Today, I encountered a person. I encountered someone smart, dedicated, and influential. He was a guy with his own lab and ideas, meeting with my mentors and bosses for a collaborator project. I was able to sneak into the meeting under the excuse of learning. He rolled into my lab's small meeting room, covering a half of a mac laptop with his palms, oozing down on our meeting room chair until the chair finally let out a weak groan. It is from this guy that I've learned something that could be useful to a lot of social interactions.
This guy pulled out his computer, put up a long powerpoint presentation, excitingly talk about what he has found from the maturation of cells from basil laminar to the external surface. Slides after slides of colorful, powerful images of stained cells, the results pretty much sold itself. Throughout his talk he found chances to include some personal stories and jokes to make the presentation less dry, and hence we know that he also has a number of other projects and collabrators. As we sat there gawking over what's in front of us, his tones changed subtly. "I usually hate to talk about this," he began. He was asking for additional funding to his project, a common problem that scientists face. I stared at his facial expressions, trying to catch any indications of sensation other than the excitement and honor to work with us. Among the many blessed words to our ears, I caught tiny glimpse of discomfort, nervousness, and lots of laughter to ease out any source of negativity. Is he carefully articulating what he is saying for a better outcome? Did he chose to focus on how happy he is to work with us so we don't pay too much attention to the financial request? Or is the cheerful attitude and the awkwardness of financial request just a honest representation of his thinking?
Often times in social interactions I come upon the need to ask for favors, or just to get on someone's good side without saying I really like you as a person and wish we can be friends. Even if I don't like someone, I still feel the need to be as friendly and amiable as I can. In a world that is as intricately connected as ours, a good rule to have is to make as much good impressions as one can. However, there are times when I mess up. When I have mixed views about something, words come out of my mouth reveal exactly that. I would then have to be more elaborate and explain that I didn't meant to say what I said, but I know that I really believe what I've just said. Confusion, inconsistency, and awkwardness are the results of these kind of slip ups. Sometimes people tell me that I need to articulate my ideas better, but it requires knowing English on a deeper level then I demonstrate. Other times people encourage me to focus on something else then my actual point, but that doesn't sound right either. With my recent discoveries of religion and morality, a few things clicked as I observed and listened to what this guy said.
Becoming a good speaker requires articulation. But carefully align words in purposeful ways requires lots of mental power and exercise to achieve perfectly. It requires years of reading, large span of attention dedicated to vocabulary, relationship between words, and all that jazz. It is not the fastest solution to avoid slip ups especially when you are not confident speaking eloquently. However, being a honest speaker that voices out how I feel at a specific time, does not require any thing but honesty. To me, narrating things in the honest and truthful way requires less mental energy then speaking while facing cognitive dissonance. If not able to articulate my own words is my problem, then I can at least convince myself that my negativity is wrong. The disappearance of negativity might only be temporary, but as long as negativity disappear while I'm interacting with that person, I still have presented myself as best as I can. I wonder as I write this post, if that dude traveled up to DC from his own institution has spent his travel time wondering what's the best word in the best sentence when expressing which idea will yield him the best outcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment