Do We Know What Healthy Communication Is Anymore?
Why am I writing a blog about communication? What does that have to do with nutrition and food? Well, I think I have mentioned this before, but the steps to being a healthy person do not just include eating right and exercising your body. Being healthy also includes exercising your mind. By that I don’t just mean reading books and internet research articles. What I am talking about here is having conversations with people. Remember what that was like? You would pick up the phone, or even meet someone in person and have an actual conversation? The communication in this day and age is NOT HEALTHY, and I have something to say about it.
Nowadays, we have the whole world in the palm of our hands…literally. The invention of the I Pad, smartphone, etc…has made it so we can meet people from all over the United States, even the world, that we probably never would have come in contact with otherwise. We can keep track of all of these lovely, new found friends on our social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. Whenever we feel alone, we can post an update about what we are doing or a picture of a place we are visiting, or a food we are eating, and people will “like” it, or give some some sort of approval sign…and suddenly, we are not alone anymore.
“Look, that guy Bob, that I met from OkCupid who is now my friend on Facebook and follows my Instagram account re-tweeted my chicken spaghetti squash lasagna recipe I posted…he must really like me!”
“Oh, it’s Rebecca’s birthday, that girl who is a friend of my twitter friend Mary who commented on my Instagram photo of my parent’s dog last week. She has a really cool jewelry line on Etsy that I check out from time to time, so I should definitely send her a Happy Birthday message.”
These are not real situations here, but do you find…somehow…this has become your life?
Do you think this is healthy?
I started to really think about this recently, specifically in dating. You can meet people from so many different places now, which is exciting at first. But then it turns into attention deficit disorder dating…do you really have time for all these people? If you actually make a genuine connection, will you ever know if you are going out with someone new every night? So you focus in on one person, but after weeks of incessant texting, then you sit back and realize…how often does this person actually try to connect with you? Like call you, or invite you to where they live to spend actual time together? If the answer is all the time, then good for you, you are my dating superstar hero anomaly. When dating people in your own city, when was the last time you met someone online who after a few email or texts, took the initiative and said “Let me call you!”…and you then had a normal human being phone conversation which led to an actual face to face meeting where you could assess this person’s social skills, or lack thereof?
Let’s take another situation. Friendship. What is friendship anymore? Do you have friends who actually pick up the phone and call you anymore, just to chat? Or even better, the friends you do have, when you get together, how many of them keep their phones out the entire time they are with you? Or better yet, check them every 5 minutes when they are with you, responding to every social media notification that comes in while you are in the middle of a story about what is going on in your ACTUAL HUMAN BEING LIFE?
Today’s communication let’s you hide from social graces. Instead of actually telling someone you aren’t coming to their social event, you can just click a button. Instead of talking to a friend about the problems you are having with your friendship, you can just de-friend them and unfollow all their social media accounts…and that should give them the hint they need. A guy/girl can just ignore you when he/she doesn’t feel like talking to you. They could do that before social media as well, but what’s even better now, is they can post a picture or status update having fun with someone else to show you how much they really don’t care, and THEN they can ignore you. Because it’s easier to hide behind your computer than it is to discuss something real, like FEELINGS and EMOTIONS.
Even my parents don’t call like they used to…I get texts of pictures of our family dogs on the furniture. (It’s okay Mom, just saying!!)
Being healthy is not just about eating healthy food. Sure, I love to post pictures of my food creations. It is part of my work and what I do, so I think it has value in that sense. It has connected me to new people in my career and social life, and for that I am eternally grateful. However, I think it is important to still remember that all this internet life can get really lonely and meaningless if you can’t ever just focus on one person or thing at a time. I decided to have an actual birthday party last week. And I had my phone in the corner of the room just so I could check if anyone couldn’t find the place I had the party at. I have to say it felt amazing to just focus on the people who were actually there in the room and connect with genuine friends who I don’t get to see all the time in person.
Do yourself a favor…invite a friend over for a meal you have cooked, or call someone you connected with that lives far away just to see how they are doing. Call a friend you care about on their birthday…and if they don’t answer, leave a message! Invite a friend to go somewhere and connect in person…it can do wonders for your health and happiness.
