are unhealthy. First, there is the obviously disfuctional relationship. This is the family that clearly does not get along, yet it is deemed as normal adn what most families look like. Next is the appearently functional relationship, but in reality, it is not. The authorities in these relationships let disrespect and so many other things slip by without consequences. These relationships would not be as strong and healthy as they look on television if they were real. Also, the conversations in these relationships are not deep or uplifting (most of the time). So then we basically fill ourselves up on movies and tv, then subconsiously imitate these conversations and relationships. And we wonder why our relationships aren't working out very well?! This is why what we watch is so important in reguard our conversations and relationships. |
Dennis P.
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Response to Erin Erin, I totally concur with both yours and Simon's comments. Love runs on rails, as you have heard me say before. Without relationships and protocols being defined in terms of the goals of our communication, as well as the form of the communication, relationships inevitably move from being a life-giving river to a putrifying swamp. |
Ashley McCuen
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The Problem of Facebook Along with what Simon and Erin have said, I think a major culprit would be Facebook, the popular social networking site. In our apathetic generation, it has created an easy way to communicate with hundreds and thousands of people. It's like this: you update your status or write on someone's wall or comment on a picture, and any one can see it and respond. It is no longer a conversation between 2 people, much less a meaningful conversation. Now, it is open to whomever wants to read it and respond. How can we start and foster meaningful conversations when we are just writing quick blurbs that anyone who wants to can respond? Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, stated these amazing stats in January of 2009-- "Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. When we first started Facebook almost five years ago, most of the people using it were college students in the United States. Today, people of all ages—grandparents, parents and children—use Facebook in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories.The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them. With 150 million voices and counting, we can't wait for the rest of 2009, and we look forward to offering even more ways for you to connect with the people who matter most." Wow!! So, if this is how 150 million people are communicating, what does it mean for the evolution of meaningful conversations?? |
