Despite Cell Phones & Email--Why Can’t People Really Communicate?

This is a section of a seminar given at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York, where we discussed the deep matter of what in us makes it so hard to communicate

 

 “Communication,” explained the philosopher Eli Siegel, “is the way a person makes his thoughts part of another person’s life.”  And Aesthetic Realism shows that there’s something in every person—as there was intensely in me—that wants to keep our thoughts only to ourselves.   

I often felt I was my best company and would prefer lingering on my inner monologues than having a conversation with someone.  Though I envied persons who seemed at ease talking to others, I also mocked them, thinking people talked too much.  I felt that if it could be said with a few words, save the energy for something else. 

In his lecture Aesthetic Realism Looks at Things: Communication, Siegel describes:

The agonizing problem of today...is that people can [know each other] for years and really not transmit what they feel to each other...You have to respect and like what you express yourself to...before the job of communication can have a fair chance. [The Right Of Aesthetic Realism to Be Know (TRO)]  

Communication didn’t have a fair chance with me because I had two competing feelings about the world and people.  In high school I’d spend hours writing letters to pen pals in Nicaragua and Italy telling them about the lusciousness of the land of Puerto Rico where I grew up, about my life, my hopes and concerns.  I would eagerly await their letters describing their countries and experiences.  Yet, I’d drive for hours with my father seeing the same beautiful vistas I had described earlier, and not exchange one word with him.   

I was in a painful jam between wanting to talk freely with my parents, but also feeling they were not interested and would never understand what I felt; and that in fact, it could make for trouble.  The truth was I thought the world wasn’t good enough for me to show my “deep, sensitive thoughts” to, and it was best to pretend to be friendly while keeping myself secretly aloof and superior.  This way of mind, I would learn from Aesthetic Realism, was contempt, the active hope to see the world as unfriendly and beneath me, and contempt is the force in all of us that corrupts communication and always makes us feel separate and ashamed.    

My life began to change, and real communication began to have a fair chance, when I learned that the world was friendlier that I thought—that, surprisingly, everything and everyone in it has in common an aesthetic structure.  Opposites such as surface and depth, toughness and gentleness, for and against were in my father, the Caribbean Sea, a roommate I disagreed with, and in myself.  Seeing how I was related to the world had me feel increasingly I could express my thoughts to another person, and had me feel for the first time that someone else’s perception of me added to my life.  

 

Concealment Opposes Communication  

As with many families, there was a big lack of communication at home as I was growing up.  When my grandparents took care of me during the day, though very devoted, we never spoke much.  I felt I only needed a few words to let them know what I wanted.  I said “hungry” and they would go through a list of choices of foods to eat.  If I said “afuera” (out) it meant I wanted to go for a walk.  Who these two persons were, why they cared for each other, what their hopes were and what they endured when they lost their farm during the Great Depression, was not real to me: they existed to satisfy my whims without much conversation.   

        Outwardly and in public my parents, sister and I were very sociable and amiable, but when we got home we drifted silently to different rooms to watch television, sometimes even watching the same program.  

I came to feel early that the world was boring, not worth knowing and full of insensitive people.  What I found exciting were my inner thoughts, a world I created within that never saw the light of day.  I’d go from imagining myself being with Robin Hood fighting evil in Nottingham, to making fun of people, feeling that anyone whose thoughts were different from mine—which was most of the population—was stupid.  More and more I kept to myself and confided in no one.   

I felt understood to my core the first time I read the essay The Ordinary Doom by Eli Siegel.  I knew then that I had finally met the knowledge that could end the division and loneliness I felt.  Siegel writes: 

Concealment is equated, unknowingly to ourselves, with individuality: the more we conceal the more it seems we are asserting our very personality, resisting a somewhat repellent, unwelcome intrusion of other things into ourselves...Through secrecy, we can be defying the world and deceiving it.  

I began to see that the contempt of using my secret thoughts to make less of reality was hurting my life.  Because the self is made ethically, when we go against our deepest desire to know and like the world, there is a kickback: I felt timid, was often depressed, and had a pervasive feeling of unease.  Answering the phone or meeting someone new was nerve wracking—I’d rehearse conversations and prepare witty remarks to make people laugh.  I couldn’t communicate what I felt deeply because instead of listening and learning from a person, I was more concerned with the effect I’d have on him or her.  Why I was this way, how to be different, I didn’t have a clue.  

