Communication is Everything. Everything is Communication.

“Communication is everything, and everything is communication” is a phrase I say often. I can usually tell by the confused look on the hearer’s face that it is also a phrase that is not easily or fully digested. So, let me explain. The linear communication model that is most accepted pretty much says there is a sender that develops a message, sends it through a channel to a receiver, who breaks down the message before developing a message of their own, then send that feedback through a channel back to the initial sender who then becomes the receiver and the process starts again. Of course, there is context and noise and filters and a bunch of other parts of the process we can discuss later. Let me break down this saying for now.

“Communication is everything” means it is super important. It is the one thing everyone and everything does, yet it is the one thing we as a society are not educated to do properly. Most, especially in America, never hear about the communication process I described above until they are among the few to take a required Public Speaking class in college. The American education system believes that if you know how to read and write, then you know how to communicate. That is a dangerous concept since America’s literacy average is a 7th grade level, and there are demographic pockets that can only read a series of short phrases they have memorized for survival. Even more so, it does not take into account those with any type of cognitive disability. So the vast majority never learn or have a…