There is this uncertainty to feel when you aren’t sure if people get you or… don’t get you.
Whether you were excited about something as you were speaking to a small group or presenting before a room, there may have been times in life where you wanted what came out of your thoughts and out of your spoken lips for all to have taken with great and full understanding.
And yet, whether they understood or not, the difference may have simply been in the output and input.
The message itself may have been simple and straight all on its own.
One plus one equals two. Show one apple and another apple, cardinally count while pointing to one and then, the other as two.
Simple at best. We can agree the answer to be two in any language that compares and tracks in numbers.
But, I can imagine somewhere in this wide, open world, those aside the stressors of worrying about numbers, even such a simple problem to solve could cause confusion.
Should we not believe confusion even at simplest times to be true?
My teaching coordinator’s lasting word to me was, “You won’t struggle in teaching the difficult and challenging. What I see you will struggle in is teaching the most simple.”
If I just made 1 + 1 = 2 confusing for you, I humbly accept why my coordinator noted this long ago.
Your way of explaining the same problem to someone else may be much simpler and to the most direct point than mine.
Or, could it be, however, we both see solving the problem differently and still arrive at the same answer?
Fundamentally, homo sapiens we human beings are termed. Individually, we each are wired as a system of our own uniqueness to stand out.
Output. Input. Daily, we interact. To understand. To be understood.
When someone says, “You know what I’m saying’?” or rather in formality, “Do you understand what I meant to say?”, here can be that moment of an inadvertent white lie when we respond with a simple, “yes”.
The scope of our understanding is infused within our realm of knowing what one truly meant.
My Papa and Mama endlessly conversed about one issue after another.
If I wasn’t in the room listening, I was in another room hearing most of what they were saying due to their loudness.
Although much quieter and subdued, my husband is no lesser tamed when it comes to thinking out loud and wanting to share with me his thoughts.
His silence outside our home may lead others to believe he is a man of few words.
Yes. To the world. As his wife, however, I listen as if I never stopped hearing.
He has much to say.
As I have continued to be as if listening to my parents, I mostly listen until my cue to chime in.
After over thirty years with my husband and to add, at least ten comprehensible years with my parents, I’ve come to understand that people would rather you hear them more often than hear you.
(I laugh to think this is the joy of teaching, most especially math- the necessity to listen to me is a wise suggestion under such role.)
Why do we speak?
Here, we reflect.
Do we speak at all times for others to hear or merely, are we just speaking to hear ourselves think out loud?
After all, do you always truly know what you are saying as each words escape, spewed out of its vaulted corridors?
Do you always fully understand the actual words coming out of your mouth?
Have you come across the feeling that as words are being uttered, the conveyance, perhaps, was off key?
Has there ever come a time where you then quietly came to realize that your thoughts were somewhat premature? Perhaps, you spoke too soon?
Nonetheless, most importantly, have you arrived at a time in your life where you can thus, own your words and actions?
And, if for the sake of peace, can you allow another to feel they are in the right even if your heart, mind, body, and spirit know you to be in the right?
Are all moments presented an invitation for discourse until an opening for debate?
Once the debate takes into position, must you fight to win?
To win what? For what? And, then, what?
Why?
Arriving to this chapter in maturation is a humbling arrival.
To wait to speak last and not first- something that requires years to fully grasp in understanding.
While I am not afraid to address someone who is seemingly giving me the impression I’ve crossed them in a questionable way, I do find, truthfully, I don’t bother worrying to please.
There are just times where we inherently view or perceive things from how we hear, see, smell, taste, or feel a given moment.
I suppose this is why we individually prefer certain foods we have grown to love or acquired in tasting.
If we can connect such acceptance with taste, we can also accept the very same for the other four known senses.
I think of investigators who seek answers from various vantage points of a crime scene. There is understanding of perspective and perception.
I think of musicians who create different melodies. There is understanding for particular likeness to sound frequencies, decibels, and wavelengths.
I think of those in elevators who invite me (or politely, the contrary) to waft their chosen scent. There is understanding of selectivity to attract others or soothe oneself.
I think of feelings, thus, as individual wants of the good, the bad, or the ugly, with a dramatic symphony playing between each. There is understanding of thresholds and yet, also, desire.
Even all colors such as red and purple have different hues with even just a slight tone or tint of dark and light.
Each time I encounter a conversation or discussion, I either say hardly anything or take over. As I get older, a purposeful intent becomes of each moment, either way.
There becomes a deliverance of sought out purpose to create a sense of meaning to every given moment.
Will I care about this outcome or, will I move forward, indifferent?
Who is to say that your output will truly matter in input if there are to be no movements for change anyway?
To wallow in what could be done while assuredly, nothing will drastically take place to even subsequently take what energy you just exerted will hold grounds for remarkable change, is just that wheel that goes round and round.
Trivial, many moments can be. The seeking, the arrived mastery of one day closer to be in knowing, is when a moment matters.
There will be these moments where once you question, once you probe for inquiries as to why we continue to do what has not helped and yet ignore what we are certain can, “What I’ve been told is…” comes to follow.
If I have yet to meet those who create the decisions regardless of what you suggest, then the political game of all pretending to matter and be heard has no winner in those who participate to play.
Do you speak to others to understand them or are you not, instead, speaking in hopes they understand you?
And, if so, are you not hoping for truth in their suggestions so that you may grow from the conversation?
Otherwise, why converse?
Do people not pay psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists to listen and not necessarily, to speak?
Does one come in to listen or to be heard?
Birds wake me at the break of dawn. Although I have learned to put blinders on to hide away from sunrise until I am ready to awake, birds could care less.
While I may mutter for them to keep silent while I try and continue to sleep, they only care to be heard.
I lay and listen. One calls out. Another calls in return. Before you know it, several birds are chirping, cawing, cheeping, or sometimes, maddeningly shrieking, all at once.
I am convinced by this time, no one is listening, just fighting to be heard.
I cannot even be angry that they have taken some of my sleep time.
I can only sit and listen.
After all, in just a few hours, it will be my turn.
We all pay time or money to be heard.
I suppose the true test of training would thus be, who was listening and when?
