Everything You Do Says Something

[Thomas Cole - "The Architect's Dream]

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This is the basic model for how communication works. 

A person sends a message, often through various environments and channels, the message is received and interpreted, feedback is given followed by it being received and interpreted and it goes back and forth again and again through a continuous process of encoding and decoding.

Without stopping. 

Which means that to understand this model of communication is to understand that we are constantly communicating.

For many people, they think of communication as talking - filtered and symbolic noises that we make called verbal communication. But only a small minority of our communication is based on the words that come out of our mouth.

Because almost all of our communication is non-verbal. 

You have things like proxemics (distance and space), kinetics (movement), and images and body language and posture and facial expressions. Even our speech is full of non-verbal communication. There is intonation and rhythm and volume and tone and a plethora of other things going on when we use our voices and they are communicating just as much as the actual words we are using.

What this means is that we are constantly sending and receiving messages. Just think about the last time you sat with someone or a group of people. You were constantly having thoughts, even if you weren't fully aware of them, about what was going on around you. You were reading people and making judgments about whether they were mad or anxious or what they were feeling or thinking. Or if there was conversation going on, you were continually reading between the lines of their words to pick up more subversive and hidden meaning. Because we intrinsically realize as humans that our body language and facial expressions and tone, all of these mediums of non-verbal communication, they are constantly expressing us. 

Which is why text messages and email aren't necessarily good modes of communication. Because unless you use ALL CAPS or lots of various punctuation or emoticons, the person doesn't really have a chance to get the full picture of what you are saying. A lot of bad experiences happen because of mis-reading and mis-communicating through these two dimensional mediums of communication that lack the depth and breadth that a person's presence offers. We miss the infinite number of message being sent by them every moment.

Or think about when someone says, "I love you." Well this could mean an infinite number of things depending upon what else is being communicated. If the person says it with a drone-like mentality, then they are probably forcing it and the words are shallow. If it is in response to someone else's emotional discharge and, in replying, there is a slip of hesitation accompanied by raised eyebrows, the two people exchanging these words probably aren't on the same page.

Because the basic words themselves aren't actually what is being communicated. We need the setting and context and the implications of their posture and voice and the other vast array of non-verbal messages that give substance to the message being sent.

It is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he coined the phrase, "The medium is the message." 

Because it is. 

Your facial expression of anger, the folded arms, the way that you stop at the door and refuse to walk any further, the shakiness in your voice, the rapid arm movement you have when you tell the story, the tear rolling down the skin of your face. 

These all are speaking to us more than just words themselves are capable of. 

This is the power of non-verbals. 

But this whole 'medium is the message' thing can be taken further. The non-verbals messages we are sending go further than the things that take place within conversation. There are all sorts of things that are extensions of us, speaking on our behalf.

The type of clothes you wear. The way you set up your living space. The music you listen to, the food you eat, the hobbies you have, the things you give your time to. 

All of these things are constantly speaking to the world. 

Because everything you do says something.

Everything is simply your mind and your way of life manifesting itself, offering a window to the essence of your being. The way you sit, the amount of eye contact you use, the way you greet someone, the pictures you post on facebook, the kinds of entertainment you participate in...they aren't just random manifestations. They come from somewhere. There is something within us that produced that.

It is the same thing happening when an artist creates a painting. Every detail and stroke and position. The scale of parts, the specific color used and how they are melded, the focus or absence of light. Every single element of the painting first originated in that artist's head and then moved through the brush to take shape on the canvas.

This painting by Thomas Cole is full of details that aren't just random strokes used to fill white space. They are intentional products of his vision for what that piece is supposed to be saying. What shows up on the paper is simply the manifestation of what came from inside the creator.

Which is kind of like what we do every moment of every day.

Because whether we realize it or not, we are constantly communicating

Now, what this doesn't mean is that we can take something, let's say someone wearing baggy clothing, and automatically equate that particular fashion with what it is communicating. There is no one to one ratio of what something might be saying. Just because someone dresses a particular way or has particular things in their home doesn't mean we automatically know what that then means. We can be sure that it is communicating something, but we can't be so quick on our certainty of what exactly it is communicating. 

Because everything exists in a story and a context and it takes a little more work to understand exactly what is being said. There are no concrete absolutes or definitions that a smile always means happiness or a tear always means sadness or a really big house always means rich and stuck up. It is much more ambiguous than that and is certainly beyond anything that stereotypes can portray. Decoding the non-verbals of our lives and of the world can't just be done in quick glances because there is simply a lot that we just don't know. In order to fully understand whatever message is being sent or that we are sending ourselves, we have to dig in and ask why and see that particular medium in its fullness. Its not that we will never be able to decode messages, it is just that we have to do more than simply observing and making flash judgments without respecting the complexity and ambiguity of each person's or each group's story.

However, despite not always knowing for sure what is being said, we still have to be aware that we are still communicating an infinite number of things every single moment. Beyond worrying about the content of the messages, we have to first develop a particular consciousness of all the messages we are sending in the first place.

We have to understand that everything we do says something. 

Because this has implications for how we navigate the world as human beings.

As people and groups and communities or even as cultures, we have to be aware that we are constantly communicating and that we all have massive amounts of mediums sending all sorts of different messages.

And this is especially true for the Church. As a community of people following Jesus and putting the Resurrection on display for the world, what kind of things are we communicating? What are our non-verbals saying to the world? The technology and advertising and how we set up and use our space. The colors we use, the way we welcome or don't welcome people, the things we do while we are gathered.

What do all of these things communicate? Are they bringing God's dream for the world or are they contrasting it?

The beautiful thing about asking these questions is that it has the potential to wake you up to what you didn't realize you were saying to the world around you. It gives the opportunity to change your posture. It allows you to instill meaning into everything that you do. You realize that you have the habit of buying the newest iPhone every time it comes out. Or you notice that every time you want to ask a favor of someone you use indirect speech as to not reveal what it is you really want.

Well, as communicators, we have to begin understanding why we do it and what it is saying. We have to understand the essence behind what we are doing and adjust as necessary if it is something that we don't want to be a part of us. It is a matter of owning the medium that is sending the message of you to the world to ensure that it properly reflects you and that it reflects what ought to be reflected. That the things manifesting you are doing so accurately. 

But again, there is no encyclopedia to look up the particular medium and have an automatic value for what it is saying. It is a reality that we have to figure out ourselves.

The most important thing is that we, first and foremost, become people who are aware of the constant stream of messages we are sending to the world around us in everything we do. 

So let's start asking the honest and probing questions, discovering the multitude of messages and the abundance of mediums we have within and around us. Let's begin opening ourselves up to why we do the things we do and what all we might be saying to the world.

Because everything we do says something...