Do what you hate, love what you do

An interesting thing happened to me: I had to do what I hate. And, oh boy, I do hate translation!

Now if I were to think about the root of this … problem, I shall probably go back to the reason I started learning the foreign languages in the first place. I simply wanted to read the authors’ masterpieces in original. Believe it or not, I once read Balzac and Zola in French. (Surprisingly, at one time I knew French far better than English – this is a reminder that if a foreign language isn’t practiced, it’s doomed to be forgotten.)

Why such a desire, you might ask. I do remember when my former teacher of linguistics, Mr Rumleanschi, mentioned an Italian proverb during one of our classes that stuck with me forever: Traduttore traditore. (For the record, this happened long before I learned Italian; for a very long time I thought it was Latin, by the way – this is about how treacherous our memory can be.)

So, my belief was, and still is that a lot is lost in translation. This has nothing to do with the professionalism of a translator, it rather deals with the concept that language is culture, and that the way one culture sees the reality is different from the way another does it. I might assume that the proverb was mentioned most probably while we were covering the notion of linguistic relativism. (Funny thing, I do remember the proverb, I forgot the context when it was mentioned – this is about how picky our memory is in terms of what to store in the long term memory.)

So, here I was asked to do the very thing I hated: to translate. Initially I didn’t quite understand what exactly I was supposed to do. I thought I should make some unofficial translation for two people I admired and liked. The event we all should attend was organised in my native language, so I was asked to make sure they get an understanding of what’s going on. This is something I’d definitely love to do.

Now imagine, my reaction when I had to go on stage and make the translation from English to Romanian. To say that I was shocked is to say nothing at all. This shock turned into stress and guess what happened? Fear took control over me (now picture the fear from “Inside Out” – I think my fear was behaving in a similar way when taking the control of me).

I was so freaked out that it became difficult for me to concentrate and remember what the speaker was saying. Luckily the person I was translating for, spoke slowly and delivered the speech in short chunks so that I could remember what was said. I am thankful for that to both speakers❤️ (This doesn’t mean that my panic wasn’t interfering with my translation process, but it tremendously helped me.)

When I watched just a few moments of me doing the translation (I can’t watch myself doing it), I noticed two things:

1. How much weight I put on (This is my judgemental side coming into the foreground as well as my inability to accept myself just the way I am.)
2. I was looking up to my right trying to remember what was said. (Now that is weird because psychologists claim that when people try to remember things, they look up and to the left, in my case it’s always to the right.)

But why is it that I was so freaked out? First of all it is because I’ve never focused on developing my translation skills. Yes, translation requires the development of certain types of skills. And there’s a huge difference between oral and written translation. Moreover, different sets of skills are required when doing a type of oral translation. So, synchronous and consecutive translation require different skills. People who do not focus on developing the necessary skills find it challenging to cope with the task, and only an incompetent person will think that they are fantastic. (If you don’t believe me, watch the TED-Ed “Why incompetent people think they’re amazing” or study the Dunning-Kruger effect.)

But is it all about the fact that I refused to develop translation skills. Or shall I look deeper and understand why I didn’t want to do it at all.

We do need translators! Even if they can’t exactly translate what is being said or written (remember linguistic relativism), they are the ones that helped connect the world. They helped and are still helping to make sense of this utterly complex world. Great job! All my admiration for you!

But then why do I hate translating? Why didn’t I want to learn how to, i.e. develop the skills? In my glorious past, more than fifteen years ago ( never trust me with numbers, but this is a totally different story), I attended a one-week translation workshop organised by the Association of the Professional Translators of the Republic of Moldova. I loved listening to the professionals. They shared their experience, they shared some tips. And although I truly admired them, I still wasn’t keen on taking up translation as a career (I think great translators earn more than great teachers 😉).

The reason I hate it is probably related to my ego. Come on, I have to translate what other people say, not tell what I want to say. I know this might sound a bit narcissistic (but let’s admit we all have it, just in small doses), but it’s quite challenging to translate something partcularly when you totally disagree with what the person is saying. I remeber one of the participants at that workshop shared her experience tranlating for one of our former presidents, and how ashamed she was because she knew he was saying rubbish, yet she did her job.

