Do you know, why are you misunderstood in conversations?
Words are not effective in conversations when people don’t care about the place from which they are coming. There are two types of conversations. First, when you are talking to somebody and all they care about is the words. They don’t care about the place from which your opinion is coming. When no one asks questions like “why do you think that way?”, “what do you mean by that?”. Then these people are just throwing words at each other. They are not discussing ideas, they are simply taking each other’s words for it and don’t even care about the meaning behind the words.
The second type of conversation is where when you are talking to someone, and they care about the place from which you are talking. Then you are exchanging ideas. Such conversations are always passionate and full of life. When people are more passionate about the subject at hand than themselves.
I have very few people in my life with whom I exchange ideas comfortably without having any fear of being misunderstood. And now I understand why I was always afraid of being misunderstood by other people. It’s because people do misunderstand your words when they don’t care about the meaning behind them. When someone doesn’t even care about the reason and logic behind a given opinion or point of view. Then they are merely words and nothing else. And for me, they are not merely words. I have put immense effort into formulating those ideas and points of view. So, I think it was futile to share them with people who are going to misunderstand them or probably don’t have the powers to understand. Not that they are intellectually incompetent, it’s because they are emotionally unavailable to even care about the intellectuality. And that has now taught me to be careful with my words.
I don’t need to shut myself again as I did in the past. But now I first look if the person I am talking to cares more about the words or the ideas. If they care about discussing the idea or they are simply talking to fritter away the time. And in life, it is always going to happen that people will not share your interests. So, discussing philosophy with some people is the same as talking to a first grade about algebra. He wouldn’t understand, and it’s because he doesn’t come from the place where he could tap into the meaning of your words. And that is fine, as long as there are millions of people on this earth. We could afford to talk about different things with different people according to the interest we share and not force our opinions on things they don’t even care about. If I have given a long thought about marriage and its sanctity, it isn’t worth saying it in a conversation when they would be quick to misunderstand it with conservatism.
When the next time you are talking to somebody and you feel like people are cutting you off more often and the conversation is not going anywhere. It is because you all are talking to fritter the time and don’t care about what you are talking about. They just need something to talk about and at such places, it isn’t worth presenting your well-cooked thoughts. It isn’t worth telling someone what you believe when people are quick to move to another topic. It’s not because the people you are talking to are rude and evil. It is because they are not ready to go deep into matters. So all they do is take a quick scan of the surface and keep moving in the surface from one topic to another. They will be easily offended if what you said doesn’t align with their preconceived notions. But that is not the worst part, the worse part is that they won’t even be willing to know why do you think that way.
I have done mistakes where I was trying to go deep into matters with people who have a habit of moving around on the surface. Whenever I tried to make a jump with an in-depth opinion, I experienced resistance and force to keep myself on the surface. I got shallow comments about the subject and slowly I started to pass shallow comments as well. Because of my need to be an active participant in such conversation, I started to put comments that I myself didn’t believe in. And when I got back to myself, I couldn’t even recognize myself. After repeated mistakes, I understood why it was happening and what I need to do. It was happening because of two things; one, I had an obsession to be an active participant in all conversations, and second, because I was trying to be deep in gathering where everyone kept themselves on the surface. And gradually I started to do the opposite. First, I started holding my urge to always being an active participant. And second, I kept my well-cooked thoughts to myself when the setting wasn’t right for them to be served.
You have to value your opinions if you want them to be valued by others. If you keep throwing them in every conversation, it will hold the same value as someone who talks his mind off. Nowadays I keep this rule in hand, to be valuable, be scarce, and worthy both.
Originally published at http://sanarajarsite.wordpress.com on August 9, 2021.
