Watch what you say!

Humans are extremely social animals. That is why, it is believed that formal speech training for a newborn is less effective than just leaving them to discover a way of making their own conversations. Though we know that communicating effectively is an important skill to master in this world, we often forget how it has evolved over time, and how different means of communication have made it more complex.

Today, if you want to talk to someone, you have several options. You could email the person, reach out on various social media and messaging platforms, or resort to the old day classic of talking in-person. (Side note: It is funny how we refer to talking in-person as an old day classic)

So it really boils down to purpose. Why do you want to have a particular conversation? What is the tone that you are going to use? How long is the message going to be? These parameters might be quite obvious to consider, but barring the method of in-person conversations, all of them are considerations for writing, not speaking.

One main thing that technology has enabled us with is the ability to write messages down before they are actually communicated across, which is exactly what I am doing right now. Writing to talk has become so mainstream that both are synonymous these days. Though I can give you a hundred reasons why it is such a revolutionary thing, I have come to realize it doesn’t work well in some situations.

In situations of communicating something personal, sensitive, or life-altering, texting doesn’t work. Even calling the other person is inefficient.

Through the years of texting, I personally believe that we are handicapping ourselves from not understanding the perils of it. It has become a way of escapism when you don’t want to confront others. It is almost always easy to type down the message, send it, and forget about it. We are not revealing ourselves behind the chat, right? What has this resulted in? Lack of clarity, misunderstanding, and falsity in relationships. And it is just not worth it.

One might argue that calling works in such cases. I still believe that there is a critical non-verbal element to the kinds of conversations I am talking about that needs to be learnt by the other party.

Solution? Just work things out, convey your understanding by having a normal in-person conversation.

Things become so clear when you are right in front of them, acting your weirdness out, and expressing your views.

Yesterday, I messed things up with a really good friend of mine. It was a rushed, not well-thought of, and an immature conversation on my part. The bad thing that I did, it started and ended on chat, which had a profound impact on the tone, content, and emotion. I take the blame to myself for that. While writing this post, I would lie to myself if I say it didn’t bring tears to my eyes.

All I want to convey is that, I might not be a master of making conversations, but I hope you don’t go through the same emotions that I did by messing things up. Go talk to them, they need to listen to you. Because life is too short to keep grudges based off of the stupid misunderstandings we are bound to have.

Truly, the title should have been “Watch what you type!”, or rather “Don’t type, just speak!”.