I was lucky to translate for wonderful people so there was no cognitive dissonance happening in me. I didn’t have to go against my values. I definitely regretted not having focused on developing my translation skills, but only for a few moments. Gradually my fear subsided, and I was able to function better.

On my first day I told myself that I won’t ever accept translating for anyone. On my third – I had a change of heart. I will, but I will make sure the people know that I’m not a professional translator. I don’t want to develop my skills in this field, I’m happy where I am right now. I’ve found my niche and continue developing in this area.

Now, at the end of my journey in which I was definitely thrown out of my comfort zone, it finally dawned on me. In life, we quite often do what we don’t like. We simple say: “I hate it”. But this hate is probably not hate, but the unwillingness to put the extrra-mental effort to a more challenging task. (Don’t get me wrong, skill development is a must, but I can say that I hate writing articles, and although I have developed my writing skills, it requires a lot of mental energy and effort from my part to do it.) Will I translate when I’m asked to? I will, just to help people when necessary. And I’ll try to enjoy the process.

Communicating a few post-reading impressions

I’ve always been interested in what makes one’s individual style. It’s a curiosity of mine, which is linked to my job. As a teacher of Stylistics and Discourse Analysis, I should be able to detect those peculiarities that make a person’s individual style used in discourse. What I find interesting above all is to analyze the specific linguistic choices people make in order to encode their communicative intentions. Isn’t it interesting to know what these choices tell about them, about their ability to communicate across cultures, about their communicative intentions which quite often are hidden with the help of exquisite, sometimes extremely original, stylistic devices?

It’s great to be aware of these things when we want to become great communicators. However, knowing the linguistic forms and masterfully using them in discourse (both while encoding and decoding messages) is not enough. There are other factors influencing the communication process as well, like, for example, our emotional well-being, or in Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley’s words “the emotional life of our brains”. Although in their book they focused on how the brain’s unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live, and not on the way it affects communication, it is, I think, obvious that the process of thinking, or living, in general, is communication in action. We think via words, and definitely life is an ongoing process of communication in which we constantly try to relate to others and to understand ourselves in relation to others.

From the very first pages, it turned out that our brain has its own emotional style. The assumption is based on Richard Davidson’s extensive research on the human brain. He tried to prove that not only the unconscious is in charge of our emotions, but also our neocortex, the region which is said to be in charge of our reasoning and logic exclusively (the region that makes us believe we’re superior to other species as we suppose it enables us to be in control of our instincts, i.e. emotions). So, emotions do not live exclusively in the limbic system, they feel at home in the prefrontal cortex, and this might mean that we can manage them, definitely, if only we knew how. And the answer can be found in the book.

According to Richard Davidson, there are six dimensions of a person’s emotional style. They are: outlook, resilience, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context, and attention. But let’s first try to understand what a dimension is. Somehow this word implies that something can be measured. So, it looks like it is possible to determine the length, width, height, or depth of our emotions. Something that might appear impossible at first sight. But the renowned psychologist managed to convince his readers that indeed the intensity of emotions can be measured. The very fact that during his experiments he got interesting results showing how the emotions of the respondents varied allowed him to arrive at the conclusion that each person possesses their own individual emotional style. Thus, it is rather wrong to generalize and think that people respond either positively or negatively with equal intensity.

This can be easily proven. Think of something that you really like, a book or a film, and then you express all your feelings about it to your friend. Then you discover that your friend also liked it but not in the same way as you did. Their response was not that ecstatic. Another situation to consider is when you feel quite awkward in a company you don’t know and you want to hide. It’s difficult for you to interact with people. Whereas, somebody you know becomes easily the heart of a company of totally unknown people. Or the way one experiences a loss is very different among people. Some recover quite easily, whereas others need a lot of time to pass to be able to move on.

