How do You Communicate Love--or Anything Else?

What Happens to Communication When Subconscious Clues Are
Missing?

What happens when all that is left is a hastily written and
then hastily read message on a computer screen?

Dire warning ahead!

According to a recent blurb from the Associated press, 71%
of business executives prefer to communicate with each other
and with employees by email.

Five years ago only 13% cited email as the preferred method.
Back then 48% preferred the telephone.

You may have noticed this change where you work. You rarely
talk to your co-workers anymore. You rarely use the
telephone to call them. Your dialogues are reduced to
discussion "threads" on a monitor. No sound. No vocal
inflections. No grins or grimaces. Just silly emoticons
now and then.

Without subconscious clues, communication has to be purely
left-brained. It comes from the 98% of your brain that uses
words.

If you don't use words carefully, a whole lot of
miscommunication occurs. But that is the least of the
problems from communicating almost exclusively in words on
screen. Consider the following deadly serious
implications:

1. Balance

If you spend 40 + hours a week using only your left brain,
you lose the insight and creativity of your right brain.
You need your whole brain in balance to work and play well.

2. Imagination

Imagination, a right-brain function, is required for problem
solving. How you imagine your world is how it will be in
many ways. Einstein imagined riding a beam of light way out
into the universe. In the process he discovered the theory
of relativity that I wish I could understand.

3. Patriarchy

The more left-brained a society, the more patriarchal and
war-like it is. It makes sense to the left brain to wage war.
It doesn't make sense to the right brain.

4. Killing

If you kill a human being face to face, you see his
facial expression. It's a rare person who would not have a gut
reaction to that. If you kill people from a helicopter, you
can see the victims, too, but from some distance. From an
airplane you would be concentrating with your left brain on
the machine you are operating and barely notice who dies.
If you program a predator to kill for you, you feel
nothing.

There is great danger in spending 40 + hours a week feeling
nothing. There's great sadness in a career with no friends
of your own.

When subconscious clues are missing so is genuine
brainstorming, as well as laughter. Emailed humor is
canned, not shared.

With cell phones you get voice inflection, at least. Yet,
you know as well as I do that cell use has cut down on "face
to face" "all out there" "this is what you get" "all me, all
you" communication. Recent reports in the press show cell
phone use in families is causing excessive stress and
discord. Psychologists are advising folks to turn the cell
phones off. Save them for emergencies.

Let the cyber bullies beware!

Now, I'm a left-brained writer. I spend a lot of time with
words. I'm fascinated by language. However, I once watched
a group of writers dancing on the same floor as a group of
professional dancers. The backs of the writers were as
straight as their pens. The backs of the dancers moved with
the music.

Nothing anyone can write says "I love you" better than the
look in the eyes of one not writing or saying those
words--just looking and dancing.

May you express your whole mind to somebody today.