If we humans learned anything from the Tower of Babel, it’s that communication matters.

In ancient times the world banded together to build a skyscraper to reach into the heavens and overthrow God. All He had to do to fight back was confuse their languages. 

If we can’t communicate, we are powerless to create.

There is power in communication, a corporate solidarity that leads to real positive action and forward motion.

But when we stop communicating, we stop creating and start destroying.

How easy is it to develop resentment and hatred toward someone we can’t or won’t communicate with? It’s good fun, actually. 

When we fail to communicate with others, we make sport of them, tearing them down just because it’s fun. Even better if they speak, say, Mandarin or German.

Listen how funny they sound! Look how weird they dress! 

But it’s near about impossible to mock them when you’re trying to learn their language. 

There is a bond created when we seek to understand each other. 

The symptom of when we fail at this is truly the funniest thing. It’s a stiff neck, like a literal pole-in-the-neck stiffness that alters the entire personality.

The stiff neck hits when you fail to treat the other person as fully human. 

When you order food, you can tell when it’s a human interaction and when it’s just a business transaction. You either exchange words, or you get your neck all stiff.

When you go to buy insurance, you either exchange stories and try to understand each other, or you get necks stiff as a board and start using big words and making awkward jokes.

When you hang out with the bros, you either have a great time together, or you stiffen your neck and start shouting louder than everyone else just how much better than them you are. 

It’s just absolutely fundamental to our humanity.

The communicator is the one who is most human, seeking connection, honestly working to generate goodness in the relationship. 

The stiff-neck is the one who has an agenda, something to hide, awkward and afraid of being found out—stiff, not because he likes it, but because he thinks he has to be.

There is power in communication; there is freedom in communication.

But it comes at a cost. 

If you are real with people, you open the door to being taken advantage of, to being made fun of. If you treat people like people, you can’t run them over and prioritize yourself. If you compromise with other people, you have to change your life to suit theirs. 

There are costs, personally, to communication, but those costs are outweighed when you consider the outcome.

The simple fact is this: by yourself you can’t even build a house, much less a tower big enough to get God’s attention.

So every time I get into a social setting where my neck starts to get stiff, I take a deep breath, roll my shoulders around, look the closest human in the eye, and ask them a genuine question.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that is has taken place.” ~George Bernard Shaw

“‘What will they think of me?’ must be put aside for bliss.” ~Joseph Campbell