The good news is that none of these people are defective. Everything is absolutely OK with them. They simply stand at different dimensions of their emotional style. Let’s take the resilience dimension. Those who are at the Fast to Recover extreme will recover faster from a loss than those who are at the Slow to Recover extreme. People who are at the Positive Type extreme of the outlook dimension are always happy and extremely optimistic, whereas those who are at the Negative Type extreme would be cynical and prone to see everything in a negative light.  Those who are keenly aware of the context in which they are and can appropriately respond to it are at the Tuned In extreme of the sensitivity to context dimension, but those who can’t read the socio-cultural rules characteristic of a certain context are at the Tuned Out extreme. Now, those who acutely feel every single message the body sends them are at the Self-Aware extreme of the self-awareness dimension; those who can’t are at the Self-Opaque extreme. People who can stay focused and nothing can disturb them are at the Focused Style extreme of the attention dimension; those who can’t focus at all are at the Unfocused extreme. Finally, people who are at the Socially Intuitive extreme of the social intuition dimension can easily pick up the others’ mental and emotional states, but those who are completely blind to these states (they simply can’t read them in the others) are at Puzzled extreme.

Now you might think that a person who is at the extreme end of fast to recover, positive type, tuned it, self-aware, focused, and socially intuitive, has the best social emotional style. Such a person is the happiest and luckiest on earth, you would exclaim. Richard Davidson encourages us not to jump to hasty conclusions and think again. As known, extremism in all its forms is dangerous, and this is true about our emotions as well. Being at the positive type extreme of the outlook dimension can actually be quite dangerous, and the psychologist proves this by providing strong arguments. The lesson to be learned is that we should strive to be somewhere in the middle of all the six dimensions. Indeed, nothing is better in life than being able to find the middle way in every puzzling situation. So, it looks like it is also true about a person’s emotional style. Being able to find the balance is the recipe to an emotionally stable person. And we know that our mental health is the drive for our success and happiness in life.

Now if you’re curious to find out your own emotional style, you answer the ten questions for each emotional style from the book and see where you fall on that spectrum. The results I got were surprising. I’ve also learned (and this is the good news) we are able to move from one dimension to another. Our brain allows us to make changes in the neural connections and become more balanced. This can be achieved with the help of meditation or exercises from cognitive behavioral therapy. It is so easy actually that it is almost unbelievable. The trick is that one has to be patient and consistent in order to succeed. It is possible to make this change. It is possible to improve your emotional style. This will definitely contribute to one’s success in communication as well, enabling them to feel socially connected.

Amintiri din copilărie

Azi o colegă a postat pe Facebook o fotografie despre coafori, cât de pretențioși sunt și mi-am adus aminte de o traumă provocată mie în copilărie. Eu nu prea am fost cu coafatul, nu că aș avea ceva împotrivă, pur și simplu mă plictisește. Nu prea îmi pasă, prin urmare nici părului meu nu-i prea pasă cum stă. Whatever. Nu despre asta e vorba în poveste. Deci mergem cu familia în „ospeție” și o rudă îndepărtată cumva o rușinează pe mama, „crește o domnișoară și nu e frezată cum trebuie.” A hotărât ea sa ieie шефство надо мной.

A doua zi a trebuit să merg în centru. Undeva în spatele pieței m-a dus la coafeza ei (na, era bine intenționată, păcat de zis). Eu habar n-aveam ce fel de freză vroiam, îmi era indiferent. Doamna se uită la mine atent și zice „Сейчас сделаем”. Problema era că habar n-aveau ce să facă. S-au gândit ele două cât s-au gândit și BINGO, chiar deasupra oglinzii din fața mea era ea, coafura perfectă pentru mine (după spusele coafezei). „Вот что ей надо. Роковая страсть.”.

Eu habar n-aveam ce-i aia роковая страсть, dar văzând reacția pozitivă a rudei mele am zis că e de bine. Na, ele două doamne cu experiență știu ce e bine. După vreo jumătate de oră de creație a coafurii, m-am trezit cu o freză scurtă, nimic deosebit. Dar nu puteam să spun altceva. Am zis mulțumesc frumos și am mers acasă.

