How many times have you gotten lost or gotten someone else lost because the given directions were less than impressive? I’m guessing a decent amount of times. Arguments with parents/siblings/significant others/friends- constant in almost everyone’s life. So what’s our deal? Like, communication is suppose to help up but it seems to typically really just screw things up a lot.
Today in my literature class we were talking about the importance of language and words. And also how 89% of the things we say are unnecessary and obsolete. We talk a ton but we never really say what we need to. And when we do say things that are important, often times it causes conflict or confusion because we’re not used to dealing with those said important things. If we could articulate what we meant and understand what others meant, how great would that be? There wouldn’t be so many arguments and political battles and divorces and general discontent. Of course things aren’t black and white and some things simply cannot be expressed through words but the things that could be, if presented efficiently, would certainly help us all out.
So we did this exercise where we wrote down the sentence “the dog ran” and everyone had to write down what they saw from that image – no other directions – and everyone had completely different things. Someone described their dog’s anatomy, someone talked about whether it was a lab or a terrier they imagined, and someone described their childhood dog walking with his dad down the driveway…. point in case: we never see the same things from the same words because everything we hear is interpreted with all of our experiences behind it – no matter if we think to, or want to, include those experiences or not.
I guess what i’m trying to say (i’m not helping myself here) is that with such an extensive vocabulary available to us, education at our fingertips, and loads of communication methods – we still can’t seem to really ever say what we need to. It astounds me. Talk less, say more? Maybe….
