Sometimes I wonder. When I was younger the answer seemed simple: I wanted to improve both my writing skills through practice and the world around me through the message conveyed. Back then, I was naive enough to think it a simple process (another reason why we should not rely too much on the young and naive to lead the way without the necessary wisdom that experience grants).

Today, I understand that no matter how well one writes, it is quite difficult to actually engage and provoke others into thinking, not least because any good writing relies heavily on a good reading.

And while better writing may help ensure an easier read of a work, there is no way to ensure it is actually read well.

My last article (‘Race to the Youngest’, The Sunday Times of Malta, January 19) is proof of this. It was an attempt to bring back some sanity to the madness currently trending of picking leaders based on how old they are (or rather, are not), instead of relying on their actual experience and qualifications in a given field. Sounds fairly reasonable, at least to my older ears, but it seems that not everybody agrees.

At least, I am sure not everybody agreed with the author, though I have my doubts as to their disagreement with the message, and therein lies the problem.

A commenter accused me of having “a gripe against younger persons contributing to society”. That is all he took away from the article. Curiously, it is also something that was not even present at all.

Apart from the fact that nowhere in that article, did I write against youth contribution and participation, apart from this fact, the comment also points to a problem of defining the words in question: contributing to society does not necessarily mean or imply leading it.

There is a huge difference between the two, and whereas I have no gripe with the former, I do have one with the latter – something which I am sure I made perfectly clear in my writing, but which apparently has been obfuscated through an inaccurate reading.

This is precisely the problem I want to address in this piece: not reading articles properly. A phenomenon which, unfortunately, is pervasive in the age of ‘scanning through’ documents – who has the time to go through all the information we are presented on a daily, even hourly, basis? And yet, that is exactly what one must strive to do. In the same article, I write the following words: “That’s not to say that the youth have nothing to contribute”.

How can someone, reading the article properly, then conclude that I have a gripe against the youth contributing? After all, I write and contribute, and I hardly consider myself ‘old’.

This is not an instance of a personal need to address unjust comments directed at me – with age and experience comes the relief of a stoic resignation. It is, rather, a case of pointing out what I believe to be a crucial and essential ingredient to success.

Good writers cannot exist without good readers, for communication is a two-way street, and it can only work if traffic is smooth in both directions. It is something that I have always believed in, though perhaps not consciously, and it is probably the reason why I loved reading comprehension exercises so much at school.

Without proper understanding, improvement in any field is impossible.

Meanwhile, back in reality, my position was vindicated this very week. Someone jokingly referred to the recent resignation of the Finnish Prime Minister, and the reply came that now the country “had a young woman instead”. As if that was all that mattered: her age and gender.

As if, just by virtue of being young of age and female of gender, she was a step up from her predecessor and the country was now better off, and that fact, and that fact alone, somehow made her a better prospect to lead it. That is the kind of silly reasoning that my article was against, but, if one does not read it properly, for lack of will or ability, then naturally that contribution is lost.

Contributing to society does not necessarily mean or imply leading it

I recall an incident during my studies when my philosophy professor thought she had identified a mistake in H P Grice’s seminal work on meaning and semantic theory. Sceptical as to how such a great thinker could overlook such a banal error in the very first pages of his book, I reread the part. Then I reread it again. And again.

Eventually I realised what I had suspected: Grice was right, and my professor was wrong. She had been too premature in her conclusion and a misreading had contributed to her judgement. Thankfully, she was also a true lover of knowledge, and accepted the correction with humility.

Humility, or rather the lack of it, is of course another problem in society. Just this week, I was talking about a peculiar border situation in Europe involving a railway, but could not agree with my interlocutor on the particular country this railway was in. I noted how sure I was of my recollection, but he would have none of it. Next day, I confirmed my position.

My interlocutor simply dismissed the matter by arguing that we had probably been speaking about different railways. This was obviously untrue, given that we had referred to this railway by name numerous times during our conversation. It is extremely hard for people to admit they are wrong, which is precisely why they are so wrong so often.

Of course there are other factors which contribute to miscommunication: not being clear in defining terms and different interpretations of said terms (incidentally, my first thesis dealt with the interpretation of texts), as discussed above, both affect the message.

For instance, perhaps I should have defined the term ‘young’ better in my last article. There is young and there is young.

A 60-year-old may consider a 40-year-old ‘young’, but nevertheless the latter has objectively had around 20 years of experience over a youth. Certainly, that means a lot. But having youth who have not even finished university catapulted to the helm of organisations, departments, and even countries, is ridiculous. And, alas, becoming all too common around the world.

What does this say about the worth of university and degrees? Are they so useless that one does not need them to secure top positions anymore? Then why have them in the first place?

What happened to understanding the world and how it works before making up one’s mind about it, before supporting this or that cause? Even to this day, my studies keep showing me how insufficient my grasp of subjects – which at the time I thought I knew well – truly was, and how one constantly learns how little one knows. Yet, here we are encouraging teenagers to speak their mind conclusively on subjects they have barely familiarised themselves with!

Digressing is another factor which hinders proper communication, and is one I am, alas, too guilty of. So, why write?

Perhaps I write because I love the beauty of words: how stringing together a number of words can produce sentences of immense aesthetic pleasure. As for the beauty of the message those words convey, I realise that it is a beauty seldom seen. When it is, it is a majestic beauty which transcends formalist aesthetic.

Perhaps I write in the hope that, one day, I get to see such beauty and am able to say that I was partly responsible for its conception.