Sharpshooting

I work for the world's largest retail organisation. I started four years ago, calling myself a "Merchandise Transport Reclamation Specialist". My boss called me a "Courtesy Associate". Really, they were both just fancy ways of saying that I pulled carts. Now, though I quit once and was laid off another time, I am an Overnight Customer Service Manager, which is their fancy way of saying "head cashier".

At my store, I encounter what I consider a "core sample" of Longview's culture. In what other of this town's parking lots will you find a vintage Jag parked next to a beat up 1985 Accord? Where else do you see the most polite children in the world gawking at those poor kids who get stuck with the task of telling their parents what to do? The best and worst of our fair city seem to converge in this one place.

Because I am in the service industry, I spend a lot of time playing a background character in my customers' personal dramas. For some reason, when you put on a name tag and stand behind a counter, you don't exist until the person in front of you finds your existence convenient. Thus I am witness to more arguments than you could imagine. It is incredible, what dirty laundry the average person will hang out in front of a cashier. What I have learned in my years of hearing people fight is that many mistake expression for communication.

This is a pretty common mistake; and it seems to me that most people who've stopped making it don't even realise they've learned anything - as if, for some, the lesson comes naturally.

Expression, for the sake of this post (and a number of real-life applications), is the "letting" of one's thoughts and feelings. When I express myself, I am not so concerned about others knowing what I'm thinking or feeling as getting those thoughts and feelings outside myself.

Conversely, communication is an effort to transfer thoughts and feelings to another person. I do not mean that the other adopts those same thoughts and feelings; rather, a person is made to understand those thoughts and feelings and is able to accurately ponder them.

To put it another way:

Expression is getting what's "in here", "out there".

Communication is getting what"s "in here", "into there".

To express, there's no need for understanding. You needn't even understand yourself, let alone the people around you. Sometimes, when I'm confused by my own feelings, or unable to gather my thoughts,  I can play the drums or plink around on a piano for a while and start feeling better. I've expressed myself, though I had no idea what I was expressing.

(I think it's this ambiguity that makes art of any sort so incredible. That we should take a message from the colourful "lettings" of another person's mind and heart is remarkable. What's even more remarkable is that we sometimes find ourselves taking away the very same feelings and thoughts the artist put into it.)

Communication, on the other hand, requires a few different levels of understanding. For starters, you need to identify what it is you're thinking or feeling. Then, you need to think about who you're talking to and develop an idea of how they process information. Then you have the simple task of helping someone else make sense of what's on your mind.

Expressing yourself at someone when you mean to communicate is like sharpshooting with a shotgun. Only a few out of hundreds of your small, round, metal thoughts will ever hit home; and, depending on what you're aiming at and how loudly you're yelling, even these will probably have lost most of their thrust by the time they get there.

Too often, I watch people express their brains out at another person, without stopping to think about whether what they're saying makes any sense or if it's having the effect they mean it to. The victim of this verbal bludgeoning usually responds in kind. The result is this: Two people walk away from a conversation angry and confused, but otherwise unchanged.

Here's the thing: (And this really is the most important part of everything I'm saying here.) Communication, just like the whole of human interaction, is mean to be formative. Its function is to give us a way of changing each other from the inside out. From even the most simple conversations, something about us shifts - if only in that our mood is slightly different; the power of communication is that we can make the most of these opportunities to help others shift for the better.

People talk about living purposefully. I say, let's start with speaking purposefully and see how quickly the rest of our lives follow suit. Let's try making the most of those daily opportunities that arise over a cup of tea or in-between greetings at church. Jesus wrote nothing that lasted beyond the next harsh breeze; but He communicated with people in a way that bestowed vision and passion and life itself to them. He knew His people and how to talk to them.

In that way, good communication really is like sharpshooting. You listen, observe and take much into account before pulling the trigger. You "know" your "audience", so to speak. How I tell a 13-year-old kid "No" is not how I tell the cashiers I lead "No."  How I tell someone a hard truth one day may not be the same way he needs to hear it the next day. How I encourage one person may employ a tone and wording totally different from what I use to encourage another.

It's this "knowing" that I think makes this lesson so tricky. There's only so much you can learn about a stranger in a few minutes; but sometimes, a few minutes is all you have. Other times, people can just be so darn unknowable - secretive, distrusting, dishonest or just awkward - that learning how to talk to them is more a matter of trial and error than anything else.

For example:

I'm a storyteller; and I come from a family of storytellers. (Even worse, we're a family of sarcastic, storytelling Grammar Nazis) So, at work, a lot of my social interaction with co-workers takes the form of short little stories that I tell between rushes or while we clean. Sometimes, it's an amusing anecdote about one of our customers; other times, I'll tell about some of the adventures I've had.

Having moved to overnights recently, I've found that the lady training me has a three-sentence attention span. After my third sentence on any topic not directly pertinent to putting items on shelves, I see her eyes glaze over; her laugh sounds forced and she's gone as soon as she has an acceptable reason to leave. So, in our quiet moments, when I would normally tell stories or discuss a recent movie-watching experience, I have no idea what to do.  How do you communicate with someone who won't stay with you long enough to be communicated with?

Fortunately, the other people I'll be working with seem to enjoy a good story.

So, let's be honest: This is a lesson I've not completely mastered. Sometimes, I fail at communicating. I misjudge my "audience" or adopt an ill tone or let my tongue get ahead of my brain. Sometimes, I set out to amuse and end up embarrassing myself.  Like most things worth mastering, this one looks a lot like a life-long process. I only hope that God will continue granting me grace to grow in this and that some of what I've learned will be helpful to you.

-isaac