My mind’s a blank right now, but maybe that’s a good thing because I had to ask my mom for help. Her advice: ‘Write about the things you know and try to explain but no one will listen to.’ Well, if no one will listen to them when I speak, why will they listen to them when I write?

I think it has to do with the art of listening. The written word requires a certain selfless concentration to understand. It holds an authority. Yet the written word is too often merely perused by the eye. It can incite emotion, but it should also be transformed into action. The written word is typically considered second to the verbal words of people. So if verbal words are broadly considered more important and more powerful than the written word, people should be careful to say the right things. But how do people know the right things to say? How does one say the right things if no one will listen?

Maybe people do listen, but they become so caught up with formulating their own interpretations that they neglect to think of the projected realities of others. Can anyone really ever know how another person views reality?

There may not be a way to solve this perpetual miscommunication. I say one thing, you hear another and you understand it as something else but then it may affect your subconscious in another way and it also may express a truth that you never realized. This can be intriguing. Suspicions are everywhere because everyone wants the right answer to validate that their reality is the only reality. Before a person even speaks, defense mechanisms cloud our minds. So who is right? No one has to be right. Competing with others to win a game will always bring people back to the game board because people don’t seem capable of handling losing. Why does there always need to be a winner and a loser?

It’s sometimes hard to accept that life is full of contradictions. It’s sometimes hard to accept someone who sees things differently. It’s sometimes hard to question, and even harder to accept an answer you can’t understand. It’s easier, however, to listen and to learn. But I think being in the right is not a matter of perception, it is a matter of action.

People want to do things on their own. They don’t want to get help, but they want to give it. But how can one give the proper help if one needs help? I think it works itself out because when I help you, you’ve helped me help myself. I often hear people say they feel very confident dealing with things alone because they have experience and know what is right. But I think people need to relive their experiences and work them out to learn what is right and how to teach others what is right. We are all damaged goods and we are all bound to suffer in some way. It is this suffering that will bring us back to where we should be, at the sides of one another.

Upholding responsibilities and treating man with respect, care and consideration is sometimes all we can have control over the rest somehow works itself out.

In the midst of all of this theoretical discussion, I stop and ask, what am I accomplishing by writing this? Am I just confusing people? Maybe. Am I helping clear my head so I can better understand how I feel? Maybe. Am I trying to send a message? Maybe.

When I speak, I’m bound to affect you in some way, so I turn to the written word because right now I have more confidence in it than I did yesterday. The written word does serve a larger purpose. It tells a story one of human relations and human experiences and a story of the trials of man, but not so much the trials of the mind or the combat between minds. So why does there need to be a struggle of the minds?

I believe certain truths unite people, even if they don’t understand what the words mean at the time or exactly how their lives will unfold. Just because we are uncertain of another’s intentions, it doesn’t mean we have to protect ourselves by denying what they say or by not listening to their stories. For the story is the most powerful tool of all because it has an effect on anyone who listens to it or reads it. The effects will all vary, but the story unites those who listen; in their silence they are united.

Peace, above all else then, seems to require trust, patience, care, help and listening without judging. Peace above all else requires accepting. It requires treating others the way you’d like to be treated. It requires concern for fellow man, but that concern may not have to involve so much worrying. Peace above all else requires help from friends. I get by with a little help from my friends; I’ll get high with a little help from my friends.

[ Amy Horowitz, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. ]