We’re at Can Uetam in Valldemossa for the first time this season.
It’s a no-walls, bamboo covered, open-air restaurant, where the view does something to your chest before the menu even arrives.
Marcus is next to me, and we feel relaxed in that particular way you only get on a last night before everything is going to change - he has an operation in 2 days, meaning I’ll be the nurse and he’ll be on crutches. And walking to the village for dinner will have to wait.
So tonight has that gloss on it. The gloss of we’re here, we know what’s coming, and we are making the most of the moment.
We order the Dry-aged beef tenderloin. It’s a riot of caramelised onion, sobrassada, a little foie, and some absurdly delicious little potatoes. I won’t go on about it as I’m not a restaurant critic, but if you ever find yourself in Valldemossa, go. And order that.
Then my chamomile tea arrives. Because I love a glass of something warm to help digest the steak.
So I have my tea. And I’m being silly. Without thinking - without one conscious thought - I lift it to my mouth and my little finger goes up in the air.
Pinky out. Pretending to be Posh. Looking ridiculous. Just a bit.
Marcus laughs, and says: “You know that used to mean something, don’t you?”
And down a rabbit hole we go, the phones come out and the research begins- because apparently, in certain tellings, the raised pinky was a signal. Not of refinement. Of availability. Of, let’s say, an eighteenth-century announcement you’d really rather not be making over dinner.
(The history is murkier than the story. The duller truth is more human - handle-less cups, coupled with hot porcelain, a balancing finger to avoid spills, that curdled over centuries into “posh.” But never let the dull truth ruin a good table.)
And here’s the thing I couldn’t put down afterwards.
I wasn’t saying anything with that finger.
No message. No intent. No idea, even, why I do it.
And yet there it was - a signal. Sent. Received. Interpreted. And possibly, in another century, catastrophically.
Gesture.
We are all doing this. All the time.
You walk into a room and you’ve said fourteen things before your mouth even opens. Where your eyes go. What your shoulders do. Whether your hands are still or busy. The half-second your smile takes to arrive.
Inheritance.
Most of it isn’t even ours. We inherited it - from our mothers, our class, our countries, the rooms we grew up trying to survive. The pinky in the air is borrowed. So is the way you hold yourself when you’re nervous. So is the face you make when you don’t agree but won’t say so.
Misread.
And the gap - between what we mean and what lands - is where almost all of human trouble lives.
I’d know. I’m deaf. I’ve spent my whole life reading the channel under the words -watching faces and hands and energy arrive before a single sound does. I read people before they speak. I have to.
So I can tell you with some authority: the words are the smallest part. You are mostly communicating with everything except them.
Signal.
The audacious move isn’t to control all of it. You can’t. The pinky will go up. The arms will fold, the face will squint.
The audacious move is to notice. To know you are always broadcasting - and to begin choosing, even a little, what you’d like to say with the parts of you that speak without your permission.
Truth.
Because here’s where it turns. Once you can see your own signals, you can start aligning them with what’s actually true for you. The body stops contradicting the words. The smile arrives on time. You become legible - to yourself first, then to everyone else.
That isn’t performance. It’s the opposite. It’s coming home to one channel.
The Dare
This week, don’t try to change a single thing.
Just catch one. One gesture. One signal you send without deciding to.
The pinky. The crossed arms. The laugh that fills a silence you’d rather not sit in.
Don’t fix it. And don’t shame it.
Just notice what your body was saying while your mouth was busy.
That’s where the work begins. Softly and with awareness.
Update : The patient is out and my home nursing shift has begun. The operation was a success and we are settling in to our new, slower, albeit temporary, groove…
Wishing you a beautiful week and I’ll be back soon with some news and views, along with some more Audacious Communication Codes.
Emma xxx
E, you are so right. Every day, in so many ways, we send signals to communicate something to whomever we are interacting with. From a behavioural perspective, this can be a good thing, but in many cases, the signals we send are either unintended, or not the signals we would like to send. These signals are seen and/or heard, and become part of the mental models that others construct about who we are and what we are all about. If the signals you send formulate or support the mental models you wish to communicate, then, well, that could be perceived as 'good news.' But if the signals you send formulate or support mental models that are not representative of who you really are - and want to be recognised for - then, the end result of being good news would be, to quote Anne, "not bloody likely." And how is Marcus doing?