The Observer, February 16, 2007
Volume XXXIX, Issue 17
A Fresh Perspective: Communication taken for granted
There are a few central themes that are inescapably tied to human experience. Love, sadness, teenage angst…the list can go on and on. At some point in our lives, we all experience these emotions, and they are considered an integral part of human development. But there is one thing that makes each of these possible – something that we take for granted on a daily, even hourly basis: communication.
I am taking a class on communication in health care this semester, and I was studying for a midterm earlier this week by reading our textbook. I was reading along, without any real interruptions or important things to notice, when I came to a sentence that really struck me and stuck with me for a long time afterwards. "Human beings cannot not communicate." The section proceeded to go into verbal and nonverbal communication, and how we are communicating at all times. After reading it, I found myself going back and dwelling on that short, simple sentence and realizing how incredibly true it is.
My thoughts centered on how we take communication, especially the gifts of speech and language, for granted. How easy it is for us to order food at a restaurant, or to answer a teacher's question in class. Can those of us who have grown up with a spoken language and no real communication disorders really understand what it would be like to have speech taken away from us? Or to not be able to hear when your friends or professors talk to you? I don't think that we fully can.
But even if we were to not have spoken language, communication is still a necessary facet of human life. How else would we make friends or start relationships?
I then began to think about how incredibly frustrating and difficult it must be to have a crippling communication disorder. My mother has a congenital hearing impairment and wears a hearing aid. Without it, she only has around 20 percent of her hearing, but the aid increases that to around 80. She speaks very well, and her impairment is almost unnoticeable in everyday life. It is just something that I accepted as a child, but not something I ever really truly thought about. I put myself in her shoes for just a moment.
And therein lies my challenge to everyone. Take five minutes out of your schedule this week, and imagine how difficult life would be if you could only make unintelligible sounds and could not understand anyone else's speech. Speech is a simple gift we (myself included) take for granted all the time. It just goes to show how blessed we really are, even when we may not think so. Once we begin to grasp the little gifts life grants us, we can begin to fully understand how wonderful life truly is.
Hershberger is a freshman Communication Sciences major involved with University Singers and Marching Band.
