When the soul cries, our personal tolerance has weathered another trial. I voice a deeper form of expression that is not just an ordinary form of bereavement, nor is it just another melancholy place or a despondent desolation that is common to many people dealing with a depressed state of mind; The cries of the soul are unique to each and every one of us because we all have different ways of dealing with this inner pain. The human condition gives us an infinite number of examples in which we bring ourselves down to a primal form of mortification. There are many reasons for the soul’s demarcation of this circumstance. Every single human being has experienced something that they can all share among the community because we are all part of a feeling, emoting, thinking, people. We are reactive beings.
When we do not receive the essential and fundamental communicative expressions of human needs from others, our inner selves want to burst out and scream to the world even if we close ourselves off and say or do nothing. If you look closely enough, “we cannot not communicate.” The first principle I learned in a speech communications class which profoundly changed my life was that we as humans are expressive and our inner selves will always show signs (even if it is the micro-expressions on our faces that many people do not notice). This first principle deliberated by Paul Watzlawick (July 25, 1921 – March 31, 2007) an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communications theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems. He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California.
One cannot not communicate: Every behavior is a form of communication. Because behavior does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behavior), it is impossible not to communicate. Even if communication is being avoided (such as the unconscious use of non-verbals or symptom strategy), that is a form of communication. “Symptom strategy” is ascribing our silence to something beyond our control and makes no communication impossible. Examples of symptom strategy are sleepiness, headaches, and drunkenness. Even facial expressions, digital communication, and being silent can be analyzed as communication by a receiver.
If we give credence to this principle, than I would like to direct the reader next to Abraham Maslow and his model of Human Hierarchy of Needs.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
We are expressive creatures. We create artistic expression and have a complex language that allows us to communicate in intricate ways. Maslow contended that we cannot reach a higher level on the needs hierarchy if are lower needs are not being met. It is my belief that when we do not have enough support in some of our psychological struggles, we will stir until we express ourselves in some way; a signal to the world that we are in some vexing situation that will lead us to cry out and emote this hardship. Our cognitive skill in negotiating this dilemma is ours to take ownership of. Sometimes we just cannot think or feel our way out of it. The cognitive dissonance will drive us to emote a message.
We find many examples of expression through music and the arts. Just some of the many instances where we can voice an inner dimension that can touch people on deeper levels. We can see when the soul cries out in a blues song and when the soul sings rejoicing in a happy ephemeral moment! Both polar dimensions that can have powerful expressive abilities but by in large they originate from the inner sanctions of the soul.
I use the soul as defined including our emotive expressive abilities along with our rational thinking abilities. We cannot treat the human being on just the logical rationale because we are more than just rational beings. We are feeling and expressive beings that have multi-variables in determining our conditioning and outcomes of behavior.
Each of us has an expressive nature that is determined by our level of skill in communicating the outcome. It may seem that some of us are just quiet people who do not flex these expressive emotional and cognitive muscles which may seem true, but on deeper levels I theorize that we all have this expressive nature, and some are better at concealing it than others. If Paul Watzlawick’s principle is true, than only people close to the less expressive people may be able to find their subtler forms of expressive communications.
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