Everyone has some kind of contact with others in some way. This contact may be significant in the eye of one and menial in the eye of another. Sometimes people’s actions are for others profit and sometimes things are done solely for the benefit of oneself. Someone who does too much for his or herself is seen as greedy or self-indulged.

How do we measure the success of a lifetime? Do we relate a life to the choices the individual made, or do we relate a life to others’ choices? How can we label someone as being successful and having a “worth-while” lifetime?

How do we compare the lives of a impoverished 92 year-old woman with 35 great-grandchildren, 12 grandchildren, and 4 children of her own to an 85 year-old woman retired CEO with full benefits living a plush life?

We can say that the retired CEO has impacted many lives during her times in higher management for her company by making business relationships. She has not had to worry about financial strains or day-to-day costs due to her income. Does this make her life successful?

We can also say that the impoverished 92 year-old woman has impacted many lives as well with relationships created with her extended family. This woman may have influenced her children, grand-children, and great-grand-children to set life goals for themselves and may have provided inspiration that cannot be found anywhere besides her words and heart. Does this make her life successful?

Comparing individuals’ lives cannot give us answers when attempting to figure out the accomplishments and their impact on the world around us. I think the best route to take when coming upon this question is to weigh your own experiences with what you have control over changing. Realize that every-day actions can impact others in their own attitudes and actions. When in doubt, offer your opinions, they might be the greatest ideas ever spoken, but in silence, they have no value.

I think this quote from Charlotte’s Web describes a lot of the issues we talked about in class about relationships and how we become ourselves through the eyes of others.


“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.” - E. B. White

Oxygen. Breathing in and out; we aren’t always aware of this natural action that controls our body. We can’t see it, yet it’s there. It influences our actions, thoughts, and most importantly, everything around us. Others use it to survive and some create it. Trapped in a confined box, it might be the only thing we have. Shoulder to shoulder it’s harder to claim as our own, yet we all are distinct from one another and find our own to survive.

Communication is something you cannot avoid. You cannot improve it, or destroy it because the quality and quantity is not always dependent on one person, it is a community, it is air, and it is oxygen. Communication will always be there, and is dependent on the interpretation by each individual person. Communication is a term paper, a blade of grass, a gust of wind. Communication is a song bird, a dark alley, an e-mail. Communication is a blank stare, a smiling face, a click of the tongue.

Our meaning is only our meaning to ourselves. Everyone else interprets our communication depending on context. Standing in your own house and screaming “idiot” at yourself for stubbing your toe would be different than standing in a quiet library and screaming the same thing. Although the meaning behind your vocal expression may mean the same thing to yourself in both situations, context highly complicates the situation. A bully standing behind you hearing your yelling fit might interpret your communication as an insult to his or her character and a librarian controlling the peace in the library might interpret your communication as a defiant act. Communication is supple.

I think one of the most important things in life is to be aware. Constantly I find myself trying to figure things out, and I am sure this is the case with a lot of you out there. For some, this inquisitive behavior might be investigating the meaning behind the concept of communication, and for others it is deciding which gnome statue to buy to decorate your newly refurbished lawn. Day to day we are faced with accepting facts that are thrown in our faces and most of the time we consciously become aware of these newly explained ideas. Not everything we accept as our own ideas, but to be aware and open to new things is what helps us when learning. Growing up I was taught that communication is something you can either be really good at, or it is something you need to learn how to do better. Communication, in my experiences, hasn’t (until now) been presented as something continually happening everywhere. Studying communication can’t necessarily make anything better, but it can bring a better understanding to what people do and say. I hope that I can take information that I absorb from this class and blend together a colorful concoction made with a dash of my own opinions, a smidgeon of others opinions, and topped with a dollop of day-to-day experiences. Only two weeks into a single course I have found myself becoming aware of my own communication method and style piece by piece. During this course I look forward to becoming aware of others’ communication as well as my own.