The Universal Language

"Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do. What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Would your every movement tell the story? In time you would become so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green leaves."

I'm inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's way of understanding plants, one that is grounded both in Western science and ancient wisdom. Our assumption is that plants cannot communicate with us, let alone "speak," even as most of us accept that they can, in their way -- through pheromones, chemical compounds, electrical signals, vibration, and other means we do not fully understand -- communicate with one another. And, of course, we understand that fruits and flowers are intended, at least in part, to connect plants with animals, including humans, who tend to respond in ways that support the plant's propagation, but does that really count as communication?

How we define communication makes a difference. Our doubts about plant communication tend to revolve around whether or not there is a conscious purpose behind the message being sent, but is purposefulness necessary for it to be communication? I mean, plants clearly send messages, other plants receive those messages, and then there is a response to those messages. Defined this way, conscious purpose is not necessary for communication to have happened, although some Western scientists are now starting to wonder (catching up with indigenous traditions) if plants actually do possess something resembling consciousness, even without the sort of brain-like structure found in animals.

Of course, the definition of consciousness is also open to debate. As is intelligence. Not to mention that there are many who believe that the "free choice" humans believe we possess is in fact an illusion; that we simply act according to the dictates of evolution, much the way we assume "decisions" are made by plants and "lower order" animals.

Kimmerer asserts, "Plants teach the universal language."

"Intuition has a maligned reputation as one of the lesser kinds of reasoning," writes neuroscientist Patrick House, "but is, in fact, second only to consciousness itself as the mammalian brain's greatest feat. Intuition is the reasoned product of a lifetime of careful, metabolically expensive observation. It is the output of the brain, never the gut . . . Nearly two-thirds of the brain's neurons are devoted to prediction and feedback so that the brain can learn and update the validity of previous predictions." But most of this happens off our consciousness' radar.

Intuition is akin to instinct and stands outside of conscious thought as the product of our subconscious mind. It causes us to move or act, which are signals that communicate through what we know as non-verbal communication. Psychologists and police detectives are among those that understand that words may lie, but our bodies, like the stems and leaves and roots of plants, tend to "reveal all." Sure, we can lie with our bodies as well, but that takes a conscious effort, and the moment we let our mind's drift, our bodies go back to truth-telling.

Our babies are born without words, but we all understand that they come into the world communicating, reaching out for the connection that will bring nourishment, warmth, relief from pain, security, and love. Signals are sent, received, and responded to. This is communication.

Play is another or those words or ideas that eludes definition, but it's through attempting to observe, or gaze upon, play that I come to most fully understand the children in my life. Play, like all movement, is an aspect of the universal language. We tend to say that behavior is communication when the behaviors are challenging for us, but as the plants show us, it is all eloquent communication, revealing far more truth than words ever can. Indeed, the vocal-learning region in our brain is contained within the regions concerned with movement: language is a mere and meager subset of all that we do and communicate.

Children, like plants, like all living things, answer questions by the way they live. And as Kimmerer says, "(Y)ou just need to learn how to ask," which requires us to observe and reflect. This is why I say that early childhood educators are at least as much researchers or scientists as we are "teachers." When children play, they are, like plants, responding to the world around them, and what they are telling us is often difficult to put into words. But that doesn't mean children aren't supremely eloquent, only that words are too crude to translate it.

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