The Touch, The Feel...

               

                 Reading the title of the article, you may wonder what is it that she is going to write about today. Well, off late, I was troubled by the lack of being in touch and feeling the warmth of friendships in life inspite of being in touch with people 24*7. Besides the jungle of gadgets and tech-stuff meant to keep us connected forever was really getting onto me. That's when a conversation dawned in my mind with a very intelligent and impressive gentleman in his fifties who actually taught me a very important lesson. Also it sparked the need to explore other forms of communication in life. What I want to say is how futile the words are as a means of conveying one's thoughts and mind, but ironically I have to use the crutches of words and only words to convey the same. I am not disrespecting the power of words here, but what I really want to stress on is that how the lack of other dimensions of a conversation make the words seem powerless.

                 “So... How attractive do you find British men? Fancy anyone yet?” He said while sitting across the kitchen counter, sipping on the mug of beer, while I was clearing the dishes from the dinner table and loading the dish-washer. “Well, it’s very different for me. I have never actually dated anyone ever. I don’t know the dating rules etc. And besides I am very awkward in creating first impressions”, I replied while wiping the kitchen counter with a damp cloth. “Oh, come on its not that difficult. You are a beautiful and smart girl and you are well spoken and sweet. I’m sure you’d have guys swooning over you. You just have to have an expressive body language”, he said. He added saying, “It takes one tenth of a second for a person to create a first impression which is the lasting impression. You see someone sitting at a bar or in a tube, glancing at you. You look at the person, if he looks healthy (physically and mentally), is dressed well, smiles, and seems confident and you find the person attractive as well, sit up confidently, and give him a warm smile. It goes a long way. It conveys to the person that you are open for a conversation and the next moment you will find him -sitting next to you, chatting to you.” ‘Beep-Beep’ rings the dish-washer. I bend over to unload the dishes and start wiping them and arranging them in the cabinets while pondering over what had been said and replied, “May be you are right. I’m usually so tightly wound up that I forget to smile at all. I think I will try what you said.” And then I smiled. “See there it is”, he said with a wink and went to the lounge to watch his usual favourite TV show.   

                    Communication! When you hear the word the only thing that comes to our mind is the jungle of mixture of sounds and words created by man a zillion (500,000 to be precise) years ago used to simplify the expressions inside their brains. It is basically defined as an act of transferring information. It made understanding the complex commands, emotions and facts easier for man at that time. Over time the art of communication kept evolving from the jibber jabber of sounds to words to petroglyphs (carvings on the rocks) to pictograms and ideograms, to written alphabetic language, to mouth to mouth transfer of information to letters, to telegraphs, to telephones to the complexity of the satellite signals, televisions, transmitters, and most recent the social media and so on and so forth.  

                    But Communication is not just verbal. Two-thirds of all our communications is nonverbal. The parameters by which we interpret them are visual cues that include body language (kinesics), distance (proxemics) and physical environment (haptic or touch) and speech characteristics like the rate of speech, the pitch, volume, the tone (paralanguage). And the most powerful factor is oculesics, which are the actions of your eye, like looking into the eye or away, dilatation of pupils, blank stare or playful wink, sensual glance or a sympathetic look. They reveal the most about what you intend to convey.

                     It is such an interesting science. Usually our brain is smart enough to pick up obvious clues of these non-verbal communications. They are very primitive. They don’t impede communication at a primitive level. Imagine yourself in a foreign land where you don’t know the local language or customs. But it is this non-verbal means of communication that will help you make ‘the connect’ with the people. They are what we would describe as a Vibe. You may have said or heard it a number of times that a certain person gives out a positive vibe to me or vice a versa. Well, when you look back and notice, it’s probably because the person has had a relatively open body language to you, has been physically at a comfortable proximity to you. Maybe you find the pitch of their voice and the tone of their voice soothing. Their eyes, and the pupils which if and when dilate, give out a positive vibe, which is a neural response to the happy chemical released in their brains. There is a reason why they tell you, your eyes are the window to your soul.

“You don’t speak the language, the Language speaks you.”

                   So, when you get an idea in your mind, a form of energy is created.  (I know Mr Newton says energy is neither created nor destroyed, but just a figure of speech). It will release the chemicals in your brain forming neural pathways or circuits. (It is a fine balance of the Happy and Sad chemicals called Agonists and Antagonists in your brain). Now the brain is clever and can formulate and decide the words that it may want to use to convey a thought but these chemicals will basically govern the non-verbal means of communication. It is very difficult to alter these neural pathways or circuits. Thus, it is known that it’s easy to lie by verbal means of communication but more difficult to do so by non-verbal means.

