Communication

Communication is a distinctive quality for humanity. It separates us from animal species. Even though animals exercise communication in their unique way, their communicative ability is limited. It is not designed to develop an understanding of the self, and the universe at large. Furthermore, animals are not aware that they are engaging in communication as a tool to advance their cause. It is a natural process that is unleashed without effort. Just as natural processes in humans are unleashed without effort and training. Natural processes differ from trained practices. We are trained to communicate. We are guided from birth to communicate using language as a tool. Communication, and language, thus, are two potent tools, which asserts our supremacy, as well as deliver supremacy when we deploy the tools to unleash the potential of the tools.

Language is the means through which we deploy communication. A word, when uttered, invokes an image associated with the word, unprompted, in our mind. The communicator need not bring the object or show the object to the receiver of communication. It is instantaneous. Our mind is lightning-fast to make associations with objects, and intangible feelings, which makes receivers connect with the speaker without a lag. Words for smallest to largest objects, in our Universe, exist for humanity to elevate life. We need not stock samples of items to receive and understand each other. A word delivers a message without the burden of physical proof. Simple to complex systems exist in mere words. A word and the associated object are interchangeable in our mind. If we see the object, the word becomes redundant; if we hear the word, the object becomes redundant. The interconnectivity of a word, and associated object is undisturbed generation after generation. The unbroken linkage allows us to understand the past, present, and future. Word and object remain in an eternal marital bliss. We communicate because the relation between word and object is intact. We can relate to historical precedents because the word and object relation is permanent. We can extrapolate future trends because the word and object will remain unchanged for many tomorrows to come. The power of communication through language kept humanity tethered to understand each other despite variations in language, culture, and race through eternity. 

The association for words is not restricted to objects only. Intangible feelings, emotions, elation, sorrow, and myriad provoked, and unprovoked human reactions are resultant from words, and the associated meaning. Our existence, thus, reverberates to communication. We can reach the highest peaks or fall into an abyss from mere utterance of words. Words can kill a being or rejuvenate spirit for life. Words deliver God to us.

Human existence is dependent on words is not an exaggeration. Even uncontacted people utilize language to communicate. Limited as their vocabulary might be, however, usage of words to communicate with each other is evidently obvious. Innuits, and many other tribes utilize communication with unique sounds that modern society may not recognize and understand. Communication utilizing language is a universal human trait, educated or uneducated, and modern or tribal. Logically, we can conclude that the human race did not exist without the tools of communication and language. Communication is an inherent ability humanity possessed from ancient times. 

 Language is unambiguous in character. When a word is uttered, the associated meaning is universal. Everyone who hears the word will receive the same incontrovertible meaning. Communication will suffer if the speaker, and receiver have divergent meanings. Words are rigid. In each context words will carry a specific meaning. Communication is possible if and only if the speaker and audience are on a shared platform. Through communication a mutual purpose will be fulfilled. Communication does not happen when the intended purpose is not served. When we speak without a purpose, then the most potent tool for humanity should be considered as misused. Misusing any tool, will ultimately, spell doom for the user. 

Communication and language are unambiguous structures for humanity to grow in the physical and metaphysical world. However, in the last century communication has turned nebulous. We speak in uncertain terms. Doctors are unsure. Lawyers are unsure. Leaders are unsure. The world we live in is surrounded by ambiguity. How did humanity devolve into an opaque world? Clearly, a time existed when humanity communicated with certainty and purpose. We lost both qualities.

Examine ‘Free Speech.’ It has become a rallying cry to usurp normalcy from our existential world. It is synonymous with irresponsible, and irrational thoughts to spread divisions within the human race. We have an ability to speak, but it is not meant for use devoid of thought and purpose. An individual’s thoughts must be rooted in truth, beneficial to self, family, and society, and it should be pleasing. We seek to live unconditionally; however, life, all around us, is conditional. We seek to live sans rules. Our life adheres to rules that can be witnessed in nature. If we are part of nature, how can our lives be erected without rules?

Problems exist in our world because communication is mishandled. Communication is an intelligent pursuit. A need to communicate the obvious does not arise. It is redundant and unproductive for human endeavors if our thoughts and communication are focused on the present day and time. Our thoughts and communication must orient toward the future. Future is underivable by merely evaluating existential moments. Future can only be extrapolated from the deep past. When the past becomes irrelevant, as it is in the present time, our ability to offer sustainable ground for our children, and future generations is akin to winning the lottery. Future is a gamble. Hit or miss. Luck rules the roost. Supremacy of humanity will be lost.

