We live in the age of the random.
From the things we find funny to the countless demands on our attention and everything in between, the signs are everywhere. One of the staples of comedy these days is Family Guy, and one of the quirks of the show (if you've never seen it) is that each episode features various random breaks from the plot. It usually comes about when one of the characters says something like "...that's just like the time when..." followed by a clip of something random happening. Saturday Night Live has gone in this direction as well, with its Digital Shorts featuring a rap song about the Chronicles of Narnia, two guys having a serious talk in between big bites from a head of lettuce, or a series of people getting punched right before eating.
That's the fun side of random; we're seeing a lot of things that don't make any sense, but they're so ridiculous we can't help but laugh. The down side of this trend, however, is that it doesn't take a whole lot of intelligence to be random...just watch any new cartoon in the Adult Swim block of programs on Cartoon Network. Seriously, most of them look like they were made by a five-year-old. It's supposedly done that way on purpose, so that it's crappy on purpose to make fun of itself...but it just ends up looking crappy. But somehow, this stuff is getting the ratings, so more and more of it keeps coming out.
Part of the problem is that there are so many demands on our attention in the modern world. Cars come with built-in connections for iPods and Bluetooth headsets, TV has 200 channels, the internet bombards us with "information" at 100 megabytes per second. I have to admit...I've sent text messages while driving...and listening to music. We're a generation of multi-taskers, and it's gotten so ingrained in us that it's difficult to only do one thing at a time. Another confession: I listen to music when I read sometimes. Yeah. I know.
So what's the big deal? We're getting more done, right? So what if we're a little overstimulated...technolog
I can agree with that, but I guess I'm just old enough to remember what everyday life was like before this randomness was so common. It wasn't anything drastically different; we still led busy, productive lives, and things got accomplished.
I guess what I miss is the focus on the details of life, and perhaps most importantly, the realization that time truly is the most precious resource we have.
Here's where it gets personal for me: I hate (HATE) it when people interrupt each other. I'm a quiet person by nature, and by default I tend to listen more than I speak. I think I learn a lot about people just by listening, and I've found that in the long run, it helps me better relate to them on some level. To me, it's incredibly devaluing to a person when you're more concerned with what you're going to say next than you are with what they're trying to communicate. Because from my experience, it's not what's being said that matters, it's just the fact that they're getting to share a little piece of themselves with somebody else. When the listener can't even wait until the speaker is finished before hogging the stage, I find that very self-centered. Not to mention the fact that the interruption is often to pursue some random tangent...that bothers me.
From the other side, as a naturally quiet person, I know that when I do speak, I usually have something I want to communicate other than the face value of the words I'm using. It may not be anything earth-shattering, but for me (and for most introverted people), there's usually more to the conversation than just the conversation, if that makes sense. So when I finally put my thoughts together and start to speak, only to be interrupted, whatever I was going to share goes back into the vault and may or may not ever come back out again. Sometimes that's just fine, other times that means that I'm not going to share something important. I'm positive that this is a universal reaction; if you consistently communicate to someone that your thoughts/opinions/random comments are more important than theirs, eventually they're not going to share anything important with you.
This all ties in with randomness because I think the problem isn't that people don't care about each other, but rather that most of us have been subconsciously trained to skip over the setup and get right to the point. Basically, we're so used to having everything "on demand" that we're becoming increasingly incapable of following a long-term process to achieve the desired results. Instead of following a subtle, intricate plot line in a show or movie, we'd rather see a bunch of loosely-connected clips of random jokes strung together for a half hour. Instead of building a foundation of equal communication through consistent restraint and humility, it's so much easier to just let our brains wander wherever and let our words follow suit. It's not that we're jerks, we're just lazy.
In order to work ourselves out of this habit, we need to find out specifically how other people communicate and how it's different from how we communicate. It's a lot like the various love languages; we all show and feel love in different ways, whether through quality time, giving gifts, or physical touch. Communication isn't much different, and everybody has their own little quirks. But the key is time; the more time you invest, the more you see what works and what doesn't. Specifically, the key is attention and focus...our minds and hearts are being pulled in so many directions that we're often only 50% or less invested in whatever we're doing at the moment. Investing time, and investing 100% of your attention, is neither easy nor common, but it really is the only way to avoid a lot of the potential communication problems we face.
Now obviously I can't say that I have perfectly practiced this, but I will say that it's something I've worked at and have tried to maintain. I really enjoy investing my time in the people around me, and it's blessed me tremendously in so many ways.
I suppose, at the end of the day, my frustration isn't with what happens to me, because it's really not that big of a deal. I see a lot of trends in society that aren't so great, and I see how they affect the people around me in both positive and negative ways. I just think it's important to look deeper into what's happening around us to better understand ourselves and what we're doing in this crazy, random world.
Because, if we're not careful, we might get punched in the face right before eating.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/
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