Communication; something that simultaneously seems incredibly basic to us yet we all struggle with during certain times. So why, when we need to the most, do our brains sometimes fail to communicate our feelings as words or actions thus allowing ourselves to be understood by others?
Feeling misunderstood is undoubtedly a terrible feeling. A feeling most people have felt themselves on various occasions and would be able to describe only as frustrating. We all seem to be bound by a hot bubble of irritation, in which our feelings boil, seething and stewing, until the bubble bursts and our emotions pour out like an angry flood of lava, destroying everything in its pathway. The lava knows no limits, nothing in comparison is indestructible or able to prevent its downpour. For once the bubble bursts, the bubble can’t be restored. Once something has been said, it can’t be taken back.
This is why for many reasons; communication is an art. Something that only a select few are naturally good at but something that with practice, can begin to come naturally to an individual. But communication takes time and effort. Only, these are qualities that not a lot of people develop in a culture where we’re taught if we don’t get what we want immediately that we should just give up, we are impatient as a generation.
Communication in this sense becomes a historical art. The new Michelangelo or Vincent Van Gogh. No longer do we have beautiful canvases, every brush stroke occupied with emotion and every line inspired by sentiment, instead we are left with vacant text messages and artificial emojis that not really anyone can relate to.
This is not saying that there were not communication difficulties between individuals in centuries before us. It’s almost certain that there was. But there are too many distractions today, and despite the advances in technological communication seen in the 21st century, it ironically seems to have set us back in a raw and human sense. As a society, we seem to hold in our emotions, having only a laptop or phone screen as a visual and literal outlet. We celebrate a persona of ‘not having feelings’ and it’s not healthy, because of course, as people, we do have feelings. Repression is not beneficial for our mental wellbeing. So when we finally do explain how we feel, we seem to burst, like a bubble, scalding everyone close to us with our molten words born from the frustration of trying to be emotionally unavailable like we are told to be.
But we can’t. We are all ‘available’. And perhaps if we are all present, maybe we can leave Twitter and Whatsapp and Facebook in the side lines for a few minutes, have a look around, and actually communicate.
We were given the gift of communication; so why don’t we embrace it?
Jael Moore 