Future time is not a few years, or decades ahead. Our latter years of life are not future as well. We are here. Our life will progress without much effort to live. We came, we journey, and we depart.  Furthermore, our plans are not working according to our desires. Our desires, and expected outcomes are dramatically different from what we receive. The best laid plans for the future proved to be futile is manifestly obvious. Why should carefully laid plans go awry? Why does our existence not cooperate with our expectations? Most of us might have quipped in our mind, or among friends and family, that good people leave us too soon, or bad things happen to good people! Why does such a thought cross our minds? For, we are admitting that we are not worthy of consideration as good individuals. Are we alive because we are not worthy? Is our life fruitful and free of problems because we are not in the camp of good people? Logically, all these signs in life point, and clearly, in only one direction. 

We are not meant to live the present moment, nor for our future years. The present moment and our future years of our life is, decidedly, determined. Whatever course correction that we can make, in our lifetime, to alter the outcome is hard wired, and inaccessible. Human existence, thus, is to influence the environment far deeper into the future of ourselves, as well as our surroundings. Our mind resists attempts of rewiring inaccessible, and invisible layers of preprogrammed outcomes that were meant for us to enjoy or suffer in our present life. Even though the mind is a powerful controller of our life, and body, it is a lazy instrument as well. It is optimized to deliver our karma to us. Our karma is unknown to us. When we look around the vagaries of the world, it is impossible to find conclusive evidence for success, or failure, enjoyment, or suffering, good, or bad, health, or ill health, and the myriad ways life differs for seven billion people. It is difficult to find two lives that are similar in nature amongst an ocean of humanity. Bewildering complexity of outcomes is an amazing display of power of nature that is beyond the reach of human control. 

Into such a perplexing world we come. Why? How do we take ownership and steer our vessel to calmer waters as we sail in life? Our life is not in our control. Our mind is not in our control. Our present is not in our control. Yet we live. We live with the dualities of life: happiness, and sorrow, rich, and poor, educated, and uneducated, and an array of pluralities that we see on the canvas of life. If life is meant for the educated, uneducated person should melt away in the heat of life. If life is meant for the rich, the poor should wither away in life. If life is happiness, then melancholy should be driven away just as illumination drives away darkness. However, life exists in a duality. Both rich and poor exist simultaneously, and perhaps mere meters apart.

All the vagaries we witness on the broad canvas of human life are sending, unambiguous signals, to humanity. The success one enjoys today is not eternal. The failure of today is not eternal. The riches of today are not permanent. If we are in comfort today, tomorrow we will suffer. Tomorrow is a figurative tomorrow of rebirth. Why does life oscillate to the dualities despite our best efforts to avoid troubles. Troubles in life are not exclusive to the poor. It impacts the very wealthy too. Success, and failure impacts all of us equally. Enjoyment, or punishment is carried forward from past births in the form of karma. If we have doubts of rebirth, then the modern efforts to end the suffering of humanity has been an abysmal failure. Continuing to indulge in a failed structure can only prolong the suffering. It will not solve the problem. 

Rebirth must be accepted to understand our existence in the present moment. If we exist in the present moment, we existed in the past. Thus, a future birth is not in doubt as well.

If a future birth is guaranteed, then our actions must be geared towards ensuring equal pleasures in a birth yet to manifest. We need to live in the present moment with an unwavering aim toward the far future. We do not control the present moment. But we control the future. Our actions determine our future, as well as that of our Earth, and the vastness of our Universe. The environment we utilize to live life exists in a selfless mode. Opting to live selfishly is detrimental to us, our children, grandchildren, and to unborn generations. 

The most impactful and efficient mechanism existent in human arsenal to develop our minds, rid of problems, and to lead a life of joy is communication. It is the only tool we possess with capacity to alter our life at this moment, but our future births as well. Our other sensory organs cannot guide us beyond the immediate moment. Eyes can only see what is in front of us. It cannot see what is behind us. The sense of touch is activated unprovoked, nor do we try to touch and feel to discover the future. Taste is an activity to satisfy bodily needs of hunger, or thirst. Body exists only for the moment. It is unconcerned with future birth. What we hear and speak are the two instruments that can alter the course of not only life we live today, but lives that are in the waiting too.

