15: Communication

The only thing which is certain about any of us is what has happened in the past. I picked up that comment somewhere in the script of a British television company’s rendering of Brideshead Revisited which must be one of the longest, slowest, and most spell-binding television majors yet produced. It was an idea I had heard before. I had inherited the boxed four tapes (lasting a collective 640 minutes) from a friend of 40 years standing whom I have watched dying of cancer these past 3 months. He was a masterly teacher of English and a great one for communicating. And communication is what I have been ordered to write about by our beloved editor. As a member of the JCI~>CI Editorial Advisory Board and a regular reviewer of manuscript submissions, I sometimes find that those who submit their learned papers have fatally flawed their attempts by being so obscure that the meaning cannot be caught, and the purpose of good communication is missed.