Communication is Human

"Everyone's a kid that no cares about.
You just gotta keep screamin' til they hear you out!"
- "Written in the Stars" by Tiney Tempah

Listening is one of the greatest ways to show your love for someone. To hang onto their every word and to believe that their opinions, thoughts, and dreams matter. To put aside your judgments, and your own words and truly hear someone out.

Do you really listen? So often I "listen" to others, but all the while I am just waiting for them to finish so I can talk.

That's so dehumanizing! Communication is vital to being human, that is one thing that stuck with me when taking Into to Communications this semester. As communal creatures, humans need to relate to other people and to know and be known. How can we do this if we don't listen to one another?

Furthermore, how can we grow and learn if we don't listen. Learning is also vital to being human, because knowledge brings freedom, and knowledge is a human right. Do we dismiss the words of some, thinking that they are unworthy to teach us? That they are less than us, therefore we should not have to listen to their words? What pride. Listening is a lesson in humility.

When you see a quiet person, you would do well to assume that they are waiting for someone to listen to them. Quiet people spend so much of their life listening, but people assume they don't want to talk, because if they did, they would. That's outrageous. People need to communicate, but so many are driven into silence because they have been conditioned to think that their words are meaningless and no one wants to listen.

Communication is human. Communication is a two way street. It helps us learn. It helps us love. It humbles us. It makes us human.

*This post was inspired by conversations with Karolina, and by many conversations about the evils of dehumanization while taking a class on American radical movements this semester.