Communication

Rounds on the pediatric floor, Monday afternoon, supervisor in tow. He's going to follow me into a patient's room this time. It's going to be awkward as hell. Time to do it. I have no choice. Better get it over with.

I move forward, look at the patient's name on his door, and enter.

Hi, I'm David, I'm a chaplain intern, I tell the man, twenty three years old, who lies in the bed in front of me. I speak, but I do not listen. I see, but it doesn't yet register.

Because, a few seconds later, I realize what I am actually dealing with. The twenty-three year old is built like a child of eight. Staples run the course of his head. He can speak, but only sound comes out.

So the whole process to which I'd become perfectly accustomed was shot. How can I hear him, how can we interact and feel and share, if he cannot? I freeze. My body tightens up. The eyes of the priest behind me burn through my back like a saw through feeble wood.

The man lifts his hand, and puts it to paper with pen. Slowly, one letter, one word at a time, he writes on the page. Hours seem to pass as I wait for what he'll say.

What.... are... you... doing... here?

I have no answer. The man in front of me may communicate with difficulty, but I am just as unable as he. I cannot speak. I cannot formulate sentences. I don't know what I'm doing, and I can't even say so.

The five minutes I spend in there feel like days. I get one opportunity to leave and I seize it. I'm out. Done.

The patient could not speak, and I could not communicate. There was no synergy between our brains. We did not understand what the other was saying because we were not saying a thing.

Fast forward to last night. Sitting in the library, if you can call it that, of my place of work, I talk, catch up and work with my co-intern. Our topics range the gamut, but then, he settles down on something he recently found interesting.

Thinking about himself, and how he describes himself religiously, he realized just how dependent he is, he has been, on one title (in his case, "Reform") for the construction of his identity. What's your background? Someone will ask him. He answers with a history of his involvement in "the movement."

No! He declared. This is a crutch. It says nothing but make me feel good, part of something. I don't even believe or adhere to the connotations of what I'm saying, he tells me. So he wants to try to drop the unnecessary label. To say what he means. To communicate through words that have meaning, not ones that simple make him feel good.

What kind of rabbi are you going to be? They ask me. A Jewish one, I tell them.

And then, one afternoon, on an overcrowded elevator, I find solace in my electronic companion, my iPhone. I try to type a message to my friend. I throw in some Hebrew to my mix, and, rather than saying "good" I say "tov." I tried to, at least.

My fingers are big and the virtual buttons are small. And in my carelessness I typed "t-o-c." And, just as quickly as I typed that 'c' a little bubble appeared, reminding me that I likely wanted to write the word "tov." How did it know? Was my iPhone fluent in transliterated Hebrew? Hardly.

I write some more, and rather than "books" I write "seforim" but, again, my finger slips, and I write "s-e-g-o-e-i-m." (Maybe this time I erred on purpose...) Again, pops up a bubble, "seforim" my iPhone tells me.

I know what you want to say. I have learned from you over time. I pay attention to what you communicate. A synergy exists between our brains. Your words matter, and to me they mean something.

Am I reading too much into the software of my cellular phone? Probably. But in that moment on the elevator, it all seemed so fitting an example. An example of what I could not do with the patient, an example of what the intern wanted to do.

We communicate to spread ideas, and share feelings, and move around in this crazy world. And the intention behind that action makes all the difference. Our ability to listen to one another, to speak with, not to, one another, to inscribe specific meaning in the words coming from our mouths, all is significant.

And if we try hard enough, we can anticipate the meaning behind the words from other's lips. If we can just open our mouths wide enough, two people can share more than sounds with each other.

They can mean something. They can go somewhere. They can prepare themselves for something bigger.

אדני שפתי תפתח ופי יגיד תהילתך

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[Josh Levin]

Dialog is a cruel mistress.