palabras

It can be interesting, to read a dialogue, noticing overall trends more than when we're in the moment, responding to each moment.  I'm not the most relaxed person and it shows even when I'm chatting.  Martial arts instructors are always telling me to relax, too.  It's similar in that I'm just trying really hard to get it right.

Most people are very imprecise.  We have this instinct to assume similarities, unless given reason to think otherwise.  So in being imprecise, we can think we're agreeing, when we're actually talking about totally different things.  Great strategy for getting along with each others, but how connected are we if we're not really paying attention to each other?  I suspect people misunderstand each other this way all the time.

I try really hard to understand and to be understood, and successful or not, it can be awkward.  I don't enjoy the sort of banter where we don't really care.  I can relax just fine, it's just that I'll be more non-verbal if I do.

This gets at something I really like about internet interactions.  In text we get to know each other's thoughts in such a way that allows more time to think and process, to remember. I think something can even be lost when we stop doing it.  We forget these deeper parts of the people closest to us.

What our senses tell us feels the most unimpeachable truth, but our minds interpret our senses through what we think we know, missing all that we don't.  One example was this time someone I was with was crying.  She kept saying that she didn't know why she was crying, she wasn't sad.  It was so difficult to wrap my brain around the idea that this person, showing obvious signs of anguish, was having a response to the shrooms she'd taken.  Her words didn't match what was right in front of me.  I believed my eyes instead of her words, and it wasn't until later, in retrospect, that it seemed stupidly obvious.

Of course this isn't everything.  It's a part of who we are, other parts come through more in person, and some will always be unknowable.