Crooked Lines

It was Euclid, the Greek mathematician also known as the father of geometry, who first put forth the notion that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Thousands of years after this pronouncement, what now may seem like a simple observation continues to hold up. To go from Point A to Point B, all one needs do is follow a direct route and they have reached their destination. Easy peezy. But while Euclid's observation may work in the world of math, beyond that there is a different reality. In my house, for example, I cannot walk directly from the living room to the kitchen without taking a detour around a couch and several chairs.   


With all due respect to Euclid, I am sure, playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht once observed, "The shortest line between two points can be a crooked line." Certainly when it comes to communication, this is much closer to reality, particularly if one defines communication as clear and understandable interaction between two or more people. This means it is not enough for one person to say something to another. The other needs to provide some type of  response that they have received the message as well as understood it. Doing that, of course, requires a similar response from the original sender. Thus, what began as a straight line has started taking on a few curves.  


Then there is the scenario that the original message is not understood. At that point you can kiss the straight line good-bye. Then, the message's sender needs to explain what they meant. This may elicit more confusion or questions from the receiver,  And what if the receiver ultimately disagrees with the original message? At this point, the straight line has become a full-blown wiggle worm. All this is to point out that communication is rarely, if ever, a straight line. It involves twists and turns, reversals, and stops and starts. Those occurrences are a regular feature when it comes to commonplace interactions between two people. As a result, one could not be blamed for even raising the question as to whether a straight line even exists.