We long to understand each other and connect with each other. We do. But. We all come to everything from different backgrounds. Different interpretations. Different expectations. Different paths with different feet. We even experience the same things differently. We even interpret words differently. This is what makes us human. This is the human condition.
What makes us divine is remembering this and holding off that judgmental streak. Applying the knowledge of this divide to our responses. Finding out more before speaking or writing. Thinking we know all about another person and that we have some kind of right to judge them? I don’t think so. I would love to talk about this with you.
Every subject heading advertising another’s writing running across the top of my screen shrieks with instruction. And demands. And ‘I know better than you’, ‘I am an expert’. Words designed to catch our attention and garner clicks. Such pretense. Such bullshit. They judge us as weaker. Stupid enough to be caught in that web.
I miss seeing you up close. That dipped head as we listen to each other. The eyes that track a mouth. The slight angle of a body towards another. Our hands resting at the ends of our arms. The feel of your fingers. The bones in them. Arms for hugging and hurting. For both. Our choice. And our dilemma. Our brains designed to learn not lecture. Nourish not repress. So why the shouting. The possession. The demand to do as you say. Be how you want me to be. I think a human would rather hug than hurt. Do you agree? So why then do we hurt each other so much. Watching the barbs hit home then feeling that grim sense of satisfaction as we mangle another’s thinking with our own words.
And our language does not only consist of words. Maybe words are fifty percent of what we mean. Do you think? Fifty percent? Eighty percent? Yet, many of us choose to communicate in this medium of written words and pictures. No bodies. No smell. No flesh. No blood. No sound. No roll and dip of voice. No audience. No opportunity to touch or refrain from the touching. No body language to hang our responses on.
In this medium we only have half the story.
You will read this and fill the gaps in my narrative with your own sounds and your own scent. Your hand on the window as the rain falls eagerly outside. Do you feel a chill or a promise? We all feel the rain differently. Informing our responses from our histories.
I grew up on a beach so the rain for me is mingled with the whip of salt spray from a stormy sea. My breath keeps reaching for that sharp briny hit. To fill my mouth with it. My senses feel the absence of that salt, out here on the prairies where there is no sea.
And that is good.
I am reminded of this when I’m editing our evening videos on TKG Take Ten. When I hear the birds singing in the screen, and I also hear other birds singing outside. In the same moment. When timestamps overlap. I have to resist being informed by the here and now and instead focus on the recording of the recent past. Blot out the present in a way. It is hard! I can hear morning birds on my screen when I am hearing afternoon birds from outside the window. It is curious. It is a curious juxtaposition.
And now it is early morning. Another dawn without a dawn. Just that slow rising of light into the deep cloud. It is raining outside. Still. It’s been raining on and off all night. At different times in the night I reach up and touch the glass above my bed. Feeling if the temperature has dropped. Feeling a frisson of anxiousness about the storm. Listening for the sea. Worrying for the fishermen in their boats but there are no fishermen here.
Mr Flowers and I will not be going outside very much today. A dark rainy day is my favorite kind of day for writing. I don’t want to waste a minute.
Do you feel that too?
How are things over your way?
Celi
See you this evening on TKG Take Ten. Probably a video of rain. ☔️ I think. 💭 But from where.
The Kitchen's Garden 
36 responses to “We are All from Different Worlds”
I think one can become an expert(over time) by reading, thinking and writing about things. However, writing can be more easily misinterpreted than a face to face discussion. I would definitely rather hug than hit, but there are an awfull lot of angry people out there …and not just men.
oh you are so right! Anger and meanness is not just men at all. In fact all the angry mean people I see out here are women.
Oh no!
I agree there is a lot of free floating anger out there. I attribute this to a general uncertainty and fear about the future. We are living in unsettled times worldwide. The cost and benefit of the internet is that we are exposed to events and beliefs from around the world almost immediately, should we choose to tune in. Last thing to say is that animals provide all of us with a more immediate and personal awareness of the earth under our feet.
I was just saying that to Him Indoors yesterday. How sad I was for people who could not look out their window and over the backs of cows and across the fields. How lucky we were. And how I loved sharing it on the blog and TKGTake Ten. He had no idea what i was talking about but I think you do. Have a fab weekend!
ROFL – I suppose John has grown up with it and just thinks it’s normal. I think you give the world a little piece of the Farmy and that, potentially, makes their lives better 😉
I think so too. And I enjoy it immensely.
I love seeing all the animals on the Farmy – it make me happy!
