But that's not what I meant ..

Yesterday, Susan and I had one of those experiences where you simply cannot stop laughing! You know the kind of belly laughing that makes you cry if you try and say anything while you’re in hysterics?

Each evening after I’ve written the story for that day, I send it to Susan to spell check and grammar check and generally sense check (this one will go to her in about 30 mins for example).

So we’re relaxing in the sitting room and I say ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you .. you know the Richard Branson story from Monday last week?’

‘Yes’ she said, half interested.

‘Well when I said he came up and had breakfast, it was surreal .. I spelt it wrong and it auto corrected it and changed it to cereal! He came up and had breakfast, it was cereal! And then you sent it out!’

We both cracked up! It’s making me laugh now just typing it.

 

Susan couldn't stop laughing, 'I thought you meant wow, he's a billionaire but so normal he eats cereal just like we do!!'

That wasn’t what I meant, but that’s what she thought I meant!

I remember listening to a top speaker 10 years ago and as part of his presentation he said ‘A servant’s worth is higher.’

I thought, wow, that is good .. the worth of a servant is higher than his master .. I’m gonna think about that .. is there more value than in serving I wonder? And I really thought about it .. for months. In fact it was several years later that I realised what he had actually said was ‘A servant’s worth his hire!’ (in fact I just googled it and realise that it is from the Bible! A labourer is worthy of his wages .. not what I thought it meant at all ..)

That’s what the speaker meant all along, but that’s not what I thought he meant!

When we think about something like that, we tend to see it and hear it and think about it, not as it is .. nor as it is intended .. but as we are. We project meaning onto it, don’t we?

It’s possible to totally misunderstand what someone means, even with the best of intentions.

Someone recommended the Lamsa translation of the Bible to me years ago. The thing that I will always remember about the back cover is that Lamsa highlights some mistranslations, one of which is ‘.. it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle ..’ According to Lamsa, the Aramaic word gamla means rope and camel, possibly because the ropes were made of camel hair. One makes more sense (to me at least) than the other .. but I always pictured the camel and thought it odd (obviously I’m not an expert in the Bible, I just found this interesting when I read it).

But how often, I wonder, misunderstandings arise from the reader or listener taking a different meaning from what the author or speaker originally intended?

If it happens when listening to a speaker, or reading a book, it probably also happens in conversations and in relationships doesn’t it? And that’s without even getting started on emails and text messages!

My good friend, Paul Martinelli, has a fantastic teaching on DRAMA .. he says people often look to be offended! It doesn’t make any sense initially, does it .. Why would you LOOK to be offended? But we all know people like that don’t we?

People who go through life falling out with everyone they get close to, because of something that was said, that they found themselves thinking .. ‘I wonder what they mean by that ..?’ And then taking offence.

The bottom line is: communication can often be imprecise; and we are all human - we likely offend other people just as often as we are offended. Of course there are nasty, mean, rude people in the world - but probably not as many as it may appear!

So we have two obligations: 

 

One - stop, take a breath, think .. is there another way of seeing this before we are determined to take offence?

AND two .. think through carefully how we can more clearly communicate, so we don’t give some people the opportunity they’re looking for to fly off the handle, or simply to be confused or misinformed.  It saves a lot of time in the long run, and well chosen words will more likely leave your listeners feeling refreshed and blessed.