With all the different ways we have to communicate with one another these days, talking face to face commonly falls to the wayside. We text, email, comment, post and tweet everything we have to say and our conversational abilities are paying the price. Now I'm not saying I posses superior communication skills as opposed to everyone else, I am just as guilty as the next person. I would much rather send a text message than actually call someone up on the phone just to tell them something I could type in two sentences. I find myself complimenting people from behind facebook comments more than I do to their face. We have become so accustom to using technology to communicate that we're losing the emotion and human aspect of communication.
I catch myself just going through the motions of interacting with someone while taking an order. Simply writing down their drink, taking their money and moving on to the next person. I will notice myself doing this and attempt to make a change to more stimulating conversation but I still find myself falling short of really engaging someone.
I haven't always felt this way. When I think back to even a few years ago conversation seemed to flow effortlessly. Back then I almost never communicated with people through social networking and rarely texted someone instead of called. Now I find myself almost constantly checking facebook on my phone or computer, texting complete conversations with friends and using my fingers much more than my mouth to express what I'm thinking. Communicating this way has been designed to be effortless and accessible so that almost everyone prefers to utilize it but it is costing us. Now I'm not saying delete your facebook account and throw your smart phone into oncoming traffic, I simply feel we need to be proactive about maintaining our conversational abilities and to instill the emotion and thought that it takes to talk to someone face to face.
