The Cookie Jar (June 24, 2008)

The Cookie Jar
by: Maria Reylan M. Garcia

Imagine the world without cellular phones; almost a fourth of our population would either lose their social lives or die without finding out the wonders of thumb reflexes. Imagine the world without telephones; almost a half of our society probably winds up with unrelieved anxiety due to unshared gossips. Imagine the world without any form of conversation; all of the world's people might end up to be living zombies with dried up saliva and bad breath. Communication has then been and remains to be a vital process that keeps us all sending SMS 24/7 unlimitedly. Man is considered to be a social being who needs to interact with another to survive, otherwise the cliché, no man is an island, would lose its hard earned integrity.

Frederick II, an emperor of Germany, proved to the world after his unusual experiment that communicating is worth more than annoying telephone rings and a stock pile of snail mail. He wanted to know if language did intuitively exist and what appears to be the oldest language. In his experiment, Frederick II used several new born babies to be raised up normally, they were fed, bathed and put to sleep when tired, all but the part where they get to be exposed to any form of communication. In the end Frederick failed to discover the oldest language and alongside are the cold and lifeless bodies of poor infants. Surely, to never get the chance to hear an actual conversation or even just to see a nod of agreement from another person would offer a sense of ignorance, that would be depriving and could kill more than hunger or thirst could.

Communication is omniscient, it is everywhere, and continues to be one of the forces that turn the world around so it would once again face the glorious day. But, although its goals may be as pure, man's brokenness and wrecked relationships were rooted out from the misuse of communication. Technically, communication is composed of the sender of the message, the message itself, the receiver of the message, and the feedback. If done ideally and in a two-way mutual process it could bridge new friendships, cease ruthless wars and even unite a multitude of differences. Communication starts off with the sender sending the message to the receiver who after getting the point of the message sends back a feedback to the sender. But, sadly such ideal communication rarely takes place.

I have observed and I myself had experienced that we never really follow how an ideal communication should commence. Most of the time, it begins with the sender sending the message but with an added twist, the sender already has a fixed expectation of what the receiver should response as a feedback. So, when the receiver replies different to what was expected by the sender, chaos takes place. Almost always do my mother and I argue on such petty things, and now I know why. How silly of me to ask my mother's opinion whether I should say yes or no, when in fact I am constantly hoping for a yes. Danger comes when my mother answers a cold no and I began to breakdown. Thinking about it, I shouldn't have asked in the first place.

People nowadays say that major problems such as our country's fractioned government couldn't be anymore solved with a simple gathering around the table to talk things out. I disagree, those problems could be solve only if everyone listens to what someone has to say, not just to what everyone expect someone to say. The process of communication could not get pass through the sending phase, because we never accept the message as it is, rather we find faults in the message. Message sending failed. I am in awe of ants, yes those minute six legged sugar lovers can communicate better than we, rational and free willed human beings do. One minute you see them all scattered and lost in direction, but then they stop to wiggle their antennas to hear what the other ant has to say, then the next minute you'll see them all line up straightly and orderly marching towards the nearest cookie jar.

Indeed, we communicate and it allows us to exercise ourselves as social beings but its goal of effective understanding, of clarity, of unity has been toned down to the most minimum of volumes. We often meet miscommunication because we only await messages that we would agree to, if not we conclude that the other doesn't understand or the communication was useless. Wouldn't it be better if after we receive the unexpected message, we try to pause and really listen to what it meant? Wiggle your antennas if you have some, whether the message was useless or worth a million pesos worth of contract accept it and later on just send the appropriate feedback.

Communicate and Live.

Find the nearest cookie jar.