Miscommunication

You know how sometimes when you're talking with someone, what you say and what the other person hears are two completely different things? You always figure that the other person is wrong, that she just wasn't listening closely enough or she didn't care enough about what you were saying to really pay attention. Then one day, you have an argument so huge that you are left stunned and bewildered, wondering how you could possibly be so colosally misunderstood by someone who is not being intentionally dense. A moment comes when you realize that you're both talking past each other instead of to each other. But neither of you can figure out why the misunderstanding continues to grow, so you each continue to try to explain your positions, hoping that somehow, the key will be found and the answer revealed. It never occurs to either of you that you're not comprehending the other's points because you're speaking completely different languages. Neither of you has the faintest idea that your perspectives are so mutually foreign that you might as well be from different countries.

How ironic that we sometimes have the most trouble communicating with people who speak the same language as we do. When dealing with foreigners, we approach all communication with the knowledge that we will have to work at being understood, and that cultural differences might lead to non-verbal cues being misinterpreted. But when we deal with our compatriots, and perhaps most especially with those of our own generation, we completely forget that we are separated by differences no less substantial than those we possess with others. We forget that differences of upbringing, geography, family, race, religion, education, health, prosperity, and personal philosophy all unite to form vastly disparate perspectives. And even though we know full well that people disagree about a multitude of things all the time, we continue to blunder blindly forward under the fundamental belief that at least we're all looking at the same picture, even if we're interpreting it differently. How is it that it never even occurs to me that the brilliantly-colored oil painting I gaze at with rapture is nothing but a crude charcoal sketch to my companion? And how is it that she can see nothing but charcoal?