This week Melly told the story of the brilliant experience of meeting a blogger friend in person for the very first time.I’ve enjoyed that pleasure three times now. Each time it’s been like meeting someone I’ve known for years. Each time it felt like walking into a conversation that had already started with someone I already knew three-dimensionally, a longtime friend that I just happened to have never met, until then.
I’ve been thinking about that, about why that is, about where that difference begins.
Studies say that well over 50% of our communication is nonverbal – how the message is presented, body language. When communicating over the telephone, one researcher found that 84% of communication is vocal and 16% is verbal.
It makes me wonder how that all changes when we put our thoughts directly on screen or on paper. The route bypasses the need for visual and audio support, because we think through the words we write and put down, and we see the words that we read and pick up.
Something about this virtual world calls out to our thoughts, demanding our undivided attention – demanding we participate in the moment in a way that we can’t, don’t, won’t in the busy, noisy, over-stimulating world that we live in.
Maybe it’s that the smallest communication we write here is everlasting.
What if I spoke to those I love with that sort of presence? What if every word I said was everlasting communication?
−me strauss Letting me be
5 comments:
I'm always glad you can articulate what I'm thinking, but am not so good at expressing...Over the past couple of days I've tossed around what it would be like to meet a "blogger" lol. Don't know if I'd ever want to. At moments I would, but I like when all that's seen of me are my words. And I like seeing another persons words without them being jaded by anything else.
Katrina
Hi Tell No One,
When you have shared your thoughts with another and they have shared theirs back the same. There's no need to worry that there will be a judgment, only recognition that you'll both be safe.
Online communication lives forever, often archived in the search engine vaults, so one has to be more careful. But not everyone is!
(I couldn't even correct the typo in an earlier comment, after I hit enter!)
You choose your words, and thoughts, more carefully. And you probably do exactly the same in all your communication.
Because, in the final analysis, we only communicate who we are.
For a tangential takeoff from your observations, see:
http://sunilbajpai.blogspot.com/2006/10/non-verbal-component-in-text-based.html
Hi Sunil
Exactly. That's what i'm wondering, what if we took that kind of care to think about what we said when we talk to those we love in the 3-D world? If we thought our words would be so everlasting, as indeed they really are, would we treat our loved ones to nicer more well-thought words?
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