Communication. The element that grows and adapts, the element that guides us, the element that controls us, the element that we all think of knowing. However, it has more doors closed that opened, waiting to be discovered.

Communication has been used by humans since their evolution, to let each other know who was leader, who was doctor, and who was sick, hungry, or tired. Around 9,000 BC, people discovered that ideas and images could be linked, creating a simple and effective way to signify things to others, assuming they knew what the symbols stood for. However - around 3,500 BC - Mesopotamians started using Cuneiform, a brand-new innovation in which a singular symbol represented a certain pronunciation, such as “Kkh”, or “Huh”, and when strung together, it represented both the idea and the complex pronunciation of the idea. The innovative thing was that if a new idea needed to be made, letters could be rearranged in a pattern and pronunciation that hadn’t existed before. As the language grew, so did the complexity, needing words that would describe other things, or words that said what a thing was doing. As these ideals were achieved, there were also words needed to connect other words; to signify times, places, things - to introduce them, and on and on and on. These concepts eventually solidified to become the base for all future languages.

The most used word is “the”, the word to rule all other words, which makes sense, as it is the word to announce ideas, to make them known. You will find it to be true, in every literature, in and out of the English language, that it is the most commonly used word in all. If you don’t believe me, count the amount of times “the” appears in this text compared to “be” and “to”, the second- and third-most used.

Strangely, in all languages, only twenty percent of the words make up eighty percent of USED words in a language. This was first discovered by Joseph M. Juran, who suggested the idea in 1896.

However, this theory was not - while it does apply - discovered with languages. It was made when he realised that only 20% of the pea pods produced 80% of his peas. The pattern even has its own name, the “Pareto Principle”, and is applicable in all subjects. In most businesses, 20% of the clientele make 80% of the profits. With computer coding, 80% of the work takes 20% of the time, leaving the harder 20% to take up 80% of the time.

But this alone is not the only pattern in nature. A prominent example is of spirals, which occur in many forms of nature, from the horns of sheep to shells, spirals are everywhere in nature. Most animals have symmetrical faces and bodies, plants have created folds that not even technology can replicate, bending the laws of physics. Even the planets, with their perfect spherical shapes, are made out of patterns.

So, it seems clear that with all of the gracious patterns of nature underlining everything, our communication would be subject to the patterns of nature as well.