As Jerry Seinfeld once quipped, “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Does that sound right? This means at a funeral most people would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.” There are so many ways to communicate and the most common is with speech. The most enduring is the written word. Other ways are more subtle, such as the glance of an eye, a touch, a motion with your hand, etc. When the telegraph was invented, making it possible to communicate from long distances, a code was developed using a series of electronically transmitted dots and dashes called Morse Code. The person on the receiving end could only decipher the message by knowing and interpreting the variable dots and dashes into individual letters. The military has developed ways to communicate so that the enemy, listening in or observing, could not interpret the message (and then know their strategy). So secret codes were developed and intelligence technicians were trained, by both sides, to interpret or break them. Advancing technology has made it possible for us to communicate around the world and even into space both with images as well as voice. Many countries are mass producing communication instruments so cheaply, that even small children have phones and/or iPods, etc. They are relatively inexpensive. We should all be intelligence technicians, because to communicate, regardless of the method used, is a difficult thing to do. We work hard every day at trying to understand exactly what others are saying to us. Plain speech, may even have intonations that may cause what was said to mean something different than what is heard. Even a simple request in writing can confuse, for example: “A Chelemite teacher was given a post in a neighboring town. Arriving there, he discovered he had forgotten to pack his slippers, so he wrote a letter to his wife reading as follows: “Be sure to send me your slippers with this messenger. I have put down ‘your slippers’ because if I wrote ‘my slippers’ you would send me your slippers. And what would I do with your slippers? Therefore, I say plainly ‘your slippers’ so that you will read your slippers and send me my slippers” Someone else described the frustration of communication this way, “I know you think you know what I said, but what you don’t realize is what you thought you heard is not what I meant.”
Writing is as old as Adam, the first man. He was asked to keep a book of remembrance, and to do so he was either given or he developed an alphabet. Hugh Nibley stated that, “Writing still remains and probably will remain, the most effective means of binding time and space.”
The spoken word is the most common and abundant means of communication. Unless it is recorded it is lost in the atmosphere as soon as it is released from the sender’s mouth. Even electronic recording devices have a limited longevity. That may change in time but the written word is still the primary means of conveying communications from generation to generation.
Galileo was quoted as saying, “What sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.”
Elementary teachers often express their frustration with teaching children how to communicate who can both see and hear. One can hardly imagine the difficulty and frustration that Annie Sullivan must have had in teaching Helen Keller how to communicate.
Helen who was both deaf and blind. The movie, “The Miracle Worker,” depicted that challenge very well.
Most people are not considered good communicators; we all bumble along trying to express ourselves to each other the best we can, most always losing something in the process. It is said:
“Love is a language that can be heard by the deaf and seen by the blind.” Unfortunately we communicate with many, even those we barely know, let alone have learned affection for.
But even a child without training seems to be able to communicate with the Father of us all. The prayer of faith is heard even when it may have been emitted only as a sigh. We ought to be very grateful for the scriptures, which is the Father’s primary way of communicating with us, His children. A journal or a biography is a mortal’s best way of communicating their life and what they want their descendants to know about life and its pitfalls to avoid. It may be considered scripture by those who loved him or her, and it may be a positive influence in their lives. To leave this life without leaving any information about your life and deeds, is it to say that that person learned nothing of value to share with their descendants, or could it mean that they failed to learn how to communicate what they did learn. May God bless us to learn how to communicate our thoughts, wishes, our love and our wisdom to those we leave behind. As the Australian has said, “All we really are is our story!” Another way of putting it is, “When a man dies they bury a book.” A book that may only be of interest to a few but never-the-less a book with stories about a person’s life, loves, trials and tribulations. A book of wisdom for those who are willing and desirous of learning from a loved one who felt that they had something worth sharing and were willing to do so.