Hear the talk:
In my previous talk I wondered about what is news -- what is new -- what is worth reading about in a newspaper, and what our newspaper tend to publish.
They publish disaster, sensational news, and I am not saying such matters do not fascinate, titillate, sell copies, but somehow such news, which really is not news because it happens always, everywhere, such news swamps what should be set before us as real news.
“It is now accepted in the social sciences that males & females perceive verbal and non-verbal clues in different ways and therefore are exceptionally good at misunderstanding each other.”
These words need to be printed in our newspapers. “males & females…are exceptionally good at misunderstanding each other.” The public needs to be made aware of this concept. This is new, and this is news, and this is something I can think about, do something about. This can impact my life.
What impact does the death of thousands far away have on me. Yes, I feel for them as much as one can. Yes, I should be told about this. But a constant diet of mayhem & disasters does little but overwhelm me. I need information I can use to make my life better, to make the life of those around me better.
“Males and Females perceive verbal and non verbal clues in different ways.” Perception is not factual, it is personal, biased. As one person said “we see things not as they are, but as we are.” And that really is why males & females perceive verbal and nonverbal cues in different ways.”
I will give you a couple of small examples of how “we see things as we are, not as they are.” Long ago I remember how, on some days, my two young boys almost drove me crazy careening around the house, and I screamed at them, told them to cut it out. I also remember a sudden realization a few days later: they were behaving just as they had behaved only a few days ago when I screamed at them, and yet on this day the behavior did not bother me, just seemed like good fun, boisterous but not dangerous.
On some days I was harassed, harried, any action was distraction. On some days I had nothing to do but be with them & entertain them. I suddenly saw that it was not their behavior that mattered, but my mood. We see things not as they are, but as we are.
Second example. We go see a movie, think it is the most wonderful movie ever made. We see it again a few years later & wonder what it was we saw that made us think this rather mediocre movie was wonderful. We see things not as they are, but as we are.
Our mood, our maturity or immaturity, the time of day, good grief -- who know what conspires to make us feel as we feel at that moment -- but one thing is certain, men see things differently than women -- and we perceive verbal and non-verbal clues in different ways and are therefore exceptionally good at misunderstanding each other.”
It took my wife and I many emotional misunderstandings before we realized that, married though we be, we seem to be particularly good at misunderstanding each other.
What do we do about it? Well, we are suddenly not surprised when we misunderstand each other, and though we do get upset, we do understand. That is the nature of the beast: men & women, husbands and wives, are exceptionally good at misunderstanding one another. So Long
Copyright © 2007 Henry Morgenstein