I stare across the table at my lovely wife. I know I'm wearing a blank expression, and no doubt she can see the wheels spinning through my eyes. During a lull in my response to the conversation, she attempted to finish my sentence for me and couldn't have been more wrong. I smile. We've sometimes laughed at these situations; however, we generally marvel that after 39 years of marriage, we still don't know what each other is thinking. I don't know if our inability to read each other's minds is erotic or chaotic, but it is something we have had to deal with our entire married life.
Communication is tricky, and I remember as a young man watching the series *Star Trek Next Generation* as the lovely Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) attempts to explain the nuance of communication to Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Holding up her tea glass, Deanna says, "S'smarith." then she asks Picard, "what did I just say? " The captain responds, "cup... glass." Ms. Troi responds, "are you sure? I may have meant liquid. Clear. Brown. Hot. We conceptualize the universe in relatively the same way. " Without a standard frame of reference, it is impossible to know. [1]
"We need to trim this bush back," my new bride Linda says as we leave our meager apartment on our way to class. We recently eloped, and due to circumstances, not everyone knows we are married yet, not even my parents. We live in the basement of an old house a couple of blocks off campus. The entrance is in the back, causing us to walk around the side of the place where the offending bush has overgrown our narrow walkway. During the rainy season, the scrub sheds water on whoever is first to pass through the narrow confines. It took me weeks to realize that "we" meant "me" in the new context of marriage.
Many years later, while on a vacation trip to Beijing, China, just before the 2008 Olympics. Beijing was making an impressive effort to install all the needed infrastructure, including restrooms that held "seated toilets," not simply "squat toilets" that are common to the country. After washing my hands in the sink, I stared at the sign on the hand drier that read "it is wrong" in English. Chinese characters were above the words, and I realized that the unit was "out of order" or "it is broken."
Communication will always be the most challenging part of any relationship. Whether the communication is between husband and wife, boss and employee, two countries, or someday perhaps between Earth and an alien race, getting the nuance right is critical. I stare across the table at the lovely female species, so foreign to me, in thought and action; I know one thing for sure, patience will always be the key. I gently correct her on my final points of the conversation and smile, knowing what I just said probably causes me to grow snake scales and yellow eyes for all the sense it made to her.
Written September 12, 2022
References:
[1] (https://www.quotes.net/mquote/864331)