MikeyOpp.com

One of my favorite films is the sixties classic “Cool Hand Luke” starring Paul Newman. One of the most memorable lines from the film is when the callous and cruel head guard of the chain gang tells Luke: “What we have here, is a failure to communicate” and then he fires his gun into the air, proving that his word is the final word, and the only word worth considering.

Visiting my family for the holidays, for me, is quite often an experiment in communication. In the past, my goal has been to convey my appreciation and love to my family, but also to ascertain that I’m in charge of my own world, and doing just fine, so they don’t need to worry about me.

In the past, I’ve felt that their goal during my visit has been to prove that I still need their guidance, their advice, and a better wardrobe. Quite often, on the airplane ride home, I have found myself fuming from their intolerable efforts to control me, but also well aware of the fact that their advice has been pretty dead on, and that the new clothes they have “forced me to buy” do fit better, and are considerably nicer than my old rags.

I am returning home from another holiday retreat with my parents, but this time, there were no communicative speed bumps, and nothing but pleasant times and good conversation, featuring an even flow of dialogue, and some amazing food!

Many of the conversations concerned my career as a writer, so the majority of my inner dialogues were examinations of the art of communication. I noticed that my father and I tend to phrase our arguments similarly, in an effort to best one another in an ongoing debate over who is more right about being right.

Good communication can circumvent most arguments and, obviously, is the only prevention for a misunderstanding. That’s why I’ve recently tried to mind my usage of so called ‘figures of speech.’

“Don’t get me wrong;” figures of speech are great. It’s fun to use literal phrases to suggest figurative meaning. For example, the other night, my parents asked me where I wanted to go out to eat for dinner. I didn’t have a real passion for any one place, or type of food, so I instinctively said, “I don’t care, I’m flexible.” But really, this was a lie; I’m not flexible at all. It’s actually a sore point in my life that I’ve never been able to touch my toes without flexing my knees a little, which I consider to be cheating. What I meant to say was “I could eat most any food, so long as it’s not a cuisine I hate.” Nevertheless, I assume that my parents got the point; since they didn’t pull the car over and demand that I prove my flexibility on the spot.

But some figures of speech make no sense to me. I know that Jerry Seinfeld already did a ‘bit’ about this, but I still think referring to being on or off of a wagon is one of the strangest euphemisms for addiction control.

As a writer, I am constantly editing my own expressions and words, and as I do so, I’ve started to notice that I often repeat and reuse comfortable expressions, that have a real meaning and a certain connotation to me, but I sometimes wonder if my readers grasp an entirely different meaning from these expressions.

“Furthermore,” I also repeat certain phrases as introductions to new paragraphs. And this bothers me. No writer wants his words to become stale. For example, I say “for example” all the time. In addition, I use “additionally,” “in addition”, and other trite expressions to segue my thought patterns, and so on and so forth, for this that and the other, and what not, and, and, and, well, “you get the point.”

My analogies are the worst. If I had to make up a number, to sound more scientific than I actually am, which I do, all the time, I’d say that nearly eighty percent of my analogies are about the Holocaust, and comparing some modern act with the evil actions of the Nazi’s. It’s my obsession with cultivating my readers’ perspective that goads me into doing this; “what I mean to say” is that I’m nearly as obsessed with the Holocaust as the nazi’s were obsessed with…“there I go again!”

When apologizing, I’ve noticed that I no longer say, “I’m sorry” because this phrase is so overused that I think it sounds insincere, and has lost most of its relevant meaning. Instead, I use “I apologize” because I think it shows that I’ve actually thought about what I’ve done to offend someone, and that I want them feel better about it.

When someone uses too many superlatives and modifiers during an apology or in defense of their actions, it makes me think that they are trying too hard to mask the truth with these linguistic tricks, and that they are actually guilty of the very thing they are trying to clear their name of. And I’m sorry if you don’t agree. I truly and sincerely am.

I’m told “all the time” that I use my hands “an awful lot” when I speak. I’ll reply to this accusation, sometimes, especially when I am feeling antagonistic, “I do that an awful lot? Really? So it’s an awful habit of mine?”

The response is usually uneven and follows some stammering: “Well, no, it’s not bad, or awful. I simply meant that you do it all the time…”

“So, let me get this straight. All the time, I use my hands, when communicating?”

“Well, not all the time, but a lot of the time.”

“Then why didn’t you just say a lot of the time? You made it sound like I do it more often than I actually do, which is an exaggeration that seems worse than my use of hand gestures!”

After these sorts of conversations, I often feel a bit of shame since I know that when I “call” people on their misuse of a word or phrase, that I’m being a real jerk. I just hope that I don’t do this “an awful lot of the time.” Maybe I should start a group of wagon riders dedicated to preventing themselves from antagonizing others about speech.

We have so many clever and articulate words at our disposal, in the fine compendium that is the English language, but it seems as if most of us have ‘dumbed’ down or simply forgotten to use some of the more colorful words at our disposal.

Instead of spending so much time shopping for clothes and other tangibles that alter our appearances, I wish our culture would spend a little time (and it’s free!) looking up new words, and refreshing our memories of long forgotten words in order to alter our speech, therein making our conversations more unique. You can show up to a party dressed to the nines, but if you can’t make decent conversation, then, in my opinion, you’re not really adding much to the party.

Watching CNN this weekend, I noticed how often the talking heads repeat a phrase, a cliché, or even just a word until it ceases to mean what it originally did. This causes most listeners to skip over these phrases, treating them like an ‘um’ or an ‘er.’ This process eradicates meaning from once meaningful and clever phrases. “So be it.”

If I’ve learned one thing from writing sixty plus of these columns, it’s that when trying to communicate, the less you write, the less room there is for misunderstanding. And the more you write, the more likely someone is to read between your widening lines, and interpret you incorrectly.

“What I’m trying to say here” (even though I’m not speaking, but writing), is that your language, and choice of diction are powerful tools, that you can use to better communicate with the rest of the world.

“These are dangerous times.” I think most of us feel like we are on the precipice of a great change, but no one is sure of which direction that change will be in.

Quite ironically, I worry about our world’s future when our President consistently uses Holocaust analogies to bait and goad his political enemies into challenging our nation into war (Bush has often referred to Iran and North Korea as an “Axis of Evil”).

I think it’s about time everyone “stepped up to the plate” and attempted to communicate more effectively with one another, lest we enter another worldwide war of epic proportions. I do not think that it is too late to prevent what many feel will be a war involving Russia, China, Iran, Israel, Europe, and of course, The United States.

I think a lot of the growing global conflicts could be abated if our U.N. Ambassador would lean into the microphone at the next General Assembly, clear his throat, and say something meaningful, like “I apologize for most of our nation’s recent taunting and accusatory speeches regarding other nation’s responsibilities and goals.”

The War in Iraq, The Housing Crunch, even the so called clear cut divisions between red states and blue ones—“What we have here, is a failure to communicate.” “The way I see things,” The U.S. government failed to communicate back in ’02 that the war in Iraq could last more than a decade, and many banks failed to mention to their loan recipients that adjustable rates could and would adjust to extremes beyond most people’s incomes.

So I guess, “what I’m getting at,” is that maybe if we, as individuals, focused on communicating more effectively and coherently with each other, then world peace could “kind of just happen.” After all, the human race is “pretty flexible.” And so am I.