It was one of the most exciting moments of my life when I decided
to study in overseas, a few years back in Myanmar. At the same time, I felt
belittled whenever I subconsciously asked myself how would I communicate with other
students in overseas? I assumed that communicating is one of the innate
abilities and it is the only barrier for
me to communicate.
Until now, I have been lucky enough to share the same room in
Singapore with my childhood friend. We know each for my whole life,
minus five years before primary school, so we presumably know almost everything
about each other and sometimes in some aspects, my friend may know more than my
family does. Since we arrived in Singapore, we walked into different paths. We rarely talk to each other as both of us are busy with our own schedules and sometimes it is even hard to do household chores together. Ever
since, I gradually feel that something is setting us apart and until recently,
I realized that we became a total stranger to each other. I am more open to my overseas classmate then my childhood friend. Now I see the big picture that we have a
serious communication breakdown. When I refer to my own perception
of communication barrier, my hypothesis is totally wrong for my case. We speak the same language, we came from the same country, we came
from the same cultural background, we go through same childhood life and ultimately we
lived in same road where only a few houses separate our homes in our hometown.
The intricacy of communication is getting more and more complex as we go through different phases of our lives but the basic rule to establish
successful rapport is as simple as the main purpose of communicating. So why do we
communicate in the first place? We may define it in different ways but ultimately
we do communicate because we want to deliver the right information to our destination. So we cannot probably expect to receive the information which is not
delivered in the first place. This is where the communication breakdown start to happen when we take our relationship for granted and we tend to assume or we expect he/she to understand without even communicating. For my case, I failed to communicate in the first place, we assume each other to understand some
underlying problems and so I do not try to make effort to reestablish my communication. This trivial
problem is snowballing into total communication breakdown. I also forgot to
nurture my innate ability to make full use of it. I hope to communicate effectively and handle my communication mistakes very well in the future.
Edited on 2/19/2016
Commented Blog
Jia Sheng
Edited on 2/19/2016
Commented Blog
Jia Sheng