După vreo trei luni dacă nu mai mult, când deja părul crescuse în așa fel încât nu se mai vedea роковая страсть, am zis că e timpul să merg iar la coafor. Dar nu aveam eu chef să merg nu stiu pe unde în centru și am preferat să găsesc ceva prin zonă. Nu-mi aduc aminte ce zi era, dar mai toate erau închise. Găsesc eu una deschisă aprope de școală (nici nu mai sunt sigură dacă mai lucrează) și merg să-mi fac роковая страсть. Coafeza, bineînțeles în rusă, mă întrebă „Как будем стричь?” Eu încerc să-i explic că vreau mai scurt. Ei dar nu era deajuns „Как коротко?” La care eu naiv spun: „Я не знаю. Меня однажды постригли и прическа называлась роковая страсть.”

Să fi văzut fața doamnei. A inmărmurit. După a izbuhnit în așa hohote că a venit doamna din camera de alături să se asigure că totul e în regulă. Îi spune pe scurt despre роковая страсть și încep să râdă amândouă. Când își dau seama că eu totuși sunt clientul care deja de jumate de oră așteaptă să fie frezată, îmi dau un catalog cu diferite tipuri de freze și îmi spun să aleg. Răsfoiesc eu cât răsfoisc și parcă dau de роковая страсть. Îi arăt doamnei, la care ea exclamă „А, под гарсон.” Avea un pic de probleme doamna când pronunța litera „s”.

La cât de stresată eu eram atunci, eu nici nu am înțeles ce a spus. Și iata așa роковая страсть a devenit под горшок. E clar că după rugam să mi se arate catalogul de la bun început și arătam cu degetul ce vroiam fără să mai dau vreo denumire.

Acum tare am eu impresia că prima coafeză propunea роковая страсть la toate doamnele, domnișoarele și copilele, doar nu în zadar stătea fotografia chiar deasupra oglinzii. Poate cineva tot a avut роковая страсть ca și mine și nu știa că de fapt e под горшок. Totul se rezumă la marketing, drept că așa termen nu exista pe atunci la noi.

Morala: deșertăciunea deșertăciunilor și toate sunt deșarte.

The dichotomy of good and evil

Are we inherently good or bad? Imagine being asked such a tricky question. What would you say? How would you react? What would you feel? The tendency is to come up with an instant answer defending the superiority of the human species, and say that good always prevails over evil; it keeps evil under control. One might be even appalled to be asked such a silly question. How could anyone allow such a thought to even cross their minds? Of course, people are good and caring. Yet, there would be somewhere at the back of their minds the possessive adjective “our”. Otherwise, how could inherently good people explain the division between “we” and “they” still existing in our world?

This division seems to have helped people justify so many crimes throughout history committed with the express purpose of protecting what’s ours and destroying what’s theirs. Indeed, the preconceived belief that “we” are the army of good and “they” are the army of evil has helped humankind destroy whatever did not properly align with the core values shared by the winners. It must be good when the winners are “we”. But has anyone thought what it might feel like when the winners are “they”? Why bother if one is lulled into a false sense of security, if one lives in the safety of a bubble blown by the winds of change with the only hope for it not to burst.

But let’s get bothered and carefully consider this controversial issue. Probably we should start by trying to understand what good and evil mean. If we look these words up in the dictionary, we’re bound to find that evil is profound immorality and wickedness, whereas good is that which is morally right. It looks simple at first glance and comprehensive enough. But is it really so?

The crusaders thought they were profoundly moral in their campaign to win the Holy Land. The slave owners were highly moral and religious people, yet they saw nothing wrong in dehumanizing other people who did not happen to be white. The Nazis were convinced in their profound morality when they started an inhumane campaign against the Jews. The terrorists killing innocent civilians are also guided by highly moral and religious convictions. Yet, all of their actions are undeniably evil.

Maybe it’s not morality that should be mentioned in the definition as the understanding of this notion is highly subjective. Somehow these atrocities were morally justified, e.g. to kill in the name of God, or to decide on the superiority of one race over another. So, dictionary definitions offer an oversimplified explanation of what is good and what is evil. People understand them being influenced by their own socially acquired filters, as well as by their own unique perception of reality.

In his book The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo defines evil as consisting in “intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.” So, the renowned American psychologist does not even mention morality, instead he focuses on the intentional harmful behavior people display towards others who do not deserve it at all. It is interesting to note that the word innocent has as its synonyms such words as righteous, moral and virtuous. It is also worth noting the emphasis the scholar puts on systems as bearing the responsibility of the evil people do. Philip Zimbardo does not justify the individual act of doing evil, but rather explains how it is possible for an otherwise righteous person to do evil being influenced by the system they are part of.