Sadly, in this day of social media, so many are losing the knack of simple conversation. My granddaughter came for a visit last weekend and brought two of her friends from school. I had to remind them of our house rule of no cell phones at the dining table, and I think it never occurred to them that everyone needn’t be sitting in their own little pod while enjoying a meal together. They think they are including all their ‘friends’ in their lives, but really they are mostly sending photos and emojis. I do worry that people are losing their ability to read each other, their moods and needs, through body language and tones of voice.
But I also think the horses are out of the barn!
yes!! The horse has definitely bolted. But maybe we can find new horses and barns. Do you think?
I think that is truly a possibility, as I am ever hopeful!
Me too! I love our positive natures.
I’d much prefer a glass half full!
Speaking of which- it IS Friday!!
Yes! The weekend begins!
When have human beings ever had the ability to converse well? By this I mean active give-and-take with a high degree of listening on both sides? And thoughtful response? Maybe in your family. Cherish it.
I guess I have been lucky, a family that loves to talk and a wonderful group of chatty friends. There’s always the oddball, but that is what makes life interesting, all those differences that sometimes we have to maneuver.
I always prefer speaking with people in person. I tell my kids this all the time. I want and NEED to see their body and how it reacts, want to watch their small gestures and movements as their voices change depending on what the topic is. I want to sit just inches or feet from them, make human close contact with them. We are all different and come with different perspectives but there is something necessary about sitting across from someone and looking them in the eye, feeling their presence as you speak, watching what their body says even more than their words…
We get rain this weekend as well. I will be dog sitting with Lila, my sons large terrier mix who likes to sleep on her back with her feet in the air.
Lila and BooBoo must be cousins! I can’t wait to sit with each of my children and the people. I feel blind not being able to see them.
Three of my daughters took me out for lunch today(for mother’s day, they know l don’t want “things”) l just sat and watched them laugh, joke and do some childhood reminiscing together. It was joyous to see how well they get on and communicate. A lifetime of interacting! I am SO lucky!
Isn’t that just the best. Those moments when you see your kids chatting with each other. How lovely! A lunch. I am very envious on this dreary dreary day. I often threaten to take myself out to lunch.
I wish l could take you out to lunch😊
Me too.
I’ve come to feel that even when face to face we, as individuals, all view the world and the actions of others through our own very idiosyncratic lens. Our interpretation is always underlaid by our previous life history, the situations that we have been involved in and the resolutions of those situations. Certainly our life history won’t be identical with theirs or in many cases not even close. So jumping to what seems to you to be a logical conclusion about the meaning of their words or actions is generally not a good idea. It’s necessary for us to try to get more information from the source which sometimes will help us come to a more valid assessment of what’s been said or done.
Yes! Conversations. We need to talk and talk and talk ! Thank you so much for this Victoria – well said.
Tis’ true. We can write and read but sometimes we need to do and be. We’re about to head off, much needed from time to time, on a little roadtrip to catch up with further away friends, family and places.
I love your travels!! Have fun.
On another note, Happy International Women’s Day!!! 🥳💃🏽🤸♂️
Wish that came with a few dollars for us international women!
Fully agree with each point you have made in your first paragraph but after a decade wandering around the world by how much we have learned and daily do so about likeminded people half the world away. There are differences in understanding however hard one tries if one relies only on the written mode. More than once I have sent warm fun messages into the ether for them to be interpreted as serious and critical! Personally it has been my experience that a 5-minutephone call will ‘solve’ any issue forever . . . admittedly dozens of such have ended up being hour-long funfests! That said . . . I really don’t think anyone wastes their time on posts like yours unless they have positivity and a’learning experience’ on their mind . . ,.
yes! I can see how ‘someone wasting their time on posts like mine’ could be misinterpreted! 😀 Take care.
Oh Celi – This one you seem to have read 150% incorrectly! See what I mean . . . !!! bestest . . .
Every other Thursday I meet up with my sister – caretaker for a declining husband for 13 years now, my sister-in-law – windowed for a year and a half. I have been widowed for 6 years now. We share happy news and sad news, we bitch and moan and laugh and enjoy a (long) lunch out. We are not alike at all and we truly try to hold each other up. We all pretty much live by the adage that you don’t have eat words you don’t say.
Is it six years now? I love how you are all so different yet get together – I miss having groups of friends like that. I think sometimes that leaving NZ was a mistake – I have had a wild and fun time but I lost my people. I love that you still have your people.
I love to read some. I like to write some.
Nice.