Thought of the Month

I have been thinking about communication and the transfer of knowledge and understanding for a long time.
I reckon I'll be spending a lot of time thinking about this when I'm FINALLY going for my reservice this coming Wednesday. It's been 7 years. Can I still strip a rifle? I'm about to find out.
But I digress.

When I speak to people, there will always be a part of me thinking, "Am I getting through?" Human communication is a precarious and an inexact thing, with so many FUBAR* factors that at times I wonder how any of us manage to get ourselves understood enough to order a bowl of noodles at the hawker stall.

Consider for a moment. Human thought is constantly moving. In communicating, we attempt to crystalize a small portion of that, take it out of the context of our constantly moving stream of consciousness, codify them into a semblance of what we ourselves deem to be coherence and then project that outwards through actions and words.

The other party has to recieve these images and sound, hopefully in its entirety. They will then match these actions and words to an internal template, hopefully similar to ours, and try to make sense of the message, through the filters that they have in their minds, and attempt a fit into their own understanding and consciousness.

Wow.

Add ethics, censorship, human emotion, morals, subconscious projection through body language, intonation and context, I wonder to myself how the hell do we even manage to make ourselves understood to the next human being, much less live together and not kill each other from sheer frustration.

Some have said that 70% of human communication is non-verbal to begin with. 23% is the way we say something and only 7 frigging percent is what we actually say. Fuck.

Despite all this difficulty in communication, we still try our very best to make ourselves understood to our fellow man/woman/others. And in doing so, attempt to provoke a reaction we deem to be satisfactory to ourselves in the recepient of our attempt.

Double wow. We suppposedly evolved monkeys really do aim for the stars don't we?

Enough ranting. Back to topic. Shite. As if communication isn't back enough, I gotta have a brain that jumps around like a bunny in heat, on a steady diet of mexican jumping beans and coffee for 6 months.

Back to communication. Why have I been thinking about this?

I'll be addressing my 3rd batch of course participants come tomorrow. There will be almost 30 people at this seminar. Almost 30 individuals. With their own unique experiences, and their own lives, and each individual level of knowledge. I have 60 minutes exactly to take everything they have heard, imagined, felt or concluded about trading and futures, and throw that out the window.

In that same 60 minutes, I'll have to plant the seed of what we believe trading actually IS, and synchonize 30 people to at least have the same understanding and lingo that we would be using for the rest of the course.

And I have to keep their interest. AND I have to make sure they GET IT, not just hear it and keep as head knowledge.

That's just one of the reasons why I am currently obsessed with finding a better way of attempting to communicate.

I am, shall we say, blessed with friends that come from many walks of life. My own life is enriched by their presence, but there are times where I find it hard to convey ideas or opinions to the other person, and me, being the numbskull who don't know when to quit, will keep trying and trying, to a point of time where the person gets pissed at me, or it gets painful.

Oh I learnt slowly and painfully to communicate and to listen. But there will always be a situation where I face an apparently insurmountable wall. And this wall to communication is such that I care enough NOT to just ignore it and leave it.

Examples? Parents, people I care about. People that mean something to me, but try as I might not get through. Talking to them is frustration in the purest sense, yet, because of what they mean to me, I never stop trying.

Maybe one day, I'll get through to them. Oh they don't have to agree with me. They just have to get where I'm coming from, after that, agree to disagree. Can it be the emotions that cause this block? Baggage? Or a simple refusal to compromise? Or can it be just me, that the people that matter to me does not agree with the things that makes so much sense to me? And it is a failure on my part to recieve communication from them?

Good thing my Reservice is 3 weeks long. Maybe I'll actually come back with an answer to this question.