The other day, during an interview with Hunters Bay
Radio host Matt Allen, author Peter Jennings was discussing a book he wrote
about happiness. Jennings suggested that happiness is getting harder to achieve
these days because of the current high level of stress in our society. In part,
he seemed to be attributing this to a disconnect in our eroding personal
relationships. I’ll extrapolate from this observation and suggest that we are losing
our people skills because we favor electronic communication over face to face
interaction. This in turn leads to an erosion of the sense of community.
How many times has it happened to you; you’re trying
to explain something complicated to someone by text message, a message that
might take one minute in a face to face conversation takes fifteen minutes on
the phone (with auto correct, maybe longer!). More and more we seem to be
failing to connect, to understand each other. People communicate by phone from
opposite ends of the same room. We are fast becoming a society that would
rather not interact face to face, or at least by speaking to each other, and I think this is a sad development. In the
past week alone I can remember five different instances wherein a Facebook “discussion”
degenerated into a disrespectful exchange of insults and personal attacks. We
used to call it “flaming” in the early days, email correspondences that were
designed to be hurtful and inflammatory. I wonder if people would be so
insulting if they were in a face to face conversation. We’ve forgotten how to
discuss controversial subjects with respect. We are losing our emotional maturity.
Not only are nasty remarks in social media hurtful and
destructive, they are often irreversible. Someone once said something to me
which is indelibly etched in my mind ever since: we are the owner of our
thoughts, but the slave to our words. I’ve said many things I later wished I
could take back, but if it’s in print it’s even worse. Add to this the amount of disinformation churning around the internet, and the likelihood the
truth will be compromised increases markedly. As we become more disconnected,
and as the news we absorb, in its various degrees of legitimacy, chips away at
our sense of control, it’s no wonder we find it harder to find happiness.
In fact, much of what I glean from the internet and from the various news feeds
I consult, contributes to my loss of faith in mankind.
The reason I so avidly support our local community
radio station in Huntsville is that it makes me happy. It makes me happy to broadcast
36 of my unusual song choices once a week, it makes me happy to promote
talented artists I don’t think are receiving the recognition they deserve, it
makes me happy to in some small way connect with the people around me. Maybe I’m
not reaching all that many people, and I can’t gauge that, but if I reach and
entertain a few, that is something. Because of this little radio station, I’ve
met a lot of people in this local area, and I feel a little bit more connected to the people around me.
By supporting HBR I’m supporting a network of volunteers who through their services
do some good for the larger community. I think goodwill is contagious. In a
small community, there are palpable rewards, as well as consequences for our
words and actions. Next time you’re tempted to respond angrily to a tweet, or
post, or email, count to ten, and perhaps you’ll come up with a more constructive
response. Perhaps your random act of kindness for the day is simply to turn a negative
dialogue into a positive one. Choose your words well; try to do more good than
harm. You might just find that this will make you feel better about yourself,
and in turn will benefit the world around you. Just a thought.
- Written
by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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