The Art of Misunderstanding
Recently I was out to lunch with a dear friend when she told me to" Stop It". I had been speaking in a self-deprecating manner without realizing it. I took her words as an admonishment. I got reactive. "It's not your job to fix me," I returned. "I'm not trying to fix you--it just hurts me to hear you talk about yourself that way." We got a little heated trying to flesh it out all the way. But ultimately it was a tune-up for our communications. It had been building up for a long time... years? Prior to this lunch date I had already been reflecting on the Art of Misunderstanding. It seems to me that so much of life is filled with misunderstandings that there should be a play-book for how to make them turn into a growth moment. But the fact is, life moves so quickly at times, and we have so many communications within a day (and this is ofcourse variable, depending on one's circumstances), that they aren't that easy to track and revise in-...