Bubbles

I feel like I'm in my own world sometimes (and people outside of me have confirmed this) because sometimes, I'm still in the world of whatever I'm reading. Sometimes, it may be something as simple as a newspaper article or a blog. Other times, it's the world of the books I'm reading and yet other times, it's the anime that I'm watching.

Kind of like how I mentioned in a previous post that I'm influenced by the anime I watch, or by... well just about anything, I realize too that if I get pulled into a world and its way of thinking, I see the rest of my world as such. I think it happens to a lot of people but they're just better at contextualizing where they're coming from.

For me, sometimes, I'll be in the middle of thinking a thought relative to the lens of the world I'm in and I'll say something that only makes sense relative to that world.

I suppose it really isn't a world. A context, perhaps?

Anyway, it makes me highly misunderstood and quite unfortunately, my sister is often the one who has to decode what I'm trying to say (not because she understands me more than others, though this is true as well, but by mere proximity, she is forced to hear my random nonsensical musings and try to make meaning out of them).

For example, we'll be driving somewhere and we'll pass by a billboard that has something mildly amusing. We'll have just finished a conversation about coffee or food or something unrelated and suddenly, (as if she too is seeing and thinking the same thing I am), I'll say, "That's funny."

Which means absolutely nothing to her because we were talking about something that wasn't at all funny.

She'll look at me questioningly and I'll have to backtrack and explain to her what I saw and why I thought it was funny.

This happens quite often.

I feel like at large though, this is probably the source of most miscommunication. We understand things differently, and live in different worlds, or bubbles, I suppose you could call them. Contexts would be another word.

Because of this, we are constantly trying to translate what the other person says. I don't mean those moments when you're trying analyze what a person meant when they said that they were feeling fine when they clearly weren't. Even the day to day interactions with people, the "have a nice day!" and the "thank you!" may also have different weights and meanings.

I suppose because of all this, tone, inflection and accompanying actions are so important. Yet this too requires translation - there's the whole culture thing. America, with its nuances of culture, rather than homogeneity is why sometimes this translation becomes muddled.

So the conclusion is, dealing with people is a pain in the ass. Heh.