Language, Smiles, Power And Empathy

You don't see the world as it is, you see it as you are. We all see the world through the filter of our own selves, and when we want to communicate what we see, we're restricted by yet another filter; "language." And the words that are spoken to us become part of how we see the world and ourselves as well, making them as powerful as spells; we can make and break each other with the words we use.

Yeah, I don't care how successful the many "self-help" books and coaches are (ironic in itself to be coached in self-help...), or how they keep stressing to talk positively to yourself to make life better; it's the words of others that have real power over us. "But only if you let them," I hear many of you think now, but that's not how it works, as we're empathetic creatures first and foremost. Why do we place so much value on, and why are we so expertly adept to reading body language and facial expressions? It's not our own face we learn to read. Why and how do we learn to begin with? We learn precious little about ourselves from ourselves; instead we learn about the world and ourselves by absorbing and responding to external inputs, mostly originating from other people, whether it be by their words or actions. And we do this on a semi voluntary level through rational thoughts and deliberate choices, but for a large part involuntarily through our mirror-neurons.

A simple smile can be the most powerful thing in the world. The thing is though, that you have to be there to see it; taking into account all the above, it's easy to see how limited we are when discussing online, when we only have words. Sure, we have emoticons, but they are as meaningful as a fake smile; in real life we can distinguish between a fake and a real smile, especially when we know the smiler well. Our need to be seen is coupled with a need to be perceived as we wish to be perceived, and online communication gives us every opportunity to steer that perception in certain directions, an opportunity we jump at by painting the best version of ourselves for our online alter-ego's. A smile is the most powerful bit of positive language we have; I've heard of a study that says that a smile can have huge effect on the reward part of the brain, and that it's worth the sort of brain activation that 200 chocolate bars might elicit...

The intense use of all these facial muscles leaves many traces like laugh-lines, crow's feet and forehead wrinkles; as we age, these traces are a kind of a permanent record of all the emotions we've expressed throughout our lifes. That's why crow's feet are beautiful and not something to erase with plastic surgery; this reduces the face to a real life emoticon, so to speak. Speaking of crow's feet: I could use some more of those... I guess I haven't laughed or squinted enough... And a little less forehead wrinkles please ;-)

Have a nice day, pleased to meet you, hello; a greeting is powerful too. When we say "have a great weekend" to our colleagues on Friday, we don't literally think about their weekend, and we know this about each other to, yet we still say it. Imagine if instead it was custom to wish each other to hell each Friday. Why do we 99% of the time answer that everything is all right when asked how we're doing? We're not doing alright 99% of the time, maybe 80% of the time, if we're lucky, and we know this to about each other, so why do we accept this anyway? All this, to me, is just an indication of how we're basically and fundamentally aware of each other's needs, the need not to be wished to hell and the need not to be burdened by each other's sorrows all the time. It also conforms to our need to bee seen and recognized; the Zulu word for "hello", "sawubona," is a contraction of "siyakubona" which means "we see you."

And then there's the subtle clues that are present in the voice that speaks the words, another aspect we miss in written conversation. You can't hear the crack in my voice when I'm about to cry, nor the edge in my voice when I'm about to lose my temper. And as we've already seen, there's no way for you to read the emotions produced by more than 40 facial muscles, when we're actually masters at reading each other's faces and emotions. When we're restricted to the use of words only, we're missing this essential ability to of decoding their full meaning because we're missing all that's communicated with facial expressions, body language and vocal clues. As an interesting side note it's good to mention that it takes more muscles and energy for us to frown than to laugh, and while scientists aren't allowed to speculate on the meaning of this, if there is any at all, I'm free to speculate that this is another indication that we're essentially empathic creatures, that we recognize our own and each other's need to "be seen," to be recognized, and for our joys and pains to be recognized as well.

Words and empathy are powerful in their own right, and become even more so when we combine them. That's why it's pretty sad to see that we use words so carelessly sometimes. Especially online, when actually it's online, where we're deprived of so much of the tools of communication and natural empathic ques by means of mirror neurons, for which we must be in each other's physical presence, where we should be extra careful with our choice of words. And to briefly come back to what I said about self-help; of course it also matters what words you use when talking to yourself, it does matter whether your inner voice is talking like a victim or like a winner. But it's important to recognize that you're not the sole architect of that inner voice, that we make each other's inner voices by communicating, and that online we only have words to do it. Words matter:

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