Meditation for April 18th, 2016
Communication Breakdown
When I was young, all I had was a land line and voicemail. I would come home and with excitement check my messages. Some people had to wait all day or more for me to get home to check my messages and call back. Even when email was had, I never relied on that for communication.
Now I have missed calls/no voicemail on my phone all the time from younger people who feel I just need to be on the level with them.
“Why didn’t you call me back?”
“Because you didn’t leave a voicemail, so it was obvious that it wasn’t important”
“—”
That’s right, I will not call back if there isn’t a voicemail. Since I had no message letting me know the level of importance of the phone call, you are not entitled to a call back.
Just to be somewhat sensitive to young people’s communication habits, I always leave a voicemail and text, “check your voicemail.”
At my work we have kids texting someone to let the boss know that they will be late or that they can’t come in at all. We had to change the handbook to address these lazy and lack of confidence kids that they need to call and talk to a boss directly.
I have friends that say they only take text messages, but still don’t text back – ever.
I see miscommunication all the time from people trying to make points using the written word. When something is important, talk face to face like adults. Text messaging is for teenage girls.
The kids say that voicemail isn’t pragmatic or that text is instantaneous, but it boils down to lack of respect and being scared of confrontation. A text can be read and studied and researched before responding, but a voice to voice conversation is instant and gives the person no shield against the trappings of the written word.
Prayer
Iris,
I am now seeing all the colors of your rainbow and how each color represents a different method of communication.
Red – person to person. The purist of communication. You can be present to defend your point and hear an argument.
Pink – the hand written letter. This can have a lot of heart and emotion put into a short piece of communication.
Purple – the email. Cold and professional, but can hold a lot of words and may use multi media to make a point.
Orange – the DM. This is any form of direct messaging or instant messaging. This can be read at leisure or be an instant conversation. These turn into fights all the time because most IMing happens between 2:30am to 7am.
Green – posting on someone’s Facebook wall. This is like a an electronic postcard. You can post a GIF of cute puppies declaring your love for someone or an article proving you’re right.
Periwinkle – vagebooking. You just make a post that is an angry rant on Facebook without naming names, but everyone knows who you are talking about. Except when we don’t, and that is really annoying. “Who is he talking about?!?”
Blue – Twitter. You can be as honest as you wanna be because no one actually reads Twitter anymore.
Violet – Passive aggressive blogs like this one bitching about kids and how they won’t fucking leave a voicemail!
Amen
Craft
Here is the etiquettes of modern communications.
Phone calls: when you call someone k or that you have the possibility to be talking to someone. This is the communication method for all things important. If someone dies, leave a message on the voicemail that says, “Please give me a call back, it is important.” If you want the person to call you back, also leave a message with, “Please give am a call back.” If it is very important then also text.
Text – texting is for messages that you want to see the person to see right away. I can check a text message quickly, but a voicemail may take some time to get to. You need to know that returning text messages can’t always happen on your schedule so learn patience, child.
Email – this is for long form reading communications, multi media and attachment communications. This also is like a voicemail, and the person you are sending this to doesn’t know about emails or compact discs.
Facebook & other social media/instant messaging applications – when you do t have the person’s phone number, you want to reach everyone at once or at least a bunch of people or it isn’t important at all like Vice & Buzzfeed articles.
Face to face (not the band) – this is when you are angry, you want to break up with them, you have bad news for them, you want to let them know you love them and are grateful for them, if you want to make sure what you are saying doesn’t get misunderstood or used against you or anything else that would not be appropriate any other way.
Mail – hand write more letters.
Goal
If you need to communicate with someone you have to make sure that the person you are communicating with understands your method of communication or you have to meet that person the whole way. Leave a fucking voicemail when you call someone.