Out of Context

"Are you going to come?" "That thing is huge." "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

All of the foregoing are statements that, when taken out of context or the moment, can easily be misinterpreted or misperceived. The latter comes from Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2. It is spoken by an anarchist that is discussing the necessary steps that any tyrant must take to destroy freedom. The idea Shakespeare was conveying was that so long as there were lawyers, people who knew and understood the law and recognized what the tyrant was trying to accomplish, freedom would be preserved. Hence, while the quote is often cited as a derogatory comment towards lawyers, it is actually paying homage to the profession.

I find the creation of this type of confusion is even easier with email. Michael Eisner stated at a commencement address he gave at Berkeley years ago that email was one of the largest dangers facing our future. For while it is a very efficient way to communicate, it has many hazards. For example, the angry letter that you write the night before, will likely not be able to be torn up the next morning. The mighty send button has been pressed and the bytes are floating through cyber space, landing on a hard drive somewhere.

Adding to the confusion is email's complete inability to convey emotions. I had a girlfriend that asked me to never email her anything important. She explained, "you come across as cold and mean, and I know that's not how you are. However, I can't read your emotion, inflection, and mannerisms into the text. So I end up getting hurt and angry, even though I know if we had spoken, I wouldn't feel any of those things."

In law school, my best friend and I would email while we studied. We were both sarcastic and witty people. However, we knew this about each other. If you read our emails out of context, not knowing us or the type of people we were, you might think several things about us, depending on which ones you read. You might think we were fighting; you might think we were dating; you might think we were friends that quite simply could not study without emailing. (The bombs going off in London today remind me of her, as her boyfriend works over there, and so I will be very concerned about them both until I hear from her.)

I realized that this habit I had in law school, has carried over to my professional life. Email is my form of communication, oftentimes, while I am at work. It is just easier for me to type out a message than carry on a full conversation because I can compose it as my day goes, or write a short note while I think about the document I am drafting or whatever. However, I learned last night that this can be a dangerous pasttime in some cases because the people receiving my short quips are not hearing the sarcasm, are not catching the dumb jokes, or sensing that this is simply silly banter. In short, people are getting hurt, when I was only trying to make them laugh. I have to be more careful about who I email.