Have you ever had one of those all night long type of conversations? You know the kind that starts in one place and leads through to so many different thoughts and topics you wish it would never end? The kind where there is flowing, two-way communication and things just click?

That’s what writing is like for me.

Last week I wrote a fun piece about what if you had the ability to read anyone’s mind. Can you guess it? Yup it got me thinking.

It got me thinking about a different kind of what-if. That being, what if we didn’t need to have the ability to read someone’s mind.

I mean really, at the end of the day why do we have times that we wish we could read another persons thoughts? It’s because we can’t tell what they’re thinking and they’re not sharing.

So in my ever logical pattern of thinking, I can only conclude that a rather satisfactory (if not down right brilliant) solution to this quandary would lie within communication!

For all the brilliance and advancements of the human race, it’s rather astounding how simple communication is becoming such a lost art. There are books and courses and movies – all focused on teaching people how to communicate. Some people spend decades trying to figure out how to communicate properly. And I’m not talking about learning a second or third language.

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I’m simply talking about how one human being speaks to another, regardless of the language they speak. How do we tell someone that we have a crush on them? How do we convey to someone that we’re upset with something they said or did? How do we ask someone to do something for us?

On one hand you might be thinking that this is absurd, because frankly you just speak the words.

“Hey, I think you look really nice today and I was wondering if you might like to go for a drink?”

How simple!

But wait (remember the inner dialogue I referred to in the previous article ‘We are what we think‘?)… those thoughts start to creep up…

“What if the person thinks I only want to go for a drink BECAUSE they look nice?”

“What if the person thinks I mean a type of drink they don’t like?”

or on the flip side…

“Why do I look nice today? Didn’t I look nice yesterday?”

“Why only a drink? Am I not worthy of a meal?”

SIGH

Communication is indeed becoming a lost art and both sides are at fault. For starters people are forgetting how to put complete sentences together… but even if they manage that, the receivers are most often over thinking the message being relayed.

Say what you mean, mean what you say and take what you hear at face value

…wouldn’t that make life a whole lot simpler for everyone involved?

Honestly, I think this is likely more of a pipe-dream than the possibility of telepathy. Sad, but potentially true.

Photo by lawtherjamie and Photo by Instant Vantage