The Key to Understanding Other People – Visual Misrepresentation

Shakespeare once said “Hear the meaning within the world.”

Whether or not you want to translate what he meant into “understand what the meaning is of every word you say” or you want to go with “listen to how they say the words” doesn’t matter.

Some words comes off as harsh sounding while others come off smoother and this can set an emotion just from the sound.

I think as far as communication is concerned we will rewrite his quote to say.

“See the meaning within the word.”

To “hear” the meaning requires you to deliberately mull over what was said. I can assure you that there isn’t much thought going on in your head when you here someone speak. You almost autonomously connect what this person is saying with visual imagery based on your own experiences, and sometimes, your understanding of this individual who is speaking. If you don’t have a similar experience set as the speaker or don’t understand the speaker, you’re in for a world of hurt. What you end up doing is essentially assuming what the speaker is really saying without really knowing.

From this point you will make judgements, considerations, and decisions based on what you thought they meant and to which you will voice vocally back to the speaker. The speaker not knowing why you said what you said because you didn’t understand him will then continue to process and translate what you said into his own visual imagery. Thereby, setting the scene for two people who are engaged in conversation, neither of them are actually disagreeing because neither of them understand what the other is talking about.

Your goal in successfully communicating with another human being is to connect the visual imagery each of you holds in your mind. If you fail to do this step, which almost everyone does, you will think you’re disagreeing or arguing, when in reality your simply not even on the same planet.

Fishing Example

Let me give you an example.

If I walk up to my fishing buddy and say let’s go fishing, we’ll meet at our usual places at our usual time. He will respond with a yes or no. Now because of his history of being my fishing buddy, he knows precisely what I meant when I said “let’s go fishing” as far as anyone will ever understand it.

Now let’s say I walked up to a complete stranger and said the same thing. “Hey, let’s go fishing tomorrow” They may say sounds like a good idea. Where do you want to meet and what time? You both agree on a place and time, so far so good.

The next day the stranger shows up with his boat in tow and you’re getting out of your vehicle with your wading boots on. Apparently, he came equipped for some lake or large river fishing but the location you’re accustomed to is a small creek that you actually wade into the water and fish. He may have lures, you may have live tackle.

What happened here? It’s simple. When you said let’s go fishing. You both immediately had an image pop into your head. Yours was of small stream fishing with waders on. His was with a large boat and lures. Is someone wrong in this scenario? No! You simply didn’t connect your visual images to each other. There was more to the discussion. Each of you has your own visual representation or “idea” of what the word fishing means based on your experiences in life.

If you can confuse such a simple thing like this, imagine what not understanding another person will do to a conversation that involves more than “let’s go fishing”. It can become a mess in a real hurry. You get people in serious arguments and debates, and if you make it through one of them long enough, at some point someone is going to say, “Wait, what the fuck are we even talking about Frank.” And Frank will respond, “I have no fucking idea Larry.” Most people don’t take the time to even get to this point, you’ll get a bullshit line instead.

“We’ll have to Agree to Disagree”

Doesn’t that shit just piss you off?

Agree to disagree is code for “I don’t want to take the time to understand what you are saying” each person says they disagree with each other but each person may be right in what their visual imagery represents but lack the enthusiasm to explain or describe it to another individual.

After exchange of visual imagery the majority of the time these people don’t actually disagree and either find they were explaining the same thing in a completely different way or they were talking about completely different things from completely different angles, this can also be referred to as a paradigm. Or as I like to say, people are sharing not their 2 cents with you, but their 20 cents with you, “paradigm” thought as “pair of dimes” or 20 cents. When people share their 20 cents with you, make sure they give you one of the dimes so when you spend it, it’s spent on the same damn thing, and don’t end up looking like a “pair of idiots” in conversation.

Rarely do two people actually disagree on something after understanding one another but rather they just have a preferential view on something that trumps all other views, even though they may agree with your conclusion.

An example might be recycling. They might agree with recycling but their view may be we need to stop producing the waste in the first place so they may be against recycling or prefer their view as a solution to the problem of limited resources and waste.

Understanding and communicating effectively with other people requires that you understand their paradigm and see things as they do first before you see things as you do, if you don’t take the time to see through their paradigm (or look through their lens), you will never be looking at the same “picture” resulting in the inability to fully understand anyone. You will find that you “agree to disagree” a lot in life. This serves no purpose to either person and can cause resentment, distaste, or even hatred toward another individual.

Misuse of Common English

It gets worse! Misuse of modern day English words to explain visual imagery leads to many forms of conflict and frustration when communicating

Some people ignore what the dictionary definition of words are and when they say the words it means something entirely different than what the actual word means. It can be so far off that most people, and sometimes no one alive has heard the word used in such a manner before in the English language.

Some people use words with the correct meaning, but the meaning of the word as they intended it to be is one of rare forms used, whereas, a single word can have many definitions and interpreting a word with the most commonly used meaning can lead you astray.

Communication is best formulated and efficient when you understand the nature and thought process of the other person, when you don’t know them that well or don’t take the time to try to change your paradigm so you think as they do; your assumptions as to what they actually meant cannot be taken for granted, and may be dangerously incorrect

“You’re Entitled to your Own Opinion”

Doesn’t that just piss you off as well?

When you fail to socialize, communicate, and understand another human being you are simply refusing to learn anymore. What joy can be found in life when the only thing you can discuss in intensity with another human being is the last football game or weather? No one takes the time to truly communicate and express things to other people because they fear others will “disagree”.  Fuck them, talk anyways!

Some people claim everyone is entitled to their own opinion and will say things like “well you have a right to your opinion” but the funny thing is, not many people actually share “their opinion”. What they end up sharing is the opinions they got from a news channel, or read somewhere, or one that someone else told them.

Self opinions are rarely discussed and you’ll find a comical situation unfold where two people “agree to disagree” claiming each person is entitled to their own opinion but neither person is actually sharing their own opinion with the other individual who “disagrees” with them.

So now two people are stuck defending an opinion that isn’t theirs because they were too lazy to formulate their own. They just wander around the earth hopelessly while repeating things they heard and never taking the time to formulate their own views on things.

Live as if you’re dying, learn as if you’ll live forever

This quote isn’t just about learning by opening a book or gathering information and knowledge. It also means learning to appreciate, understand, and respect your fellow human beings as human beings. Stop labeling them and pretending you’re somehow different from them at the end of the day.

It doesn’t matter what political realm you’re from, what religion you believe in, what you do, or how much money you make; at the end of the day, you’re both humans heading in the same direction. You’ll both leave the planet with nothing physical and none of that shit you thought was so important will matter. How do I know it’s not important? Simple.

When September 11^th happened, thousands of phone calls were made from cell phones in the twin towers. Would you be surprised to learn that not a single person called their stock broker, their boss, their business partner, their acquaintances, or their car dealerships?

It is not surprising that every single call that was made was placed to a loved one and every single person in that building wanted to tell their significant others, be they friends, spouses, or children, that they love them. Before they tragically left this earth that day, the most important thing to them in this world was love.

You come into this world with love and you leave this world with love. Learn to love while you’re here. It is the only thing that truly matters in the end.