Is Short Always Sweet? Can('t) It Be Bitter Too?
Reflections on the increasing shortness of our communications and interactions in modern life, and the impact of this paradigm on our lives and relationships
Hello Dear,
How are you? I trust you have been doing reasonably well, or very well. Let me begin by asking you a quesion - a question which disturbs me, when I think about it. Can you think of some very short conversations you have engaged in, which especially in retrospect, appears to have been too short, shorter than they should have been? In other words, looking back after the conversation, maybe soon after the conversation, you thought you should have invested more time into the conversation, and that not doing so, perhaps because you were in a real or imagined state of hurriedness, was rude and unkind on your part, which in turn might have inflicted an emotional scar - howsoever small or big - on the other person(s)?
And why does this question disturb me and make me uncomfortable? Simply because there have been instances where I should have been more patient, forthcoming, listening and should have given more of my time and hence of myself to the people in my life. Just very recently, I happened to have a conversation with a close relative who happened to be in deep distress. While the tone of my conversation was gentle and empathetic, somehow, I chose to not explicitly address the cause of her distress; rather, I confined the conversation to certain material factual aspects, which though related to the cause of her distress, did not address the emotional, psychological and spiritual sides of the issue.
I think it was the classic human fear of expressing ourselves freely and fully, of getting outside the comfort zone of ordinary lived experiences, of not navigating into the unexplored and uncertain territory of our partaking afresh and anew in the brokenness of our fellow beings…in short, I think it was the classic and eternal human fear of being human, of manifesting our innate divinity, that prevented me from engaging in a deeper, longer and thus more heartful, compassionate, soothing and hence hopefully a more uplfting conversation with my dear dear relative.
And wow, an idea strikes me now, thanks to having penned down these thoughts with you! I can still very well call up my relative and seek to be a mantle of hope and joy amidst the suffering she is going through. And I will. Wow, that is comforting, a consolation.
Which reminds me of what must be one of the biggest strengths of the human being and our humanity as a whole - our ability to change ourselves, to become a new creature and a new creation, irrespective of anything and everything. I believe that even when people very close to me have often expressed certainty regarding there being no solution to certain problems, this is one belief which have made me unable to give up on hope, and in the belief that we can and need to work towards a better future.
I believe we are all capable of change, howsoever hardened of the heart we may be, howsoever stooped in the pit of sin and evil we may be, howsoever crushed and weighed down by misery we may be.
We are all both finite beings in body and infinite beings in mind, heart and spirit, vested with infinite potential for beauty, goodness, excellence and love; and by the very definition of infinity, most of this potential is unexplored, unknown and yet to be manifested to ourselves and to the world.
Speaking of potential, let me invite you to read the following post, where I reflect on some pathways towards realizing our infinite potential.
Ok, coming back to where we began, i.e., the question of short conversations, I find this to be a very serious question, which has deep, serious and largely unnoticed ramifications, #NotJust for the domain of interpersonal relationships, but for our collective societal consciousness and global society as a whole.
We have already spoken - in short and in brief, however (just note the irony!, this too we are dealing with in short) - on the danger of how short conversations can often also end up being rude and unkind. Of course, this need not always be so, especially when it comes to transactional conversations, such as making a purchase at a local grocery store, or while discussing a work-related matter with a superior who has a hundred other things to attend to, besides the matter he or she needs to discuss with us. I mean, it might be that we just “stick to business”, the matter at hand, in such short interactions.
But then, these too raise further questions which I think merit our reflection. Why do we even have transactional conversations to begin with?
Have more and more of the conversations, interactions and relationships of our life become precisely that - transactional - where the immediate and short-term goal of a successful transaction is the only goal and the conversation is merely a means to fulfilling this fleeting goal?
