JULY 2020
AUTHENTICITY KILLER
I started crying in my car as I drove past the NewBo area of town. I saw dozens of people enjoying each other’s company in the sunshine and it made my heart hurt. Gathering with friends is exactly what my heart needs to be healthy. Several of my friends are on the cautious side of getting together; which means they are not ready to make many social plans yet. As a fun-loving extrovert, this has been soul-crushing. Hospitality and authenticity are key elements to relationship-building and it turns out that Zoom (a platform to hold meetings online) makes these elements hard to access.
I’ve recently come to the realization that Zoom is an authenticity killer. In fact, in all the busyness of trying to move everything over to Zoom, learning how to use the platform, and then helping others do the same, I’m only now realizing that authenticity takes far more energy when using Zoom. Most of our communication with others is non-verbal. All the body language, tone of voice, direction of eye gaze, guttural sounds, hand motions, posture, and movement away from or towards the speaker offers us far more information about what the person is saying than their actual words. Part of me thought that Zoom would work because of the camera focused on the face, allowing for some of the non-verbal clues to be captured by the listener. However, so much is still missing or left to interpretation. This lack of clues about the speaker(s) makes it hard to share authentically.
The Marco Polo app (a platform that lets you leave video messages) allows for different results than Zoom. I think one of the main differences is that people can share when they are ready, any time of day they choose. That means if I’m thinking things over in the grocery store I might be ready to leave a thoughtful or heartfelt response from my car in the parking lot. Zoom demands that you produce thoughtful responses at the moment everyone else is in the meeting. Marco Polo has allowed my small group the ability to share what is on our hearts, from a distance. Admittedly Marco Polo and Zoom are different platforms with different functions, but one has allowed deep connections to continue and the other allows for business as usual (as usual as it can be in a pandemic).
The moral of the story for me is that connection is essential and complex. We all need time with our friends and family in order to stay healthy. Doing life together with hospitality, authenticity, forgiveness, and restoration is the answer to my heartache.
Lindsey Ungs
Connection & Communication Architect
