We often have heard these words called language skills or communication skills. Persons who have them are in great demand everywhere. Communication means the act of conveying information. Now when one is good at conveying the information through primarily a language, then he is said to have good communication skills. But do these skills serve any purpose? Is communication through language necessary? Does it fulfill the philosophical principle of necessity?
My father always says communication is not what one saysbut what others understand. Therefore a very high degree of subjectivity is involved in this art of communication. Often we want to say one thing and it gets interpreted exactly otherwise. Are language skills to blame here then? Or is the language in itself to blame?
A revered doctor in Pune, Dr. Vijay Gokhale who I once happened to be the student of, says language or words connote imperfection. For example if one is supposed to write what he feels when he sees the sunset at the confluence of rivers, he won’t be able to write exactlywhat he feels. Or if one is asked to simply write down how much he loves his mother, he won’t be able to describe it. He will express himself by using most suitable, most appropriate words which could describe his feelings but all in vain! There’s a very popular verse in a sacred shivamahimna stotram which goes:
asita-giri-samam syat kajjalam sindhu-patre
sura-taruvara-shakha lekhani patra-murvi,
likhati yadi grhitva Sharada sarva-kalam
tadapi tava gunanam isha param na yati
meaning,
if an ocean is made the inkpot, the branch of the mythical Parijata tree made the pen and Goddess Saraswati (The Goddess of Knowledge) embarks to write the glory of Lord Shiva, it still will be impossible to comprehend the greatness of the Lord Shivafully!
We can codify science, math, law but we cannot codify our feelings! And Feelingsgive meaningto life. As Tagore puts it in his famous dialogue with Einstein, existence has meaning only if one perceives or feels it through his consciousness. Without that consciousness, existence itself is meaningless! In short, without feelings, everything else is meaningless. And therefore feelings need naturalform to express themselves. As anything natural is superior to anything man-made. Impulses and Instincts do form a part of natural expressions whereas language is essentially man-made. Perhaps this is the reason behind the use of polygraphic lie-detectors and microexpressions! One doesn’t have to say to his spouse “I love you”, instead his eyes would express his feelings of love better and in true sense. One doesn’t need to say “Very nice to meet you”, instead his face would convey the feelings better and in true sense. Then I just feel why to learn all these artificiality like language skills, manners, etiquette, protocols, code of this and code of that? I would rather be natural and hence a better communicator. Rather than exercising control on language to pretend that I am not angry, I would rather controlled the anger, its root cause, so that anger is naturally extinguished.
To sum up, one needs to transcend the realm of language in order to understand the true feelings, for the truth can’t be described in words. Adi Shankara was very apt in saying “neti-neti,” meaning “it’s not this, but at the same time, it’s not that either”!
Mounam Sarvaarthasaadhayet!
Mounam Sarvaarthasaadhayet!
Reinvent The Self! 