Thus, communication must perform the task of taking us closer to our desires and protect us from undesirable elements. Languages endowed with such power must be implicitly understood by all of us to deploy the most powerful tool we possess in our arsenal of tools we deploy to live. We can’t physically see ‘eternity.’ However, a word exists for humanity to understand the vastness of our universe. It did not come into existence just to describe a non-existential phenomenon with an esoteric meaning. A word must provide usefulness beyond the immediate boundary of our existence. Our existence is momentary. Many have come and gone. Many more will come and go. Endless cycle of births and deaths is manifestly evident. An identical phenomenon can be seen in nature too. We are eternal. Nature is eternal. Harnessing the power of eternity is possible, only, when we deploy ‘eternity’ with such vast meaning in our communication. 

How can uttering the word ‘eternity’ change our lives? Of course, just by repeating ‘eternity,’ it will not appear in our field of vision, nor would it, instantly, fulfill our desires, and remove undesirables for us. It is imperative to understand we exist to do something with our body and mind. We are, purportedly, a superior race. Superiority does not have a casual existence. It must be demonstrated in our life every moment. We must live a superior life to enjoy superior benefits. Our life as humans must serve a higher purpose than living. Life exists all around us. So many species around us hold life. Life is not unique in our universe. Human beings are unique. We possess the ability to recognize everything around us, not just ourselves. If we are not endowed with such greatness, our languages would be extremely limited in scope. Words like ‘eternity’ will be superfluous, and unnecessary for our existence. Neither will it possess the power to fulfill our desires and protect us from undesirable elements.  Thus, reducing humanity to merely, marginally, better than animals. 

Language must pair up with our lives. Our life and language must become one. Just as communication and language are one. Language and words are one. Words and alphabets are one. Our world is duality. A single entity is incapacitated in this universe. We live in an interconnected world. From atomic to cosmic, our connections are infinite. Origin and end are inseparable. Birth is not the beginning, nor is death an end. Our languages bring the vast cosmic phenomenon into a sound bite. Imagine the potency of a sound bite that can bring vastness of galaxies into a sound form, easily pronounceable and communicable sound that only humans can utter. Mere utterance of such greatness without incorporating it in our life is an epochal mistake. Words are not mere sound, and sentences are not mere groupings of words for us to casually deploy with caprice. When we witness a person speaking disjoined thoughts is dismissed as a mad person. The words we utter must come together for a universal purpose, and wellbeing. The full potential of our communication is unleashed when paired with our life. Our life blossoms when we join it with the universe. Universe in return enriches our life beyond imagination. 

A simple process must exist for humanity to harness the riches of the cosmos. It cannot be theoretical, and unproven. Proven, witnessed, and unbiased it must be for acceptance into our life. Proven, witnessed, and unbiased repeatedly. It must be verifiable as well for our acceptance. While belief, and faith are initial steps, continuance and persistence is built on trust, and earned with verification. Every generation must be able to verify upon close observation. Need for elaborate mechanisms must be nonessential. Our observation, thought, and life should be sufficient to discover truth. We possess intellect. We need a vehicle to harness the intellect to see what was seen earlier by our ancestors. 

Eternity cannot be conjured by our mind like objects. What necessitated our ancestors to describe a phenomenon that is relentless, and imperishable? Are we using the word ‘eternity’ as our ancestors did, or has the meaning shrunk in recent times? Are we capable of imagining eternity? Do we use eternity nonchalantly, and recklessly? Answers are obvious to these questions. Observe written communication. It is typed on a computer and stored as a file. Accessed by the user, and the recipients simultaneously with ease. The ease, speed, and accessibility of written communication is improved for writers, and readers alike. Ubiquity of computers is the reason for written communication transitioning from paper to a computer file. Written communication is not new. Paper, and typewriters were the choice for writers before computers. Paper and ink were used before typewriters. Palm leaves were used before paper. Oral tradition, and gatherings existed before palm leaves. Oral tradition and gathering continues even in present times. Communication of thoughts is an eternal process. We did not exist without communication and can be observed when we step back into our ancestral practices.