Interpretations

I was thinking about something that someone said yesterday that struck me as a little absurd. It was something to the effect of “Even though it sounds like I’m approaching this from a purely egocentric place, I really don’t mean it that way.” My thought was, “If it sounds like you’re approaching this from an egocentric place, how are we supposed to know that it’s not?” How can a person not be misinterpreted in that situation?

This is a subject that is very close to me. I have only fairly recently learned that I don’t actually listen to the words that are coming out of a person’s mouth, but am taking signals from all over the place. As a result, I end up misinterpreting what is being said because what I SEE is not what I am HEARING and I will automatically opt for what I SEE.

I think this may be one reason that a college roommate was concerned for my hearing. She was majoring in Deaf Studies and was teaching me sign language. While I was an absolute beginner in signing, I was better than a beginner in reading sign. She told me to get my hearing checked because I shouldn’t be that strong of a reader and that my lip reading skills were better than the average hearing person. I did. My hearing was fine—except for some low tone loss in one ear due to using a shotgun without ear protection.

So, how does one know if he or she is interpreting the correct thing? What if the person we are listening to doesn’t know that he or she is projecting something other than what they are saying? What do we “listen” to?

An interesting exercise…