Communication is the universal language.
"What?" You ask. "What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. Laughter/music/love/etc. is the universal language . . . not communication!"
However, let's take a closer look at my claim. Communication, what is communication? It's basically the trading of ideas, thoughts, opinions with other people. You don't even need words to communicate -- you can use body language, or the written word! Yet communicating can sometimes be a very hard process to go through, due to outside forces that conspire to work against us.
For example, I have been writing articles for the Times recently, and in my last article, one roadblock stood in the way of my communicating my idea to those who read the Times. That roadblock was disorganization. Luckily, the disorganization was offset by my point, which was solid. But I didn't communicate my point nearly as well as if I had had a more clear sense of organization.
Other things that can easily snuff out easy communication are grammar and spelling errors. If what you've written is hard to comprehend or it takes a great deal of effort to read, you risk losing your target audience and whatever thought you tried to communicate ends up ignored. Which isn't even mentioning handwriting skills in general, which in itself can be a nice little disaster. Isn't it an uncomfortable thought that doctors have the sloppiest handwriting in the world, and they are the ones writing our prescriptions and such? Variety is what makes life interesting, yet we can't enjoy the variety if lines of communication are down due to things that can be fixed simply enough. If we can't talk with others, not much gets done!
Writing is the tip of the iceberg, however! The spoken word can be much more challenging to make cooperate with you. "How?" you wonder. "Speaking is simple! How is it challenging?" To speak well IS quite a challenge! There are many things to consider, such as if you have an accent of any sort, for starters. If somebody thinks it's funny-sounding, your listener may focus more on how you sound than what you're actually saying. I am a Southerner, so you can imagine how that goes ("You say y'all! Ha ha!" Yes, I know.). Except for one thing: in the South, if you don't speak like a Southerner, you probably won't get your point/idea/thought across due to (for some strange reason) Southerners incomprehensiveness of statements which don't include "y'all", or "ain't". Don't ask me why, but if that's not included, you may end up repeating yourself quite a bit to be understood!
Besides accents, there's speaking in general to consider. I am a person who thinks before they speak, but unfortunately, what I say is often not what I thought of. My mind plays tricks on me and makes me say words that were to come later in the sentence come sooner. EG: "I need to practice my flute" turns into "I need to flute my practice," to my horror. That isn't the most common problem, but it's a serious one for me! How am I to be taken seriously when I sound like such a goofball on accident? This is why I like to write, I get to edit and make sure everything is in the right place before it's sent out to the public. As for a more common problem with communicating, let's take a look at memory lapses. "Cat got your tongue?" People ask condescendingly as you flounder around to recall what you had *just* been thinking about. By the time you remember, the person you wanted to tell the thought about has most likely moved to Antarctica (or someplace else). Either that or you go through the embarrassment of bringing the conversation back up just to make your comment you forgot.
Those problems pointed out, I feel a little voice in the back of my head saying, "Well, those are the obvious communication problems! But nothing else can cause a problem! The end!" But that's untrue! If you communicate in body language, either in the case of ASL (American Sign Language) or trying to tell something to a person who doesn't understand English, you could accidentally communicate the wrong idea! For example, a man says to his hearing-impaired daughter, "I want to be a part of your Ferris Wheel." Ferris Wheel? What? Oh, wait, he means world! Who knew the sign for world was so similar to Ferris Wheel? Whoops. Don't even get me started on foreign language-speakers, though. It's back to Neanderthal antics and broken English to attempt to convey something . . . anything.
As it is, communication is the universal language. Laughter communicates nothing. Music communicates things, but not the same message for every person. Love has never communicated itself well; how many times have you been grounded in the name of love? Communication, the art of conveying your personal self (which includes thoughts, opinions, ideas, and all that good stuff) is the universal language. Make sure to master it to have the best fluency possible in this art so the world doesn't miss out who you are in the big melting pot that is our culture!
g4m3r2
Author's Note: Anybody who doubts the existance of rampant, destructive miscommunication has neither had to deal with the customer service people nor DairyQueen. Just kidding. Kind of.