Before rejecting vehemently the idea that someone can be influenced by the context to such an extent as to betray their core values, think about the righteous Germans under the Nazi regime and the profoundly religious slave owners who held the belief that all people are created equal. Undeniably, they should be held accountable for their deeds, but in order to understand the root of the problem one should dig deeper to look for the actual reasons that compel otherwise good people to become evil.

Philip Zimbardo bases his conclusions on years of research he has conducted. What he has become known for is the Stanford Prison Experiment he conducted in the summer of 1971. He wanted to examine to what extent the situation influences the behavior of the 24 participants in the experiment. During the course of two weeks the participants were supposed to live in a simulated prison. The researcher and his team would observe their behavior and note to what extent the role of the prisoner or the one of the prison guard would influence the people’s behavior.  All the participants were nice young people with high hopes for the future. According to the contract, they were supposed to be paid $15 per day and could leave at any time they wanted. Interestingly enough, all of them wanted to have the role of the prisoner. None volunteered to be a prison guard. However, the experimenters divided them into two groups, and the experiment began. I think they took it lightly without even thinking that this simulation could change their behavior in any way.

However, the results were so shocking that Philip Zimbardo had to end the experiment one week before it was due. So, basically the experiment lasted one week, and still the data it provided seems to indicate that evil can be the result of the situation in which people either live or are forced to live. The way the prison guards started behaving was outrageous. Although they did not physically abuse the prisoners, the psychological abuse and other Machiavellian maneuvers allowing them to punish the prisoners transformed them into perpetrators of evil. In a matter of three days some of the prison guards have internalized the hostility, negative affect, and mindset characteristic of some real prison guards.

When it comes to the prisoners, they gradually gave in to the prison system, also having internalized the roles of the prisoners. They became conformists and obedient. Being dehumanized and humiliated by the guards, they seemed to lose their identity, whereas their dispositional tendencies were wiped out by the power of situational forces. It looked as if they had even forgotten that they could end the experiment when they wanted.

The question one might ask oneself is “Why didn’t Philip Zimbardo and his team stop the experiment when they saw that their simulated prison looked more and more like a real prison?” The researcher admits that he also was influenced by the situational powers. Although he thought he controlled his mind, it looked like the situation took control of his mind. He was responsible for the evil of inaction. Only when his future wife Christina Maslach came to pick him up for dinner and saw what was truly happening in the prison, did Philip Zimbardo understand the evil he was not only witnessing, but also doing. The experiment was stopped immediately after a week. It proved that situational forces are more powerful than dispositional tendencies at a very big cost. It had transformed the otherwise normal young men into complacent, suffering prisoners and guards who lost their moral compass. All the people involved in the experiment, including Philip Zimbardo and his team, underestimated the power of Situation to transform their thinking. As Zimbardo mentions: “a person in the claws of the System just goes along, doing what emerges as the natural way to respond at that time in that place” (2007: p. 180).

So, coming back to the question asked at the beginning: Are we inherently good or bad? Before answering it, we should carefully consider the situation and system that we are part of and analyze to what extent we are influenced by these two powers. Systemic and situational powers can transform people in such a way that they won’t be able to recognize themselves. Probably this is what happened to people who got so much influenced by the propaganda of powerful systems that they lost their moral compasses and became the perpetrators of evil.

The understanding of why they behaved immorally does not diminish their accountability. But what we could do is learn from the past errors and develop our critical thinking so that we can resist these situational and systemic powers. This is possible. We have heroes to prove this. People who risked their own lives to help Jews escape during the Nazi occupations, the whistleblowers who show how corrupted systems can be and what horrible situations they can create. The most recent example I can think of is the whistleblower who helped expose the terrible flaws in the Russian prison system. His example was followed by others, and maybe this will result in systemic change that will stop tortures in prisons.

Meanwhile, check your moral compass, and make sure you take the right direction.

Reference:

Zimbardo, Ph. (2007) The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House.

