Disclaimer: This is part of #wip series, where I am putting raw thoughts out, it stands for wrong-in-public, tagged with #wip, am open to dialogue, reach out to me, through the channels, you found out about this blog. Cheers!
There is this idea, which has been brewing in my head for a while about communication being a ball game, a game of Catch. We, in our heads, when we are bested by someone else at an argument, at a party, we think of all the alternate replies. We think of, “oh, what if I had just said the x thing or the y thing.”
The communication then stops being a two way communication, it starts being cricket, it starts being if I am being bowled a “spin-bowl” or a “fast” ball, how to score maximum points. Then it has become a status game, it is zero sum game, if you hit a “sixer” the other person loses some credibility points of being a good bowler. I’d be lying if I said I don’t do it that I don’t think of alternate best replies to give to someone. But I do deeply feel, while practicing this muscle is not entirely futile, it is still practicing the wrong muscle. It’s still swinging your bat and enforcing maximum thrust at the point of contact at the best angle. And perhaps at a debate or at some presentation, these skills will come in handy. However, I do believe playing a game of catch would nourish more ideas and is useful in everyday life.
In the game of Catch, back home we’d also call it pass-pass, the game is around throwing the ball to someone and then they catching it. It can be played between two or more people. Or you can play by yourself with a wall that gives you a taste of your own throwing style. Let’s dry run a play match between two people. Imagine, the ball to be an idea or the topic of the conversation, and your roll it into a ball and throw to someone, and then they catch it, hold it for few seconds, infuse it with their own warmth, hold it slightly differently and then pass it back. And then you try to catch it, the ball you received is not the ball you sent, it has transformed slightly, changed a bit.
In this game, throwing and catching, you can play around, you can treat it gently like passing a baby or just throw difficult to have fun. But deeep down, you want the person to catch your ball, because you want to be understood. Here you are trying to build something, you are trying to create a rhythm, learning and adjusting for “maximum” catches for both yourself and your communication-partner. If you miss, you have to start again to get the rhythm right. I did a similar exercise in a theater workshop at the Kochi Biennale, where we were throwing and catching balls while saying our names, when throwing them. It was a total disaster, we were missing so many balls, then the difficulty was raised as soon as we got all into a rhythm, the game had three balls then- ball one catch – ball one throw say our name, ball two pay attention and catch from a different receiver – say our favourite fruit while throwing and so on for the third ball. It a beautiful workshop for attention, communication as an art and building confidence to say what we were saying and to be understood.
I think this also happens when one of our close friends or partners goes away for a while, the ball was dropped somewhere, and it’s always a little hard to pick it up and start playing catch again.
thanks for reading!
your-next-door-writer-friend,
Calra
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