Thursday, May 17, 2007

Why We Speak

There is a great deal of jabber on in the world. Discussion heads, pundits, politicians, bloggers, citizens all over the place are chattering irately - in particular on the internet. Sometimes the quantity and disagreement of all of their dialogue are overpowering. There are so many channels in the world today, and as we toss through them with our various inaccessible controls, it is confusing how little good there is on those channels. Don't you ever wish they would all stop talking and listen to you once in a while? This is a place where speech matters, and where you can speak.

Speech matters. We speak to let it out. We speak to be heard. We speak to talk into. We speak to instruct. We speak to find agreement and community. We speak to change the world. So speak. And listen.

We speak to speak. At its root, speech is a human need, an end in itself. We speak to let it out. Our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and experiences need to find their way out. At some fundamental level, it does not even matter if anyone hears. We just need to speak. If we hold it in, if we stop speaking, we stew. The pressure builds and we must release it by speaking, by sharing.