I recently spoke to someone with whom I’d had a misunderstanding. It’s amazing what you can learn when you decide to listen and are also listened to. It’s funny how something simple can be ironed out and peace is restored. It’s amazing what can be achieved when you put your ego aside so that the truth can reign. It takes nothing away from you to recognize that you are wrong, and to apologize.
In fact, I can count on one hand the people I’ve encountered who can put their ego aside and speak candidly, honestly. I was going to say with vulnerability, but sometimes the truth isn’t about being vulnerable. It’s simply the truth: “I said X because this is how I was thinking, feeling. I didn’t know you’d hear X, Y and Z, but that’s not what I meant.” Assumptions can be brought out. Ironed out. No manipulation, no power play. No one wants to come out the winner or having to defend themselves from being the loser. There’s no winner take all.
Our discussion didn’t leave me feeling as though I was entirely right. I, too, recognized my error, because I realized that even if you are right, a misunderstanding can colour your perception of a person, causing you to draw inaccurate conclusions.
More often than not, adult life is fraught with challenges. However, in those moments where you can tap into maturity, respect, and decide to engage on common ground, the sincerity that can come from it makes you never want to be a victim of misunderstanding and immaturity again.
Everyone wants power over someone, power against being influenced or affected. But sincerity flows to soften, to disarm, and to connect. In a way, it even rearms you, because you realize that while ego divides and disarms to destroy, sincerity aims to strengthen. I came out of our discussion reflective, strangely empowered, and with a conviction to learn to be still, to be curious, to listen.
For example, when you work in customer service there’s an emphasis of learning to de-escalate situations, but that’s the last thing on your mind when you’re also provoked and you also have a point to prove. We can all prove points at any given time, but in doing so, connection and understanding are often lost. For a while I was getting good at asking the emotionally heightened person to take a moment and speak calmly. And I found myself inclined to be forgiving, coaxed to understand and willing to go beyond what I can to help.
Certainly, it's not always easy to practice, but I’ve learned that sometimes the power that we strive to hold on to is meaningless. The advantage that we want over people in any given interaction is fruitless. We pick low-hanging fruit because more than ever we love the appearance of strength, of power, of control, sacrificing it for sincerity, understanding, connection. We’d make terrible generals in a war, because we don’t know which artillery is appropriate for which battle.
We’ve become too emotional, ready to destroy everything in order to achieve nothing.
As a result, this interaction gave me food for thought. Sometimes, misunderstandings are a graveyard where opportunities go to die. But it doesn’t always have to be so. I think you can come back from it. I think you can become better as a person if the misunderstanding is cleared. And I think clearing misunderstandings frees you from being a warden, imprisoning people in the jail of your assumptions; and it frees you from having to be a warden monitoring said assumptions.
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