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Thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

Sometimes I think I have not spoken well enough; I have not always connected with people. If, for example, I was trying to make a difficult point, I said the words I had to convey, said the words I had rehearsed, and yet I often dreaded the reaction. But connection requires more than that; it’s not so much about the words I choose, as about their effects. People have to be listening; people have to be interested; people have to be engaged. And that was -and is- my most important job, not theirs. I am a retired doctor.

I suppose it is a matter of establishing a social connection as much as anything; of convincing them I am believable; of demonstrating that I really do have something worthwhile to say. It is much like a live actor in a play on a stage, a fascinating article I read the other day suggests.[i]

Live, because then the actor can feel whether their words and actions are having an effect on the audience in the moment; can feel if they are convincing in their portrayal; can feel if they are connecting with them as if they are a real character, not a role they are playing: baring their soul on the stage so that what they portray is actual and important both to them and the audience.

For an actor, ‘performance happens when one self meets another self… A common perspective on ‘self’ is that we are each essentially isolated from one another. Our selves are seen as discrete and clearly distinct… But this kind of individualism has not been the dominant perspective for most of the long sweep of human evolution.’ A common aboriginal belief in many regions, suggests that all things in the world share a web of interconnection. One such belief in Australia, for example, is that each of us is a single node in a cooperative network, and that you ‘retain your autonomy while simultaneously being profoundly interdependent and connected.’ The ‘you’ inside your head is in the world, of course, but not actually distinct from it.

Truly engaging performances of actors help their audience to feel the commonality of what they are portraying; that, in the end, we all share something. It is the actor’s only job: to convince; to share how it would feel for each and every member of the audience if they were able to trade circumstances with them. That, it seems to me, is especially valuable with the intimacy of a live theatrical performance: the actor can tell if they are actually connecting with the audience-something absent in a film or radio performance. And to hold audience attention, the actor has to seem present, to seem as real as if they were sitting across a restaurant table from them.

So, it seems fairly obvious that communication between you and others –me and others- requires connection. This is something that is dynamic -shared and requiring adjustment if and when the connection thins; it requires me to be present, or lose my audience. After all, to sense that I am even being heard requires me to recognize what others are feeling; whether or not they are still listening; whether they are still interested…

It’s not so much what I say that keeps them engaged, but equally, how I illustrate my mood, how I gesture, how I change my face as I am saying it; how I modulate my speech, and show it with my movements: act, in other words… A bored listener is a non-receptive listener, and you, in that case, are not a convincing actor.

But all of this reflects how comfortable we feel with others, and how likely we are to engage with them. Like an actor, we should be able to feel how we are received, because if we are uncomfortable, likely those with whom we are trying to associate, experience similar discomfort as well.

The remedy, I suspect, is not always to be achieved with sound and fury, but much like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, more by realizing that a poor player struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. There is no universally correct formula for interacting with others; there is a spectrum that has to be sampled; and the path more intuited than followed on a map; it is not an either-or trail, but a path of sensing the best direction: reacting, as a good actor should; connecting as a good actor, must…

As the essay about actors and their value for the rest of us that I’ve just sampled suggests, ‘those who learned to connect, sustain connection and communicate powerfully, have built the bridges between isolated individuals and, in doing so, created social beings.’ 

We are all actors, I suppose. And for those less socially ept there are lessons to be learned from the stage. I hadn’t given the comparison much thought I must admit, but I think the similarity is apt. I’ve played several roles in my long life but, not counting Retirement, I accepted only one of the two significant roles on offer when I graduated from university. I think I played it well, and I hope there were those amongst the audience who appreciated the connections I had made with them before the final curtain fell. At any rate, I am happy with the smiles, and heads that nodded as I left the stage.

And now, well into my Retirement, I am still content, and I can’t help but echo what the poet Robert Frost says in concluding his famous poem, The Road Not Taken:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

[i] https://aeon.co/essays/acting-is-an-ancient-tool-of-connection-we-can-all-play-with

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