Communicability

I hate to be unclear in communicating intentions. I therefore choose my words really carefully when writing emails, and rather dislike phone conversations for serious issues because my thinking process introduces awkward silences into the dialogue. I think the people who cannot find words to express exactly what they want to mean must be one of the most pitiful lot.

So, some peeving moments from this are when
- people try to be obfuscating in their speeches and hide the obvious lack of meaning/sense/logic in their grandiloquent choice of words.
- people's actions not aligned to their words; one or the other must be lying.
- people leave their intentions vague with the lack of effort to communicate well; they are only subjecting themselves to abuse from misinterpretations. Should we pity or blame them?

But I sometimes am guilty of similar crimes too, lacking the guts to say the words that hurt. Especially those that will hurt myself to say it more than the person who receives them. When I have to say things because my principles dictate so but am afraid of offending other's sensibilities. Humankind cannot bear very much reality, it seems to me - to see all the insolvable contradictions of emotions that can arise out of singular issues.

What I so very often want to say, at moments of the most urgent need, are only the bathetic and disappointing words echoed after Prufrock (After all, our archetypical modern anti-hero): "That is not what I meant at all, That is not it, at all"...

(Do read Primo Levi's essay on 'Communicating' to learn what a man who does not communicate will degenerate into.)