Being Understood
Clarity is everything.
Without clarity, we don’t have real communication. We aren’t understood without it.
In ‘Murica, we’re too busy looking for the shortcut. We want things condensed down into the smallest possible unit, because we’ve become conditioned to no longer taking our time with anything. If it isn’t fast, if it isn’t immediate, then it’s already too late because our attention is elsewhere.
Communication and understanding suffer most because of this.
Because we’re so conditioned to not taking our time, whenever someone actually slows down to do the job correctly, they’re seen as an anomaly. Worse, when we slow down and use the correct words in order to provide understanding–or when we try to–we often fail, either because our vocabulary has atrophied due to disuse, we never had the vocabulary to begin with, or the person we’re trying to make understand doesn’t have the requisite vocabulary due to disuse or never having it to begin with.
As creators, we have the burden of making sure we’re understood across multiple levels of creation, and often in multiple roles. We have to use the correct vocabulary for the job, and sometimes for the correct person. It becomes even more of a challenge when two creators don’t speak the same native language.
Being understood is part of the job. You should always strive to meet this objective.
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Category: Columns, The Daily Dose
