I Saw The Sign

25.09.2015

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how as humans we communicate so much without speaking. We look for signals from others in eye contact, gestures, physical proximity and that ‘vibe’ that tells us if our presence in their lives is welcome or not. Our behaviour and hence our actions and words are all dependent on this unspoken communication which at its simplest is like the game hot and cold. We behave in a certain way and people respond in a way that indicates if it’s welcome or if it’s not. We reinforce the way others treat us by accepting their behaviour.

It goes further than that though. I wonder how all these subtle signs we send influence the course of our lives. For example, if someone hadn’t smiled at me in my first lecture at University, and I hadn’t taken that as sign of permission for me to go over and sit with her, we may not have become such close friends with a strong friendship for three years. It makes me wonder about all the people who may have had an impact on my life if I’d let them, how different could my life be right now, if I’d smiled at someone? If I hadn’t smiled at someone? If I hadn’t asked someone for the time in an airport or had gone up to that girl in line at Starbucks? There is a butterfly effect, a chain reaction. If a smile that I didn’t know would mean anything was a catalyst for a friendship that meant so much to me I wonder how much more the actions I dwell so much on affect the course of my life.

Socialised to follow gendered norms, we take cues from our peers on how to behave around the opposite gender. As women there is a prevailing fear that if we show someone how much we care about them they will think we are too needy or clingy and get put off. And so we look for signs, for cues, on how much to reveal, on how much the other person cares about us, a safety net before we expose too much about our own feelings. I think men are equally pressured to adhere to gendered norms, if not more so. All this tiptoeing around the other makes me scared that I may not ever show how I feel about someone because I’m too busy waiting for a cue that I won’t be completely rejected, and vice versa. And if I don’t seize an opportunity, will I pass up what could be the greatest love of my life simply because I didn’t pick up on behaviour on their part that my feelings were reciprocated?

There’s an Ace of Base song I like called ‘I saw the Sign’ and it sounds so simple there, but signs are really so much harder to read in real life. It’s tempting to look at the smallest coincidences like music and shared interests but sometimes you really just need a grand gesture, and one person needs to be brave enough to say out loud the words you might both be waiting for someone else to say.