Food for thought: on cattiness and not only

In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim that “what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor”. The scholars believe that “human thought processes are largely metaphorical.” The example of a conceptual metaphor they give in their book has become a classic example in cognitive linguistics. Thus, they show how the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR is reflected in everyday language, e.g. He attacked every weak point in my argument. / His criticisms were right on target. / I demolished his argument.

In her book You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen also mentions a conceptual metaphor, which can be formulated in the following way: A WOMAN IS A CAT. She gives the example of a news article which quoted a Ronald Reagan’s campaign aid calling Geraldine Ferraro (selected as the vice-presidential candidate by Walter Mondale) ready to “claw Ronald Reagan’s eyes out.” Undeniably the verb claw reflects the stereotypical perception of women as cats.

Being attributed the quality of “cattiness” is far from flattering to women. Being catty does not describe women in positive colors either. In her research paper Of Women, Bitches, Chickens and Vixens: Animal Metaphors for Women in English and Spanish, Irene López Rodríguez states that in English the conceptual metaphor of a woman as a cat is supposed to imply a malicious woman or a prostitute.

So, these metaphors are deeply rooted into our mentality and we might not even know how offensive we might be in the end. Maybe that’s why Mr. Trump wanted to “grab’em by their p****”, to avenge all the cattiness. Who knows?

The point is we should raise our awareness as to how offensive we can sound only by using the stereotypical perceptions imprinted on our minds. It’s high time we understood Carl Young’s idea that “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” We should be more conscious about the existing stereotypes, and language can help us detect and fix them.

The illusion of being (mis)understood

So how often have you exclaimed in the middle of a heated argument “You just don’t understand”? Who was your addressee? Who bore the responsibility for not being able to understand what the other meant? Was it the interlocutor? Was it you? Was it the socio-cultural norms imprinted on your implicit memory? Was it your inability to express your ideas appropriately? Was it the interlocutor’s inability to decode the intended message appropriately?

Such questions seldom arise during the argument as the speakers are too much engrossed in showing how wrong the other is, and how right they are. Most probably they are not addressed in the aftermath of the argument either. It is much easier to put the blame on the other than actually getting to the root of the problem. It does not require much mental effort to decide that the other was in the wrong; whereas finding the blunt answer to the problem might be more discomforting and time-consuming than fretting over how unjust the other was.

People generally start from the assumption that the way they encode their intended message will be decoded with great ease by the interlocutor. They want the interlocutor to walk in their shoes, without even considering that the interlocutor’s shoe preferences and size could radically differ from theirs. Sometimes, they might even expect from them to be mind readers, without necessarily believing in mind reading in real life. And so, they argue.

Deborah Tannen, the famous American socio-linguist, has researched the issues men and women encounter while communicating and has arrived at interesting conclusions. It looks like it has to deal with the different conversational styles men and women appear to have. Men look for independence and would react whenever they think their power is threatened; hence, their turns in communication appear to be rather defensive, as if they participated in a contest where they have to win at all costs. Women, on the other hand, look for intimacy and would look for ways of connecting and showing support and confirmation; hence, their communication focuses on reaching a consensus. This is why men tend to be perceived as more straightforward and even dominant, whereas women appear to be more amiable, sometimes even giving the impression of taking a subordinate position.

The difference in men’s and women’s conversational styles could be traced back to their childhood, when they learned to use the language to communicate. They implicitly acquired the strategies socio-culturally attributed to characterize men and women. One does not teach a child to adopt a style that would reaffirm their dominance or one that would seek to create connections. It is the environment in which the child grows up that contributes to the development of their styles. Children grow up believing that ‘Big boys don’t cry’, and that girls are emotional.

Probably it should not come as a surprise that when boys grow up they engage in report talk seemingly showing little emotional engagement. Women, however, engage in rapport talk which underlies their desire to emotionally connect. As a result, men might appear cold and even rude, whereas women might appear needy and even insecure. What a man would offer as a solution to a problem, a woman might interpret it as lack of sympathy, merely because she was looking for confirmation of her feelings. She did not need advice, she merely needed understanding. Similarly, a woman’s turn in conversation showing support can be interpreted as a threat to a man’s independence. Such situations can escalate into big conflicts merely because men’s and women’s default systems were set in different ways in their early childhood. Consequently, they end up interpreting the messages in the wrong way.

