DATED – 23rd August 2014

Wikipedia says – “Communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning “to share”) is the meaningful exchange of information between two or more participants.”

Usually communicating with others involves three primary steps –

Thought: First, information exists in the mind of the sender. This can be a concept, idea, information, or feeling.

Encoding: Next, a message is sent to a receiver in words or other symbols.

Decoding: Lastly, the receiver translates the words or symbols into a concept or information that a person can understand.

The modern world we stay in today, many things have changed and some have totally disappeared – like the three steps of communication. In today’s times, the stage of ‘encoding’ seems to have disappeared. It is taken for granted that the message SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD without actually saying it in words! (Sounds funny, doesn’t it?). Hence, the ‘decoding’ happens in its own ways; obviously not congruent to the encoded message (that never ever happened!).

Let’s talk about it in layman’s language with a few examples –

• The Mother-in-Law (MIL) expects the daughter-in-law (DIL) to understand a few things that she must do as part of the family. But the DIL doesn’t really feels that it ought to be done like that since she has never seen it happen at her house.
• The boss feels that the employee should behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, the maturity of this experienced boss is different than the thought process of this young recruit.
• The teacher assumes that the students must sit in rapt attention in the classroom. On the other hand, a kid’s phone just beeped with a WhatsApp message, which he can’t resist seeing.
• The daughter is supposed to reach home before the deadline defined by the father. Yet, she sees that her brothers are allowed to come home at a time they think is convenient.
• The husband has enjoyed all the luxuries of life without having to struggle much and hence, has a relaxed way of doing things. But the wife has had a tough teenage life where she had to struggle. She loves to sort out things instantly.
• The sister and wife have issues with each other. They complain to the brother / husband (which is the same person). To the brother / husband, both look right (!)

I need not really elaborate on what will happen in all the above situations! It will lead to a few heart burns, misunderstandings, blame games, anger, frustration, loss of mental peace, and so on! I am sure; we would have experienced at least one, if not all situations!

Though the issues look complicated, the solution is very simple! A simple sentence to myself – I WILL COMMUNICATE would set so many things right. Which means, the moment I feel that someone has done / is doing something, which I don’t think is right, I will talk it out instead of keeping it to myself and hence process even more negative thoughts! We always want the other person to understand, but we don’t want to take efforts to understand them (sounds hilarious, doesn’t it? But secretly we are doing this!). Our thinking is, “At least they should understand this much! Should I be telling everything?”

Modern technology has given us more and more tools to communicate with fellow human beings. But instead of communicating on important issues, we love forwarding jokes and messages. We, as human beings somehow seem to have stopped COMMUNICATION; especially on important issues! The onus or fault is always others.

Vis-à-vis my life –

Of late, I have been genuinely working on this. I too used to be the kind where I thought, “Does everything need to be told? Isn’t it so obvious?” But realised that everything isn’t as obvious for everyone as it is for me! People have different ways to doing same things. Hence, for my peace of mind, I must COMMUNICATE! This is the best way of keeping things simple and uncomplicated!

At times, our big ego stops us from taking the initiative. But take it, we must for our own peace! How much ever bad the situation looks at the moment, yet if I decide to communicate, things can be back on track. The mental turmoil I save myself from is worth billions!

I strongly believe that communication is magic. If there is a complicated situation, only COMMUNICATION CAN SOLVE IT ALL …..