What I Said and What I Meant

Today we had guest speakers at our small group. They spoke to us on Healthy Communications. As long time friends (I was their daughter's Bible Study leader when she was in High School years ago) I knew they were qualified to speak on the topic. Fourty-four years of marriage and countless hours spent studying marriages, relationships, communication - not to mention the books read and the counsel given on the subject. I was challenged by many things they said but one thing jumped off the carefully laid out page of notes that we were given.

It wasn't a new statistic to me. Having been a small group leader for about 20 years now (on and off) I know I've heard this before but today it was like I was hearing it for the first time again. Communication is comprised of the basic elements of our words (and their meaning) our tone (and it's meaning) and our body language. As a large group we made guesses as to how much of each comprised our efforts to communicate. I was surprised (again) to learn that in face-to-face conversations, only 7% of our meaning is taken from the words we use. 38% of the meaning is taken from the tone of our voice and 55% of our meaning is taken through our body language. When you translate the figures to phone conversations, the tone of voice goes up to a whopping 82% with the actual words only carrying 18% of the message to the person on the other end. (Source: Albert Mehrabian, Ph.D.)

Something in those numbers really struck me today. I love words. I cherish their meanings. I love that they have ordained meaning and implied meaning, that they convey pictures, emotions, ideas, fears, joys, dreams, things that are real and things that are abstract. Today I ended up in the bookstore buying more books (sorry honey if you're reading this!) because of a conversation today where I was challenged with the meaning of a word in our study. I need more words to figure out what that word means. But how does this concept of the message behind the words "translate" when we can't hear with our ears the tone or see with our eyes the body language? Ahhh - this is where we earn our keep as writers; those of us who dabble and those who claim writing with the capital "W" as their livelihood. We have the awesome task of filling in that 38% of tone with language that will bridge the gap. We must draw pictures of the body language that expounds on the meanings of those letters that are strung together with other groups of letters, that form lines of words, that, when strung together, like pearls on a necklace, can create truly beautiful and profound visions of truth, fiction, expression and response.

I am challenged, I am motivated and I am inspired by the writing I have been reading lately in the Sunday Scribblings and the blogs represented by it's participants. I feel like I am learning more and more each day how to fill up those ghostly holes left in our story when we can't physically raise or lower our voice, move our hands in flourish or wink in complicity with our friends and readers. Thanks to all of you who have been teaching me through your stories and your comments!

As many famous rappers have signed off with their own unique tones (and hand gestures?) - "WORD".