Deborah Tannen states that “communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence” (1990, p. 28). It would probably result in success if only people became aware of the existing differences in their perceptions. If men realized that the communicated message is not an attempt at undermining their authority, and women understood that the intended message does not disregard their feelings, probably so many conflicts would be averted, and maybe relationships saved. Yet, the egocentrism of each individual seems to prevent them from reaching such an agreement.

So, misunderstandings, scandals, and grudges could be avoided if only people knew that the socio-cultural filters enacted in the process of communication form barriers preventing one to successfully realize their communicative intention. These filters are deeply rooted in people’s subconsciousness who interact being fully convinced that their intentions will be appropriately decoded. It comes as no surprise that the bitter feeling of disappointment can come over them. Even the fleeting sensation that they have finally managed to make themselves fully understood is rather an illusion. Moreover, instead of destroying the illusion, people seem to foster it. George Bernard Shaw is claimed to have said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

The quote might sound paradoxical; yet, it is not as self-contradictory as it appears at first. People definitely communicate to achieve various aims. It doesn’t matter whether they try to persuade others to agree with them or to make them behave in a certain way, they want their communication to be successful. There is not a single person who would engage in an act of communication wanting to fail to achieve their communicative ends. However, it is how they do it that counts. A particular role is given to what kind of preconceived beliefs they involve in the encoding and decoding processes. It is essential to note that misunderstandings do not happen once the message has been uttered. It is the preconceived beliefs in the process of encoding that also contribute to communication failures.

These preconceived beliefs form the filters that tend to actually hamper the interlocutors’ success in communication. Think about the Instagram filters. Do they convey the accurate representation of a picture? If you apply, let’s say the Hudson filter to your picture, will that still be you? How close will that be to reality? We apply similar filters in our communication process. But, when the interlocutors decode the messages, they apply their own filters. Probably we should not look for easy solutions, nor should we rush to hasty conclusions when we misunderstand someone’s communicative intentions or when we are misunderstood. We should learn to detach from our egos and try to see what is being communicated to us from the sender’s perspective. It does not necessarily mean that we should agree with what we are told. What it means is that we have done our best to interpret the message as accurately as possible. We should bear in our minds that the process of communication is heavily influenced by the socially acquired filters. Probably we shouldn’t strive to make our communication filter-free, but rather filter-aware, which probably will enable us to balance the fundamental needs that we have while trying to achieve success in communication.

The elusive notion of hope that is supposed to give meaning to one’s life

Hope seems to be the hardest word to define. It’s has this property to seem elusive. Whenever I ask people to explain what hope is for them, they end up struggling to put their perceptions into words. What comes easy, however, is a full range of synonyms where wish and desire are the most popular. So, it does not come as a surprise that they all think of hope as a warm feeling that makes a person see the future in a rather positive way.

But is it an emotion? That is the question! The dictionary entries seem to corroborate people’s general beliefs on hope. For example, Cambridge Dictionary defines hope as: “a confident feeling about what will happen in the future”. Collins English Dictionary offers a more or less similar explanation: “a feeling of desire and expectation that things will go well in the future”. These definitions show hope as a feeling that is not rooted in the present. It is prospective contributing to the creation of a rather positive state of mind in a person.

Probably adding to people’s perception of hope as an emotion are the adjectives derived from the word hope, i.e. hopeful and hopeless. Both collocate with the verb feel. You can hear someone saying “I feel quite hopeful that I will pass all my exams” or “He felt lonely and utterly hopeless”. It is worth noting that these adjectives denote totally opposed feelings, such as optimism and confidence vs. pessimism and desperation. Another interesting linguistic fact is that the noun hope does not collocate with the verb feel. So, you can be full of, cherish, entertain, have, see, express, voice, cling to, keep alive, live in, abandon, give up, lose, boost hope, but not feel it. I found this interesting.

I looked at Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions and I found no hope in it. While examining the 8 primary emotions, the closest that come to the dictionary meanings attached to hope are joy and anticipation. When these two are combined, they result in optimism, which is opposed to disapproval. Optimism is defined as a tendency/attitude/feeling/inclination to be hopeful. It is also viewed as a doctrine that this world is the best possible world.