                   

                         Such is the complexity of the action called Communication.  The existence of a mechanism that constantly encodes and decodes messages, involuntarily, subconsciously and not verbally with a human being is a fascinating process. This nonverbal communication might be between two human beings, human and animal, human and nature, human and stimuli. We tend to take the gift so lightly but come to sit and ponder over it and it would make you realise what a powerful tool it is. It will also make you realise the futility of the over-abuse of the social media and the other forms of communication that surpass the non-verbal cues. No listening to their voices, no squeals of laughter, no snorting, no slaps on the back, no handshakes, no hugs, no whispering secrets in the ear, no rolling of the eyes to show disinterest, no cringing of the nose to show disgust, no playful wink to team up and tease a friend. There is so much that is missing… Where are the rest of the dimensions, the kinesics, the proxemics, the oculesics and the paralanguage, the touch, the feel…???

Flaunt your Flaws...

           

          Reading the title of today’s article may make you wonder that I am probably going to be talking of some physical features and maybe talk about how to hide them or not to hide them. But as a matter of fact I wish to talk about flaws that probably are more reflective of our psychological attributes and shape up our personalities.

               Having a rather interesting conversation with one of my dear friends who was distressed about the situation at work and constant nagging of the boss, I happened to give some pep talk to her, as a reflex to make her feel better. After we were done talking I was sitting and wondering to myself, it is actually such a shame that we have been taught to not make mistakes, right from our formative years. Making mistakes is actually been ridiculed upon. If a child commits a mistake we have a tendency to scold or ridicule him, make him feel miserable in order for him to realise that what he did was wrong. I do understand that the idea behind that is negative conditioning and associating the unpleasant behaviour with an unpleasant response will reinforce the importance of not repeating the mistake again. But, hey, isn’t that how the dogs or monkeys are trained. Humans, on the other hand, are believed to have more complex brains and more complex algorithms in their mental circuits to be just trained by negative conditioning responses. What such kind of ‘training’ rather does is associate the fear of committing mistakes. Fear of committing a mistake will in turn make the person dread the actual process of initiating the action. So consequently the ‘Fear of Failure’ actually instills the comfort of ‘Not Trying’ in a person. They want to feel safe in their comfort zone and decide not to try or take risks. I have been guilty of occasionally doing the same. And it just doesn’t end at the childhood. It keeps becoming worse as you grow up. It becomes even worsely judgemental when it is regarding the physical aspects and aesthetics.

“Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate. Without them, what would shape our lives? Perhaps if we never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, or have babies, or be who we are.”

Wounded knees are signs of falling, but most importantly getting up after that. 

              Mistakes are beautiful. They are a way to remind you how brave you had been to try, how in spite of falling, you managed to valiantly get up, how you may have stumbled but managed to keep moving. When a child who is learning to walk, falls and bruises his knees, those scars will remind him of his first steps, all his life. The scar on the forehead after falling from the bike, will remind him of his first ride. Those marks of smoke in your kitchen wall will remind you of your first burnt cake. That place in your heart which still aches sometimes will remind you of the first heart-break. Going on the right, straight path can be boring and a wrong turn may lead you to a beautiful destination, the one that you didn’t imagine. Imagine the world without the Penicillin (invention that was actually a mistake by Sir Alexander Flemming), or your favourite chocolate chip cookies which were actually a chocolate dessert gone wrong. Mistakes are not wrong. Mistakes make great stories. Mistakes make great lessons. Mistakes make great people. Of course the idea is not to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but to learn from them and make sure you don’t repeat them again, coz if you do keep repeating them, then you are simply stupid.

             So, why don’t we teach our children, our students, our teenagers, our employees, our friends, that it’s okay to make mistakes? It’s okay to be flawed. It’s okay not to be perfect each and every time. Because, every flaw is actually a sign post of your attempt. Every mistake will show that you had the guts to make an attempt, to give your effort and the courage to learn and improve from that mistake. When our child commits a mistake, instead of scolding or ridiculing him, why don’t we try reasoning with them the cause for the mistake, try explaining them that how much you appreciate the fact that they tried, insist that so what if every attempt doesn’t succeed, that shouldn’t stop them from going ahead. Encourage them to find a reason for the failure and push them to try again the next time. When your boss snaps at you when you have committed a mistake, why don’t we learn to accept that the anger is directed towards our betterment in performance and personal development, put up a smile on our faces, realise our mistake, apologize, make a promise to ourselves and if needed note it in pen and paper to not repeat the same mistake again and keep moving ahead. However sometimes one lifetime is not enough to commit all the mistakes by yourself and thus you have to keep your senses open and learn from other people’s mistakes as well. Discuss your flaws with others and they will open you up to their world of flaws. 

               It’s the time to celebrate your mistakes as they show you tried. Show off those bruised knees and scarred foreheads. It’s time to let the world know that, “Yes I fell, but I got up as well.” It’s the time to Flaunt your Flaws and let the world know you are Fearless to Fly.