Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow says, "The human voice is the organ of the soul."
Ludwig Wittgenstein says, "The limits of my language are the limits of my identity; the limits of my identity are the limits of my world."
I think one of the most important characteristics of a civilized person today is the ability to use their voice and language beautifully, accurately, and effectively.
When Confucius was asked what he would do first if he were called to rule the country, he replied, "I would undoubtedly start by reviewing the language. If the language is flawed, words cannot express the thought well. If the thought cannot be explained well, the things that need to be done cannot be done correctly."
Confucius continues, "If the homework is not done properly, the customs and culture will be corrupted." Subsequently, if morals and culture are corrupted, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the bewildered people will not know what to do or where things will lead. That is why nothing is as important as language.
But in fact, most of us throughout our childhood might think that if we talk, we might risk exposing something wrong or abnormal about ourselves. So instead of expressing ourselves, we choose to remain silent. This is especially enhanced if we find our own voice to be an unpleasant sound. We find our voices, especially from voice recorders, quite strange.
However, the human voice is crucial because it is our own way of developing a language, communicating, and bonding. With our own voice, we share more than we know - we share who we really are. We actually use our voice more often as a gift to others rather than for our own sake. We have as many tones of voice as the number of people we communicate with. You can think of your tone as a dress we wear.
Our voice, which we discover more and more each time we communicate, has a very complex structure and requires the synchronization of more than 100 muscles in our body. It has the power to reveal some of the problems we experience.
The human body filters its own voice differently from all other external sounds. Our own voice is our inner voice and travels through our bones. Therefore, our inner voice is perceived as lower or more harmonic than our outer voice. Neurologists say our auditory cortex shuts down when we open our mouths to speak.
For this reason, when we hear our own voice from outside, such as through a recording, we may perceive it as someone else's voice, face it with prejudice, and hesitate to open our mouths to communicate. Sound is like some instrument. When you listen to a good flute, you notice the hours and days that went into the labor of producing it. Likewise, when you hear a good sound, it is necessary to recognize that it does not come about all of a sudden but as a result of hours, days, or even years of practice.
I hope that if we understand our voice better, we might realize that it is the most special thing cocooned within us and how we interact with the world.
When we talk, we express our true feelings and ideas, and we open up our inner world. And that is also a big portion of why sometimes we get a little shy.
As Poet Henrich von Kleist said in one of his articles, everyone should throw out what they have in their bag. They should be able to express themselves most simply without the need for fancy sentences - as they are.
But when it comes to expressing ourselves, many of us are uncomfortable because we do not know where to start.
We don't know exactly what to tell you. Or perhaps we're afraid of constructing an imperfect sentence and being misunderstood.
But if you want to know something about yourself, I suggest you talk to the person closest to you or even the first acquaintance that comes to mind. It doesn't even have to be someone with a sharp mind.
On another note, we are often told not to talk about ourselves or the past bad experiences we might have had.
Until today, we have always talked to enlighten others. But I think we should also talk to enlighten ourselves.
Von Kleist usually sits at his desk and examines documents while trying to come up with a number of different ideas to judge some of the complex arguments - or tries to develop new problems or other solutions in response to a solution to a problem.
Then he goes to his sister. And if she tells him about her own ideas, she'll discover parts of her complex thoughts that might take hours to decipher, which she finds difficult to reveal. Thanks to this experience of talking, Von gains knowledge, or rather wisdom, that he cannot dig from books.
Talking simply allows us to organize the range of thoughts by starting over, ordering, reordering, and connecting the dots. And it helps us to save time by getting rid of all the details at the time of speaking. And thanks to such practices, one finds ways to speak more briefly and effectively.
Until now, only what is going on in the listeners' brains has been focused on, and how listening improves us a lot.
But when the Speaker's brain is examined, it has the same effect. In other words, we learn by speaking as well as by listening.
Talking means using your voice enough to match the brains of others.
We call matching with another brain a fundamental effort that shapes ourselves through affinity and divergence, starting from a very early age.
Without voice and language, people cannot match other people and cannot spread their ideas. Ideas are the most potent factor shaping human culture.
As Confucius said, people who do not come to communicate cannot be considered to have done their homework, hence, cannot contribute to culture. And remember that if morals and culture are corrupted, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the people who are bewildered will not know what to do or where it will lead. That's why nothing is more important than using your voice and expressing your ideas.