Communicating best with love

Our hearts contain consciousness that is most apparent when we enjoy love in conversations. The more we stare at screens instead of faces, the less we feel this love. Shared understanding arises from our intimate, interpersonal conversations. Healing arising from loving communications is what America is missing at this time.

Insights are available from the work of Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA. He pioneered an understanding of communication in the 1970s resulting in books culminating with “Silent Messages” (1981). Given the time that his research was performed, communication was in person, wasn’t it? His findings indicate that over 90 percent of meaning conveying attitudes and feelings arises from tone of voice as well as body language. Those attributes are not available in most internet communications, are they? Is it any wonder that America is having trouble creating common understandings?

Our lives are not made more enjoyable by having the constant presence of a Smartphone, are they? Instead, our lives have become more frenetic in the presence of these devices that never stop demanding our attention. We have chosen the phone over the person sitting across from us or next to us. That is unfortunate for the future of humankind, isn’t it? Our human nature is disrupted by this constant presence, isn’t it?

When you go out to dine with someone, please leave your phones in the car. You do not need them, do you? You can always catch up with your device following the meal, can’t you?

I am 72 years old and have never required, as a child or adult, the constant presence of a phone with me wherever I go. I used to go out for most of a day as a child without constant parental hovering. My parents always encouraged my relations and play.

The new “Social Studies” drama series on Netflix portrays mostly teenagers awakening to the need for the intimacy of our hearts to create the love that makes us human. Without it we are becoming both inhuman as well as inhumane.

What makes us human is also the source of our healing. It is the consciousness in our hearts that carries the love that people require for shared understandings. Every time we use a screen instead of a face to connect, we miss the opportunity to share the essence of humanity, love.

As an adolescent, I spent most of the day out playing in the woods or along the streams and lakes of Leawood, Kansas. Never did my parents need me to check in with them every 15 minutes to an hour in order for them to be comfortable with what I was doing. We are certainly safe here in Boulder City, the safest city in all of Nevada and likely one of the safest cities in the United States of America. Please encourage your children to play in this beautiful city with tall trees surrounding playgrounds in parks like Veterans Memorial Park.

What is it that makes current parenting so involved in children’s lives that they all have to have smartphones? The 2024 best-selling book that explains this phenomenon is “The Anxious Generation” by social psychologist Jonathan Haight. He suggests that our children be prohibited from having phones until they are sixteen. The nation of Australia has passed a law to ban the use of cellphones until children are sixteen. Couldn’t the USA do the same?

We yearn for the light within our hearts. It is the love that was once ignited in intimate in-person conversations We no longer share most attempts at communication when they are performed remotely. Without intimacy, the light of our hearts in conversation is absent. It is what I have sought to ignite, not only in myself, but also in others.

While checking out of Costco with a lady named Lucia I broke into the song “Santa Lucia” Lucia smiled broadly as she said, “I love that song!” It is what makes us human. We respond with joy to the sound of our names, don’t we? Seek the self within while enjoying the intimacy of love in conversation. That is the source of endless love for humankind.

Eric L Lundgaard

President of the Aquarian Theosophy Foundation

Mayor and Council Member (1985- 1997)