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Perspectives on Human Communication
RICHARD KLEIFGEN
How do we evaluate the use of a life?
One small flower pokes her head above the soil deep in a forest. She sprouts and blossoms, spreading her petals to the sun and gives the natural gift of her fragrance, the beauty of her shape and hue miles from any human eye. The earth eventually recalls this wee one, as it does each form it sends. And so she wilts quietly some evening and her form bends to rest.
Another sister raises her face along a path in a busy city park. The folks go walking there every day, now eager for spring's first signals. Their eyes delight at the first green shoots and feast on our friend's full blooming. Her life is spent as the center of exaltation, the object of unbounded adoration. As the days wane and the departure approaches, her every change brings a sigh of regret from some new onlooker. And then, like her soul-mate hidden far away, she too returns to the source of her bounty.
How would you compare these two lives, given so freely and fully in nature? How do you decide and then judge your own path, your mission, your purpose in life?
Part I
To communicate with other life forms, especially other human beings, is a basic drive in human life. One can debate precisely where this impulse might stand in a hierarchy of human needs. Is it as basic as the need for food, water and air? Should it be classed with shelter, clothing and other less primary drives? Or does it belong in a category with more altruistic longings such as truth, beauty and justice? However one chooses to categorize it, the fact that it is an intrinsic part of life seems undeniable.
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Alongside this drive, which may be considered a need to go outward, to project consciousness into relationships, there stands another often opposing desire to go in, to be alone, to commune with one's own being,
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