Language is more than words and sentences.
It is a railroad between human minds that connect individuals to others.
As an advanced species, humans need more tools than other animals to communicate with each other. So, we created vocabulary and rules that can represent the state of our black-box brains.
However, that doesn’t mean that it does the job 100% of the time. In fact, language is never enough to convey exactly what goes on in our heads.
As children, we often don’t realize the importance of written and verbal communication. We spew out whatever comes into our minds through our mouths and are frustrated when the other person does not understand exactly what we mean. I call this level one communication. Babies don’t care what you think; they have no intention to understand you.
Later on in life, we learn to gain interest in others. Through questions, we fill the gaps that exist between our understanding of others. This is different from primary communication as now you request information from others to understand them better.
And as you gain a better understanding of another human being, the topics of discussion expand exponentially (actually an S-curve, but still) and create a web of information of the other person like a mind map. As information is added, the perimeter of this web grows and now there are more to talk about.
“What’s your name?”
—> “Hey, {name}. How’s your day going?”
—> “How is your dog doing? How is work? Is your brother doing well?”
It’s exciting to get to know a new person in depth as information comes at you like a tsunami. This form of level two communication creates a special bond between individuals that cannot be achieved through selfish level one communication.
Eventually, childhood ends and we find ourselves in professional environments. Here, the goal of communication is not just to get to know each other and level two communication is not enough to do the job.
Here’s when people eventually learn to craft what they say. Language becomes a tool and a weapon that persuades, offends, and exposes. A simple idea can be conveyed in millions of different combinations of words that one must carefully choose depending on the context and usage. This is level three communication.
While broken walls can be easily fixed, spoken words cannot be unspoken; people grow to talk less with more purpose as they learn this often the hard way.