Is this how life always used to be? Is it that life has become so fast, or rather that we have made or we have allowed life to become so fast, that we have time for little else other than transactions? Is it that the speed of life has made our relationships transactional? And if some of our relationships have become transactional, would it not mean that this transactionality would be intruding into our other relationships as well? In other words, are we sufficiently conscious and attentive to these effects of the form and structure of our interactions, do we even have so much time and energy to attend to these hidden and subliminal effects, in order to make a clear distinction between two categories of relationships - one which can be allowed to be transactional, and the other which should not ever be? I would think that:
The way the modern life has come to be designed and organized has led to a depersonalization and dehumanization of our relationships; indeed, it has also led to a denaturalization of Nature and our relationship with it. There is a need to rehumanize and repersonalize our relationships, and to renaturalize our covenant with Nature.
What do you think? Before we proceed, speaking of the example given a few paragraphs up, of our superior at work who has a hundred other things on his or her table (physical or mental table, that is), a basic question I have is: should any superior or executive or professional have so many items on his or her agenda? Is that a healthy and optimum way of working, of being productive, of realizing our potential? We will come to this phenomenon later; as you could very well imagine, my own take is that all too often, the urgent eats away the important, and our executives invest far too much time, drowning themselves in the urgent, with little time and energy to spare to look at or think of, let alone immerse themselves in, the important. And indeed, this conflict between the urgent and the important is something we need to think about our own lives too, and #NotJust regarding our professional, but also regarding our extra-professional lives. [I don’t believe in the lexicon or dichotomy of “personal and professional” lives, as if the professional is not personal to us. I believe it is absolutely personal; how can it not be personal to me, since it is my professional life we are talking about? So, I prefer to use the terminology “professional and extra-professional” lives, though even here, the two lives intersect with and influence each other in numerous ways, much more in today’s professional ecology than that of earlier times, say those of our previous generation. Or was it like this earlier also?]
Fine then, coming back again 😊to where we started, i.e., short conversations, one of the various thought triggers which led me to this is a judgement by the High Court of the Indian state of Karnataka, where the judges stated in their verdict that the "best option" would be to ban social media altogether as "a lot of good will come" of it. Read more about the story here.
And what is the relationship with this and short conversations? You know:
I think this has come to be one of the defining yet little-noticed features of social media: the overriding preference for time compression.
It is as if no one ever has time. We want everything in short, very short, spurts which do and must evaporate as soon as they emerge. We cannot bear to engage with anything or anyone for anything longer than a very short time, sometimes seconds or minutes.
At the same time, the ecosystem has also led a lot many of us to crave more and more for the less and less time of the people in our lives.
What is more, earlier we had friends, the world was simpler in that sense. Now, we have friends as well as “Friends” (Facebook Friends, that is). How many of our “Friends” are our friends, is another key question.
As I keep telling especially fellow officers of the Indian Information Service (the service to which I happen to belong to):
We are living in an age of hyper-connectivity, but of disconnections.
Of course, I do not mean to say or imply that the picture is all all-out dystopian. I hope it is not presumptuous to think that the very fact that you are reading this, that I am writing this relatively long-form piece of content, is something which bucks the trend and movement towards shortness, towards time compression.
Of course, neither is social media all about shortness; nor has shortness been introduced into our culture through social media. At the very least, the so-called “talking shops” or “shouting matches” TV debates which all of us must be so familiar with by now are another dishonourable manifestation and espousal of the same philosophy.
Come to think of it, I myself have a special relationship with shortness, you know. I love to write and think, and I believe there can be and there should be no end to our writings or thoughts. In fact:
I believe that conversations should never end. Life itself is a conversation which never ends, isn’t it? Don’t you converse with your dear and near ones, even though they are no longer present with you in body here on earth?
If you are interested to read more on this idea of incompleteness of conversations and of life, I offer you a window to this in a film review I wrote; you can check this out in the previous post given below.
So, back to incomplete conversations…numerous times, maybe hundreds and thousands of times in my life, so many people have told me that I should learn to be brief, that I should learn to express my thoughts more succinctly. I am happy to tell you that, having listened to all of them, I now feel happy and liberated to have decided to continue to go my own way, the way I am, and the way I feel most alive. To just let my thoughts flow. Well, this does not mean that I am not open to change or correction.
You know, we have often heard the saying that “content is king” (it should be king or queen, in fact). Especially if you have some form of engagement with the communications profession, you must have heard the following addition or modification of this statement.
