What did I really say?

“The response you get IS the communication.”

See, so much of the time, we find all sorts of justifications for being satisfied with a standard much lower than this. When people don’t laugh at our jokes, we find fault with their sense of humor rather than with our grasp of their mindset or our delivery. When we say something that makes them angry, we blame their surly disposition instead of our poor word choice and intonation. When people misunderstand what we’ve said, we chalk that up to their stupidity instead of our ineloquence. And not at all needless to say, we invert all these judgments when we are the ones not laughing, getting mad, or misunderstanding.

In other words, we would all rather be proud of having said what we wanted to say rather than learning to be proud in achieving the result in the other person we want to achieve. And even a professional in the field of communication like me finds this constantly challenging. Nevertheless:

“The response you get IS the communication.”