Frustration

Posted by yseult on Sep 8, 2006 in Personal | 0 comments

Is there anything more frustrating than a full-blown misunderstanding?

It doesn’t matter what the reason is to begin with… it might be a linguistic problem, it might be some absence of idiosyncratic sarcasm markers or it might be even a total absence of understanding for your fellow being’s sense of humour. It might of course be also the casual “you know what she said about you…” knock over the head where gossip turns your relationship with anybody south. It can also be something so trivial like hormones (yes, they do exist, you know) what will make you hear things that were not intended.
Let’s stick with the easier version here: the linguistic misunderstanding. The big catastrophe where you fail to understand properly what someone is telling you and start second guessing what the actual meaning was. What’s the error here? Of course: the “what did you just say?” or the “you really mean that?” salvation didn’t spring to your mind. But the real fault? Vanity. Again. Ever. Always. And there is Al Pacino in the Devil’s Advocate again, with that sardonic grin: “Vanity always has been my preferred sin…” and the Rolling Stones are rolling in.
And when after the shouting and the explaining you’re faced with the simple white wall that has MISUNDERSTANDING written all over it. Anything more frustrating?
And there you are, with your justified anger because you felt insulted or annoyed, and *poooof* no reason at all be insulted in the first place. Frustrating? Teeth-grindingly frustrating.
Guess what? For someone who has studies rhetoric and conversational methods, conflict dialogue etc. it is even more frustrating. With this knowledge in the back of your head something adds itself to the frustration. A really silly question: did I just get outsmarted? Did this girl just make me pass a real insult for a misunderstanding?

Guess what… there is something more frustrating than a missunderstanding: not knowing if it really was one.

But then again, what does it matter? If the person went to the trouble to outsmart you…