By JoJo Tabares
I’m just about legally blind without my glasses on so the other morning, when I woke up and looked at the clock, I just knew that’s not what time it was. I squinted and turned my head and tried to sharpen my focus, but the best I could come up with was 4:76am. It was only after putting on my glasses that I could see what time it really was and how far off I had been. It was actually 4:11am. As I came out of my sleepy stupor, I had a hard time accepting that I could have been so wrong. How on earth could an 11 look like a 76? Though it was obvious I was looking at the clock with inferior eyes, surely it was 4:06am or 4:15am! It was unfathomable that I could look at 11 and see 76 and yet that is exactly what I had done.
Now you may think this a trivial matter, but in that instant, I realized that sometimes our communication is a lot like that. Sometimes we look at an email or Facebook post or we hear our son say something and think that we know what he meant. And yet only after smug banter, degrading accusations, or even harsh words, we find that we were incredibly wrong. How many times have we been listening for our chance to use some sarcastic reply? How many times have we stepped on someone’s ego, pride or precious self-worth because we didn’t sharpen our focus before we sharpened our tongue?
I think the Lord has been revealing to me many lessons on focusing this week. I think that is why I woke up with this topic on my heart to share with you. As I think back, another incident brought this point home to me in a few distinct ways.
My husband got a DVD from the library last weekend to show us a bit of simple self defense techniques. As I watched it, I was impressed with the how a few simple techniques you could learn in a short amount of time could save your life. The number one lesson was to be aware of your surroundings. Focus and pay attention to who and what is around you. It’s difficult to stave off an attacker you don’t know is there! Sharpen your focus. Put on your “safety glasses” shall we say and notice what’s around you so that you may avoid these situations and not have to handle them. This is a lesson we need to learn for our communication with others as well. Focus and pay attention to what someone is saying. Put on your “communication glasses” in order to avoid misunderstandings and hard feelings so you don’t have to handle THEM.
Yet another issue kept haunting me as I watched this DVD. It pictured a young woman walking into an underground parking garage to get to her car. As she rounds the corner, waiting just outside of her sight, is a man. In the first clip, he jumps out and attacks her the minute she comes into his view. My husband was shocked that throughout this DVD, the instructor never told us not to walk so close to the corner. He said if you are too close when you turn a corner, you can’t see (focus on) what or who is there. It’s better to round the corner from a safe distance so that, in the event you do encounter someone who looks like he might be up to no good, you are not within arm’s reach and can escape.
This is another great communication lesson. Sometimes we need some distance from an email before we should answer. We need to step back and focus on who is communicating with us before we are caught in a situation we cannot handle. We need some perspective in order to accurately respond to a comment. How many times have we missed that someone really needed us when we responded to a comment with a quick wit and hurt their feelings? In effect, we didn’t see their need coming. It took us by surprise and so we were woefully unprepared to handle the situation in grace.
One final issue struck me about this DVD as well. In the second clip the woman approaches the corner with confidence and focus. She is still walking very close to the corner when she encounters the man. This time she uses all the simple techniques she was taught to lay the man out and run back into the building. As I pondered her encounter, I wondered how she could possibly have sized up the situation in the time she had. Having seen the first clip of the same two people, we assumed that this was the very same situation, but in real life, how would one be able to correctly determine the man’s intentions? She was so close to him that, had he been an attacker, she most certainly would have had to react that quickly in order to get away. However, what if he was rounding the corner on his way to deliver flowers to someone in the building? It was only a matter of a few seconds from the time she encountered him and the action she took. What if this poor guy was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when this woman was expecting foul play? How many times have we misinterpreted someone’s intentions as being nefarious? How many times have we been almost hyper focused on a hurt inside us that we have seen an offense that just wasn’t there?
In short, we may know that what we are seeing isn’t right, but we may only think we know what is correct. Sometimes we need to step back from a situation to see it for what it really is. And sometimes our assumptions cause us to see things that really aren’t there at all. Are you seeing 4:76am in your conversations? Do you think they are really saying 4:06am or really meant 4:15am? We need to put on our “communication glasses” and focus. Take a step back and put aside our assumptions or we could end up sharpening our tongue cutting someone’s feelings to ribbons before we realize he meant no harm.
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JoJo Tabares holds a degree in Speech Communication, but it is her humorous approach to communication skills which has made her a highly sought-after Christian speaker and writer. Her articles appear in homeschool publications, such as Homeschool Enrichment Magazine and The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, which also endorses her Say What You Mean curricula. You can also find JoJo on web sites such as Crosswalk.com and Dr.Laura.com. For more information on communication FUNdamentals and Christian-based communication skills for the whole family, please visit http://www.ArtofEloquence.com
