Sometimes more communication is just more noise.

Communication is much harder than it seems it should be. We inhabit a shared reality but our experiences of it are so unique that we might as well be our own planets, sending signals through space hoping that some intelligent life will receive and interpret it successfully. We often have to communicate a lot more than we think we “should” because our understanding and thoughts and feelings are invisible from the outside. When I use a phrase that all my friends use and intuitively understand, it communicates a lot. When I say the same phrase to someone who’s never heard it before, it mystifies a lot. When I assume they should know this phrase that, after all, everyone I talk to already knows, then I see their misunderstanding as being willful or stupid.

So sometimes we have to say a lot to communicate a little. And sometimes the more we communicate, the more confused and muddled the message becomes. It’s taken me a long time to learn that sometimes I have to stop talking and let the other person chew on my words for a bit so that they either can come to clarity, or they can ask questions that will help me understand what they’re not getting.

These seem like opposites but they are compliments. I need to be willing to slow down and let them tell me about the confusion so I can better clarify what I meant.