Earlier tonight I was looking at my bookshelf in my childhood bedroom and I saw a book that I had read in college and began flipping through it. It's called "That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships," by Deborah Tannen. I read it for Intro. to Interpersonal Communications Sophomore year and I remembered really liking it because it made so much sense and was so relevant (though it was written in the 80s).
I'm really big on communication and understanding how and why things go wrong when it comes to communicating. Like seriously, I think about communication issues a lot. I probably should have been a sociolinguist. But maybe not, because I think I already spend too much time analyzing conversations as it is. Anyway, this book does an awesome job at explaining the differences between men and women and their communication styles. It basically makes you feel a little bit less crazy and like your man's not such a mess.
But in reading through the second chapter, I read an excerpt that I though really made a lot of sense:
"We need to get close to each other to have a sense of community,to feel we're not alone in the world. But we need to keep our distance from each other to preserve our independence, so others don't impose on or engulf us. This duality refelects the human condition. We are individual and social creatures. We need other people to survive, but we want to survive as individuals."
"Another way to look at this duality is that we are all the same--and all different. There is comfort in being understood and pain in the impossibility of being understood completely. But there is also comfort in being different--special and unique--and pain in being the same as everyone else, just another cog on the wheel."
We are constantly trying to balance these two goals that completely violate each other. And thus, it is impossible for communication to ever be perfect. I'm not really sure if that's comforting to me or not.
But I think it's a good reason for why we blog. We all want to be understood. And to know there are others like us. But just the same, we all like being individuals. Keeping our distance and not being smothered. It's kind of a good balance here, I think.