I Learn the Cause  

Then I had my first Aesthetic Realism consultation and I was asked what I wanted to change most in myself.  I said that I wanted to overcome my shyness.  And my consultants asked me:

 

Consultants:    Do you think you have a world inside and a way of presenting yourself to people, that are two very different things? 

I answered “Yes,” thinking to myself, “How do they know?!” In college I wanted to “fit in” in different crowds and would tell different stories about myself depending on the group I was in.  I felt victorious but also terrified everyone would find out.  My consultants continued,

 

Consultants: Do you think you have an attitude to the world?

Jaime Torres: Right now rather indifferent, but when I was younger it was very unfriendly.

Consultants:    Do you think that a person that finds the world as not so good can feel some importance?  That is the principle of contempt.

Jaime Torres: It happens quite often.

Consultants:    Do you think you have a disposition not to see the feelings of others as real?

 

Though I said “People say I’m perceptive,” I didn’t see the feelings of others as real.  With people I wanted to impress I acted like a sensitive guy, giving advice, pretending to listen; but since my own depths were not involved, inevitably I felt like a fraud.  They asked me: 

 

Consultants:    You look very affable but do you secretly have a dialogue about people that they wouldn’t like so much?

 

“All the time,” I said, remembering my feeling I could “read” people very well, such as —“He’s a workaholic,” “She’s looking for attention,” or “Just say something nice and she’ll be happy.”  The consultants asked:

 

Consultants:    Do you think this way of seeing people has anything to do with how a person gets to be shy?

 

This was a revelation; the logic made so much sense!  I had given myself the right to think of people any way I wanted, and the result was I couldn’t be at ease in their presence.  I thank my lucky stars every day that I met Aesthetic Realism and had the pleasure of hearing questions like these that changed the direction of my life.   

I began to have conversations with people as I had never had before.  One of them was the woman who is now my wife Donita Ellison, who is an art educator.  Often, we spoke for hours about what she was teaching, what we both were learning, about politics, art, our families.  And because I trusted her good will I wanted to show myself to her.   

Communication and Marriage  

I’m very grateful that my education about love and marriage continues in the professional classes we attend taught by Ellen Reiss, Chair of Education.  Even though I had changed a lot, I often expected Donita to be satisfied with my two-word answers.  And sometimes I would keep my opinion to myself because I knew Donita had a different one and I didn’t want mine challenged.  When I spoke about this in an Aesthetic Realism class Ellen Reiss asked me:  

Ellen Reiss:  Is there anything in you that doesn’t want to communicate with Ms. Ellison? 

When I said yes, she asked: 

        Ellen Reiss: Do you have the feeling that your self is precious—there is something that is just you and only the very best company should have it?”  

I did! And Ms. Reiss continued:

 

Ellen Reiss: Suppose you were to really communicate with Ms. Ellison and she was to see what you felt, what do you think you would lose?

Jaime Torres: A feeling I should have myself to myself.

Ellen Reiss:  Do you think in some way you feel you would lose your soul, your personality, your being? Do you think there is something in a person that just feels, “I’ll be nothing—it would be all gone, given away to these plebeians” ?  

Ms. Reiss was so right. I saw that part of what I felt I’d lose was my conceited notion that my way was the best way.  That is why I would undervalue things Donita said, not listen carefully, or try to stop her after a few sentences, assuming I knew all that she was trying to say.  

        In this class Ms. Reiss taught me that good will, “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful,” is the only purpose that would enable me to 1) really communicate with Donita, know her and be known by he, and 2) see communication as thrilling, truly selfish and much more exciting than holding on to my ego.  

I end with a beautiful poem by Eli Siegel, which stands for the communication based on good will that all couples, all people hope to have.

Our Very Selves            
Let us, you and I talk,
About the world we’re in
So that, when we have talked,
That world seems closer,
Dearer in closeness,
Dearer in light,
Dearer for us.
Let us talk
About him and her
And them and that
So that they all
Be means to us
Of being closer
Our very selves.