On Communication

When you're trying to get something done, be it a project for school or work, or you're in a relationship, the simplest and most fundamental way to make sure that everything gets sorted out neatly is through communication.  Talk to your group members, teachers, professors, partner about what needs to get done, what's being done, and by whom because when one party says, "Don't worry about it, I have this covered" but never actually tells you or anyone involved what it is that they are doing or completely disconnects from the group from that point onward without so much as a brief status report so that everyone knows where the other stands, everyone but that party is unaware of the goings on.  They don't know if they should be working on, say, the lone party's part of the project on top of their own because, perhaps, that lone party is not actually pulling their weight, or they could be doing something completely irrelevant.  Alternatively, the lone party could be doing exactly what he/she should be or said they would do, but nobody knows, and so, everyone else takes charge to do the part they believe the lone party is supposed to be doing just in case only to find out in the end that the lone party has everything under control.

A simple bit of communication can save a lot of work and stress for everyone involved.  The lone party may think that everything is fine, but without proper communication with the other members, this one person can cause a great deal of unnecessary work and stress to build up on the rest of the group which is unfair as it could have been easily avoided.  Additionally, the lone party may think that what the other involved parties did was unnecessary and potentially take offense towards the reasoning they had behind it.

Good communication is paradoxically the simplest and most difficult thing to do whether it is between group project members, partners, or immediate family members.  We are afraid that we might offend or insult someone due to a simple misinterpretation in our tone or wording, while it is also through communication that we can try to clear up any such things and forgive one another.  We often feel that the easiest way to not offend someone and to avoid misinterpretation by avoiding proper communication surrounding a particular topic altogether (be it about a project or an issue within a relationship). 

Unfortunately, this is one of our biggest downfalls as human beings as we rely on a communication system that is vague and can be misinterpreted in many different ways.  A single sentence can appear to have multiple meanings when the speaker only intended one.  Where our complex, but well-intentioned languages and feelings fail, most other animals excel at because they don't hold back for fear of insulting.  They tell each other in clear and direct ways what it is they want.  If a wolf, for example, were pestering another, the second would surely growl a warning.  Should the first wolf not heed this warning, he would receive a warning bite telling the him that if he continues, the situation will escalate.  Of  course, it is incredibly anthropocentric to claim that our languages and feelings are more complex than that of any other animal in the world as they do have intricate languages and feelings of their own, but if we were to learn from their example and actually say what we mean and mean what we say, life as a human would be much simpler.  We would not have to skirt around each other's feelings.  In fact,  we would be respecting each other's feelings more as we wouldn't be assuming that everyone is so delicate that even the smallest mention of something that bothers us will offend.

All in all, I think we have much to learn from the other animals around us when it comes to communication.  We should be more straight-forward instead of trying to spare each other's feelings because in doing so, we are actually creating people who are more easily offended by smaller and smaller things.  And finally, as an animal whose world is supposedly built on communication, we really suck at it.