Since the day we were born, we have been trying every mean and ways to effectively communicate directly or indirectly, with the world. In our society today, communication has evolved to serve many varying purposes, mainly of which is to create and strengthen bonds between people, resolve misunderstandings and to express feelings and needs. Thus effective communication can be said to be an essential skill for survival.
From our toddler years, our consistent efforts at crying have always rewarded us with that extra candy or toy we have been eyeing. Of course, lest we forget, sometimes we end up having pain for all our troubles! This is our form of communication before language to attract the attention of our parents. As we grow up, we evolve into endless hours spent on the phone talking, instant messaging and internet chatting coupled with expensive bills, which reinforces the importance of effective communication on our bonds with the “world”.
Besides that, all too often, we hear this phrase coming up; when you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. Perhaps it can be attributed to human nature that we tend to have the bad habit of always assuming that we have been understood when in fact we have not. Many times, miscommunication has led to many disastrous catastrophes; fall out between long time friends, fights between husband and wives, quarrels between parents and children. Think back and there will be at least once that we have all thought to ourselves, “They just do not understand me!” Here, we can see that not only communication, but effective communication, in which our exact words and meaning are translated to the other party, is essential in preserving the bonds we so painstaking invest in, with time and of course financially as well. However, great caution is warned in using effective communication for great mysteries in life like why Men are from Mars and Women from Venus.
Therefore, from the few stanzas above, it can be seen that effective communication is vital for society to exist today. Be it to create new bonds, strengthen old ones, repair damaged ones or just down to the simple meaning of expressing our feelings and needs, effective communication is required. Perhaps effective communication can even be attributed as an art in which practice makes perfect.
I enjoyed reading your post Jonathan! It's a good read :) And I can identify with some of the examples that you brought out, especially the one about quarrels with parents haha!
ReplyDeleteAs in why Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, I have no idea. But sometimes I do wish that we were from the same planet, makes communication much easier, don't you think? However, I guess it is the fact that no two people are exactly the same that makes communication fun! If we all experience the same events, come from the same background, what's there to share right? So yes, we should all practice, practice, practice!
I would say that in order to communicate effectively , we need both the speaker and listener to cooperate with each other. Speaker has to do his part to make sure that whatever he has said, people could understand. As for the listenee, he has to try his best to understand the speaker as much as possible. As the saying goes,"it takes two hands to clap". Communicating effectively will need both parties to play their parts.
ReplyDeleteA modification to the saying would be, "it takes only one hand to slap". This situation, I believe would be apt for the kind where one can try countless times but without getting his message across to anyone. This will only lead to frustrations. (:
Hi Jonathan!
ReplyDeleteYou certainly pointed out some rather interesting facts about communication! A lot of times, people engage into conflicts and arguments over little breakdowns in communications and it may eventually escalate till it gets out of hand. Siblings squabbling, boyfriend and girlfriend tiffs and of course, parent child argument are great examples that you have mentioned and it certainly boggles the mind on how easily things can be resolved if we simply took the effort to understand each other better.
That aside, with effective communication, we can most certainly minimize the misinterpretation and confusion to a minimum, and keep such unpleasant feelings and emotions far far away! (:
Cheers!
Hi Jonathan, it is interesting how you started the post; from when we first communicated with the world when we were babies, to how experiences from our childhood sharpened our communication skills by getting us the candies we wanted, and finally to harnessing modern day technologies in our communication in this interconnected world today. You'd clearly demonstrated how communication is omnipresent in our everyday lives, setting the stage for the discussion of why communication is so very important to all of us. Well done there!
ReplyDeleteA question I have is whether time spent on communicating, and "phone talking, instant messaging and internet" reinforce our awareness of how important communicating effectively can be? Simple put, does the length of time spent on communication directly translates to a reinforcement of the importance of effective communication? Could we have communicated, yet not know how 'ineffective' we had been as communicators?
I'm also somewhat perplexed about the mention of the 'great mysteries' in life - why is there a need to deliberately caution readers on the use of "effective communication" between men and women? I feel that this point could be more clearly put across if a concrete reason or example was inserted.
You cleverly used a few real-life examples to grab your readers' attention, and these were strategies that worked. Indeed, how often have we asked ourselves why we were not being understood? I also like the explanation behind the word 'assume'.
For this post, I would have preferred that you bring the discussion down to a more personal level. I would really like to know why effective communication skills are important for you. Not just in general, but more on what effective communication means to you, and what it can do for you. Come the last blog post when you reflect on your development through the course, it would have made for more meaningful retrospection.