“If content is king, context is God.” - Gary Vaynerchuk
Read more on what Gary has to say about this, here.
Well, but here is something I thought of recently:
Intent is what is paramount. More than and even before content or context, it is intent that matters the most.
So, coming to me and my writing, as well as any communication for that matter, my endeavour is to continuously try to purify my intent, my intentions, my motives, in penning down my reflections. I should seek to mortify and humble myself, so that I am able to bring out the best from within me, so that I am able to serve some value to you and others who might read or might want to read me. And I think this can be and is a basic principle of life as well: it is intent that matters. Even when someone does us some wrong to us, we are hurt more if their intent was impure or self-serving, rather than by any unintentional harm they may have caused us. Isn’t it?
Now, a very interesting question strikes me just now (come to think of it, it is probably what my subconscious was wanting to be articulated?).
Do the forms and structures of media and communication in which we have embedded our lives and ourselves have a role in making our interactions short and transactional, and hence also in promoting and privileging interactions which are more likely to be dehumanized, depersonalized and unnatural, rather than interactions which give a fuller and freer expression to our humanity?
Basically, this is a media ecological perspective on the question of the relationship between the form of our communications and the type and content of the interactions and relationships they promote and result in.
So, what is media ecology?
Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival. The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people. - Neil Postman
Read more on media ecology here.
Now, speaking of shortness, we can see that there is a close relationship between shortness and slowness. It would seem that the preference for short is in large part driven by the urge to go fast or faster or maybe even the fastest.
Let me hence make a slight diversion and share two reflections I had written, both on the concept of slowness.
[Beginning of a reflection I wrote in December 2022]
The Power of Slowing Up
The faster the world changes, the slower we need to become, to first and always reflect on and understand the changes, to comprehend them deeply, to stay true to what should not change, as well as to adopt and adapt to what does and should change. And to lead change and continuity, and to not just be a spectator or a passive recipient of change or non-change.
To speed up, we must slow down.
Slowing down in an accelerating world is a superpower, in my humble opinion. Enabling us to speed up or slow down or move at the optimal pace, most effortlessly and naturally, without being overwhelmed or underwhelmed by it.
😊💐
[End of the reflection I wrote in December 2022]
[Beginning of a reflection I wrote in August 2022]
The Case for A Delayed News Service
Sharing an idea which occurred to me recently: A Delayed News Service. Some examples below.
1) If you as an individual chooses your lag time as 1 year, you get your chosen newspaper every day, but the edition published one year ago. (So the time lag will be personalized for each news consumer).
2) Applied to TV news, a TV channel, say DD News, can customize its channel for every user, some viewers getting news as it was aired 3 months ago, some 1 year or others yet, 10 or 20 years ago.
3) Same can be applied to social media feeds as well.
I later found that this is one magazine on similar though not same lines, in line with the slow media and slow journalism movements.
I would like to think I have given away a million / bollar dollar business idea for free 😉😊
Which should be good #NotJust for business, but more importantly for the human being.
Or it may be utter balderdash? 😊
[End of the reflection I wrote in August 2022]
So, I guess we stop here for today? On this incomplete note? But wait, before we go, here is the book recommendation for today. And especially since we dwelled at some length on the disconnections in our modern lives, I recommend Lost Connections, a 2018 book by Johann Hari. [I read this last year, hope to pick it up again.]
Lastly, I would like to point out that a large part of the reflections we have discussed above is said to be a core fundamental theme and message in the teachings of the great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti: that we should slow down and observe. And yes, we have just briefly touched upon slowness and shortness. We will have much more to say on this, in later posts in this #NotJust Newsletter. 😊
Fine then, I hope you are able to find some value in these reflections. Please let me know how you would like me to change the content, context, style, tone - or intent 😊- or length? 😊- of #NotJust my posts. I say, #NotJust my posts, since I do not regard these as mine alone. We draw continuously from each other, from our collective wisdom, experience, consciousness, beauty, goodness and excellence. You can let me know your thoughts at newdheep@gmail.com or in the comments section below. Thank you for being here with me! If you find this helpful, please consider sharing this with one person in your life. Thank you once again! - Dheep.