Monday Mastery: The communication paradox
Wording doesn’t matter — but your words are everything.
Welcome to Monday Mastery, a series designed to shift your perspective, teach you new techniques, and help you become a more effective writer, one tip at a time.
Human communication is a paradox.
On the one hand, you have the communication illusion.
That is, much of human communication is just the illusion that communication happened. Nothing that you say will make as much difference as you think.
How you made your audience feel matters more than the words you used.
We can probably all think of examples where a person in a position of authority spoke nearly nonsensical words, but somehow made an audience feel something powerfully. Or an article was full of fluff and circular reasoning, but somehow turned the tide of a global issue.
On the other hand, you have the unmistakable power of words.
Every word you put out into the world has an effect, small or large. The words you choose have power to them.
We can probably all think of examples where one word, one sentence, one piece of writing changed the course of our lives. (For me, it was the book How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill. It’s why I switched my undergraduate major from environmental studies to history — which led me to fall in love with research and scholarly writing.)
The paradox is that words can both not matter and mean everything.
Here is a practical application of the communication paradox to keep in your back pocket as you’re writing:
If your nerves are getting in the way of communicating to an audience, remember the communication illusion. Don’t overthink your words, just focus on how you want the audience to feel. The words will emerge.
And if being remembered matters to you, focus carefully on your words. Give each word a little breath of life, and your writing will live on.
Human communication is a paradox. Isn’t it beautiful?