Although there is a close relationship between hope and optimism, they denote different concepts. Optimism is a feeling, whereas hope is not. It turns out that hope is a cognitive ability which gives us a sense of agency and accountability for our actions while we channel our energy into achieving the set goals. This is what I understood from C.R. Snyder’s article Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind. The outlook on hope as a mental capability came as a surprise to me. Indeed, it appears fairly unusual to think of hope the way we think of logic and reasoning or working memory. But this is exactly how hope should be defined.

The appeal of Snyder’s view is in the way it shows hope as being rooted in the present. Although it is still prospective, it is the present that shapes the future course of action. Hope, thus, becomes the link between the present and the imagined future.

Just like so many things, this happens at an unconscious level. People are not even aware that whenever they hope for something to happen in their lives they have already made up their minds to achieve the set goals. Hope becomes the fuel that helps them come up with possible solutions to fulfill their aims.

So, hope is a particular way of thinking that motivates people to take action or to choose what action to take in order to achieve their goals. Snyder’s hope theory consists of three components: goals, pathways, and agency. Hope lies in goal setting, i.e. at the core of every hope there is a goal. Moreover, “human actions are goal directed” (Snyder, 2002: 250). When I came across this statement, I immediately remembered Victor Finkl’s great book Man’s Search for Meaning. All of a sudden, the puzzle was solved. I think Victor Frankl was, in Snyder’s words, a high hoper, and namely hope fueled by the goal he had in his mind gave him the mental energy he needed to survive the appalling conditions at Auschwitz. Later on, he laid the foundations of logotherapy which is supposed to help people find their meaning in life. It, thus, appears that people who have no goals, have no hope, and consequently no meaning in life.

Frankl determined three paths a person can follow in order to find meaning in life. The first is by doing or creating something. This means the person needs to take concrete actions. The second way to live a purposeful life is to love. In Victor Frankl’s opinion, “love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire (Frankl, 1992: 40)”. Finally, the third way is the attitude a person takes in front of unavoidable suffering. It is important to note that this is true only when suffering can’t be avoided, otherwise suffering becomes useless.

I think these three paths are what Snyder calls pathways thinking, the second component in his hope theory. Once the goals are established, people should think of concrete actions they should take in order to achieve them, otherwise they will remain “unanswered calls” (Snyder, 2002: 251). Unlike Frankl, Snyder does not offer concrete paths, as he believes each pathway is individual. Moreover, high-hope people have the ability to make changes if necessary, coming up with alternative routes. The idea is that once the goal is set, they make up their minds to find a way to reach the goal.

Finally, the last component is agency thinking. Snyder believes that this is the motivational component in hope theory. It is namely this type of thinking that enables a person to keep on track regardless of the various barriers that can appear on the way. It fosters a person’s grit and determination. This can be close to Frankl’s statement that “life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual” (Frankl, 1992: 72). Agency thinking involves not only determination but also responsibility.

I have recently reread the short story The Last Leaf by O. Henry. I have to admit that the knowledge I gained from Snyder’s and Frankl’s works helped me look at this story from a totally new perspective. Johnsy and Mr. Behrman did not have hope. Even if we admit that they might have goals they seem to not have pathways and agency thinking. So, their goals remained unanswered calls. Both of them have a negative attitude that created the barriers they could not overcome. As a result, they ended up utterly depressed and basically giving up on their lives. However, there is an interesting twist in the story. Johnsy managed to find a pathway although it was rather immature and irresponsible. Whereas, the old painter seemed to have finally found the meaning in life, even at the cost of his own life.

I would like to conclude with a quote by Nitzsche whom Frankl quotes in his book: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”. The why stands for what is at the core of hope, i.e. the goal; the how stands for the pathways the person takes to achieve that goal as well as their determination on the way. So, be a high hoper – find meaning in your life by setting goals, thinking of ways to attain them and staying determined. This way hope will never elude you and you will be able to respond to life’s challenges responsibly.

References:

1. Snyder’s Article Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind
2. Frankl, V. (1992). Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.