How Can You Not Hear What I Hear?

a poorly communicated essay about poor communication

Picture was AI-generated (only the picture )

I am constantly baffled at how difficult it is to communicate with people. Very naïve of me, I know. Kevin Powers frames it superbly in The Yellow Birds: “What is said is never what was thought, and what is heard is never quite what was said.” 

Maybe I hear a condescending tone in your voice, and because I abhor being spoken to as if I had a severe learning disability, I raise my voice and criticize your haughty harangue. Yes, now that I’m peeved, I perceive your previous words as a harangue. No, I don’t want to hear why. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. Our conversation turns tense and spoils any amicableness we might’ve feigned prior to your snobbery. You blame me. I blame you. No, you started it. Your tone doesn’t change. I mean, how could you be so inconsiderate? I presented astounding evidence to prove your wrongdoing, yet you continue to disparage me. Either you have no self-awareness, or your tone is intentional. Yes, I do. I believe you’re witlessly lying to protect your supposed innocence. Do you really want to do this? Fine. I accept your stubbornness as an invitation to push your proverbial buttons and express my distaste for your inability to notice the bitchiness in your voice. You’re delusional. How can you not hear what I hear? I feel belittled.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” you say. Great. Thanks bunches. Huh? What temper? Hold on. I’m the crazy one? Or do you know exactly how you sound and continue to demean me because you believe the air above your bedazzled soap box is superior to the carbon monoxide the peasants under your feet breathe? Sure, change the subject. I see you. I know, I know, I’m the asshole. Always have been. Or, could it all be—(brace yourself)—a misunderstanding? 

Gasp. 

Maybe you weren’t being condescending. I was probably grumpy and bitter all day, as I normally am, and your call interrupted my unproductive week at the keyboard and angered me, thus distorting my perception of your tone. Since we’re being honest, let’s agree that your perception of my reaction was also skewed. I wasn’t being an asshole but a concerned and noble friend. Right?

Listen, I have my senses, and you have yours. We trust what we know. Nobody knows and trusts you more than you and me more than me. Which is why, based on everything I know about my judgment and its spectacular track record, you're wrong, and I’m right. How could it be otherwise?

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I’ve always struggled to communicate with people. I was shy as a kid and still am. Drinking had cured my social anxiety for over twenty years, but once sober, I was like “Oh yeah, I can’t carry a conversation with anybody over the age of six.” I hate talking. I hem and haw. I stammer. I look skyward . . . uh . . . Don’t look at me. It’ll only enhance the awkwardness for which I will blame and resent you. No, I will not look at your eyes. Eye contact creeps me out. Have you ever watched two people who weren’t in love stare into one another's eyes while talking? It looks like a standoff. I assume whoever flinches first is inferior to the other. And if it is a love-dumb couple you see, both looking for doves and bells in the other’s eyes, you might feel as if somebody had slipped you an emetic. 

Talking to people frightens me. People frighten me. In any conversation, whenever it’s my turn to speak, the pressure to say something and avoid silence is overbearing, hence the stutter. Yeah, I stutter. So be it. My brain malfunctions the second I request its help. My mind will circle one thought—usually something I can’t verbally express without having to find a new ride home—and it’ll glitch until it forgets why it glitched. 

I need time to process information and organize my thoughts. I must ruminate and talk to myself. Then I need time to put those thoughts into words, the right words, words that haven’t been tortured and overused. I typically go out of my way to sound smarter than a cereal box, an endeavor that routinely cramps and spasms my facial muscles. Automatic responses and generic quips are unsuitable unless I am desperate for an exit. Ready-made phrases (like that one) bore me as much as discussing the weather. Of course, if I don’t want to talk to you and have somehow been cornered into doing so, a ready-made phrase will be all I have to offer. I’ll agree with you, too, even if I didn’t hear what you said: anything to pass the ball back to you so I can ponder unwritten stories.

As you might imagine, I prefer communicating via text messages. Many people believe nothing beats face-to-face conversation because it enables you to assess body language and tone, both of which are great for catching somebody in a lie and other deceptive behavior. But again, it is only our perception of the speaker’s body language and tone and not necessarily, if at all, the tone and movements the speaker conveys. If I’m already in a bad mood when we meet, everything I hear you say will filter through my emotional state and might manipulate itself into something ugly.

The beauty of texting is it allows me ample time to consider my thoughts and words, to revise them so I say what I mean, no more, no less, and have nothing to regret. I’m not immune to regret, not even close, but if I’ve carefully crafted my opinion and still said something to offend you, I’ll likely defend my words, despite how much you may hate me for writing them. Also, texting allows me to ignore you until I’m ready to read about your boss’s supposed love affair with your niece’s best friend’s mother-in-law. The convenience factor is unbeatable. If only Apple’s Focus feature worked on tampered exhausts and my neighbor’s TV.

One downside that’s not so much a downside as it is an occasional cause for trouble for people like me is sarcasm and irony don’t work well in texts unless the reader is accustomed to snide remarks, though most people seem unable to detect sarcasm nowadays, more so in the United States, as was recently brought to my attention. 

For us passive-aggressive folks, sarcasm is a great mechanism to minimize what we don’t understand. I also use it to hide my shortcomings and to avoid saying what I really think. I have a system. My daughter’s mother often thinks I’m being sarcastic when I’m not. It’s tricky when you keep your sarcasm dry. In her defense, I am compulsively sarcastic. I can’t seem to stop. Not to mention, it’s the only time I can muster a rebuttal without a su-su-sussudio.

Speaking of my daughter’s mother—she will likely think she is the “you” in many of these hypothetical situations. She is not. You are not (that “you” is you). Perhaps I should’ve mentioned that sooner. Yet a conversation we recently had did spawn the thought that led to this discombobulated essay, hence the similarities in the hypothetical blah blah. You weren’t there, so you don’t know or care. Kudos. I’m just covering my ass because she is a subscriber. Oh boy, I just remembered my mother recently subscribed. She may eventually regret that decision.

Hi, Mom. 

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I don’t think we realize how often we misrepresent ourselves. How could we? We don’t know when we’ve verbally distorted our thoughts and have no way of knowing if the people we’ve exchanged words with have misrepresented themselves. Now, I don’t doubt most of us probably habitually make spot-on assessments of other’s behavior and speech, but that probably gives us a blindspot and makes us less likely to notice when we’re wrong and behaving irrationally. Never mind that too many conversations require telepathy and a psychology degree to reach anywhere near a mutual understanding, false as it may be. Those conversations frequently conclude with one person saying, “Agree to disagree,” which is the same as saying, “Neither of us will open our minds to new ideas, nor speak an unscripted word.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of every discussion I have feeling like a game. I must decipher the subtext, list possible implications, and consider your motives. I don’t want to play tag or compare egos. I want to convey information as succinctly as possible and have you do the same without excuses and exaggerations. It’s all so exhausting. 

Maybe what we need to do is drop the acts. Forget about who’s right and who’s wrong. Stop peacocking. Quit people-pleasing. Don’t worry about being liked. Say what you think you mean. Read a dictionary. Don’t look to your neighbor for validation before answering a question. Think. What type of world would we live in if, in every discussion, we remembered communication is imperfect and that we have more to learn than to teach?

No, you hang up first. 

No, you.