Stray Thoughts of Dr. Y. V. Rao- 14
Dr. Yerneni Venkateswara Rao
M.Sc., Ph. D
Retired Principal
GUDIVADA- A.P
yernenivrao@gmail.comh.
B3-4
The
trouble with the protagonists of single point agenda like the environmental or
the social activists is that they tend to develop eternal vision; they mistake
the glow-worm or worse, darkness at the end of the tunnel for the sun itself
and blame others for not seeing it only because of their obtuseness,
overstatement and exaggeration, inflated rhetoric and name-calling,
aggressiveness and overkill being their forte.
B3-5
Though sarcastically said , it is so very true
today in our country that even poison, if offered free, will have a crowd
waiting to grab it. Are there no such things as contentment, self respect and
dignity anymore, one wonders and shudders to think that consumerism’s conquest
of men’s minds is so complete and greed’s stranglehold on society so total.
B3-6
Speech
often hides more than it says while the language of gestures and actions being
many times more expressive and revealing gives away what the words conceal.
Even the tone of voice and the gleam of light in the eye are so much more meaningful
than what is being spoken , and the mere act of looking signifies, otherwise
why would courting couples be lost in cooing sweet nothings into each others
ears, and ogling young things in exchanging furtive looks and side long glances
as if they are in a timeless zone of a wonderland of their own creation.
Countless other non-verbal symbolic intimations like the language of facial
expressions, postures, gesticulation and gestures including its stylized
version adopted by dancers , and the deaf and dumb alphabet, a formalized
version of the same language used to express words and phrases visually and the
whole vocabulary of body language are there besides, which are as effective in
conveying thoughts and feelings, meanings and messages with little or no loss
of subtlety and nuance. Such indeed is the potency of even ordinary gestures like a warm hug or a
handshake, a nod of the head, a gentle vibration in, or inflection of the
voice, or an innocuous mannerism , each more vocal than thousand words in
revealing the inner workings of the mind that in needs hardly be mentioned.
Through these and similar other visible
modes of communication, a gifted actor can , in moments of emotive excellence
and creative culmination/best, communicate more intensely without words than
with them. Like the language of pain and the language of a smile , such modes
have no boundaries nor know any barriers. Likewise, music has no language, only
feelings. No wonder feelings fly on the wings of music. They are part of a pan human
cultural and /or art form.
The language of gestures and actions is thus
a vastly superior tool of communication and what is more, like music, the
language of God’s and tears the language of the suffering million, is
universal. The sheer range and power of human communication skills, be they
oral, written or nonverbal symbolic expressions, is simply mind-boggling and it
is perhaps not given to any individual to acquire total mastery and control
over all those skills in a single lifetime.
That is why whenever people want to lie which
they fairly often do, they do so with their words and usually fail because
their other communication signals invariably betray them unless the latter are
consciously/deliberately modified to achieve special ends in acting, cheating,
politics and diplomacy. So the message is clear as crystal, never ever lie
unless you are keen on ending up as another flop or failure.
According to a landmark study of
communications by psychologist Albert Mehrabien, 7%of any message about our
feelings and attitudes comes from the words we use. 38% from our voice and a
startling 55% from our facial expressions(Reader’s Digest Dec 1993)
More
powerful than all our verbal and non-verbal expressed communications put
together is the intrapersonal communication, i.e, communication arising only in
silent thought , in one’s mind which is the basis of all other forms of human
communication. Isn’t it because of this that silence is said to be the solace
of the sober and the language of the muse, and poetry the food of love which
nourishes and nurtures all human relations and permeates all our interactions?
One couldn’t agree more with Vikram Seth when
he said , “The true test of friendship is to be able to spend a hour in silence
without wearing off each other’s company.”
B3-7
Whoever
says that life is dull and repetitive does not know what he is talking about.
Life is ever new for, every moment one arrives at is the moment at which one
has never been before nor ever will be after. Every moment of it is precious
for those who know the art of living—the supreme art that is yet to be mastered
by many.
It is dull and repetitive only to those who
have lost the naïve enthusiasm of childhood and who are apprehensive of other
people and are constantly running away from something—unhappiness or disarray
in their lives and whose sensitivities are not honed and sensibilities not
ripened and who, for that reason, neither know how to savour the freshness of
life anew everyday nor know how to enjoy the blessedness of communion with
nature and with their own selves in quiet solitude, listening to their inner
voice that speaks to them of the meaning of this life, of the possibility of a
better existence and of right and wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment