So Many Ways to Communicate
There was a time when people spoke to each other or wrote a letter and those were the only choices they had. Even then there were different communication styles and that caused trouble. People complained about how other people chose to communicate. People were brusque, or dithered, or spoke too quickly or didn’t speak up quickly enough. Social networking meant leaning over the fence and saying, “Howdy, Neighbor!”
Now communication may be via email, land line telephone, cell phone, text message, face to face, video conferencing, international Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Google + and more people are complaining than ever. I personally don’t like texts. Typing on a phone is not all that convenient and I am in my car driving a lot. I am not a “hands-free” driver so if I am going any distance it may be quite a while before someone gets an answer. Because my BlackBerry helpfully files text messages in the same inbox as email, it may be a while before I even know you texted me. I prefer a phone call.
But “prefer” is not “prescribe,” and that is something people forget when they are complaining about others’ communication styles. They will tell you “I hate it when people contact me on Facebook. I just don’t answer them.” Or they will go days without checking their voicemail and then get angry that they missed an invitation to an event they would have enjoyed. They tell their friends, “You know I never check that, you should have emailed me.”
Here is the thing about communication. Like so many things, we are the only thing we can control. In other words, the moment we get to choose is when we are the ones communicating. So if we prefer email, we can email. If we prefer to Facebook everyone or update them on Twitter, we can do that. But we cannot tell them how to communicate with us. We can only listen and appreciate that someone takes the time to reach out to us. Or not.