You remember the other day when we had that pointless argument?

You were certain I was being dismissive and rude. On the other hand, I was feeling helpless because it seemed as if you couldn’t hear the words I spoke.

Actually, no. That’s not true. I didn’t feel as if you couldn’t hear. It was worse!

We can’t control the filters others choose when they look at us.

~Rachel Wolchin

I felt as if when I said RED, you only heard BLUE.  You reacted as if I said BLUE; you accused me of saying Blue. I was confused and perplexed. No matter how often I repeated the word RED, you only heard BLUE. For the life of me I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I knew I had to understand this thing that was driving a wedge between us.

Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.

~ Kahlil Gibran

For days I pondered. I recorded my voice and played it back to myself. I accosted friends and made them hear me speak. Every single time, I only heard RED. Where on earth was the BLUE coming from when I didn’t speak it? Where was the distortion happening? Was it in your ears?

It seems as if you have a filter in your ear, like a mischievous hearing aid. It is a filter that distorts words that fall upon its surface. A lying monster of a filter. It takes nectar and converts it to putrid poison! And you don’t know it! You think the world only throws poison at you all the time. What a terrible, shameful lie!

I don’t know when this monstrosity got installed in your ear. You certainly couldn’t have been born with it. No one is born with such a loaded dice, doomed to lose even before the game is begun! He doesn’t play such sick jokes on His children.

It must have got built, one false belief after another, when you were  a little tot and didn’t know a false belief from a true one. When I see the havoc this monstrosity plays in your head, I wish I could place my hand over your forehead and download your entire life- from the moment you were born until this second- to examine it frame by frame.

I wish I could be the fly on the wall while your life plays out on the screen before me. All your joys and sorrows; moments of ecstasy and those of despair; your victories and your defeats- I want to see them all; experience them all. Maybe then I’ll see how that awful thing came to be.

Well, it’s really no use our talking in the way we have been doing if the words we use mean something different to each of us…and nothing.

~Malcolm Bradbury

You know how time-lapse photography literally (and magically) erects a whole building in a jiffy, right before your eyes? That’s how I will see the thing in your ear getting built. I’ll know the pressure points of that thing and the hidden loose joints in its edifice. Then it’ll only be a question of some strategically placed sticks of dynamite and a match to a fuse.

Then, once the whole thing was razed to the foundation, I’d edit that downloaded story and upload it again, taking care to first delete the original, faulty version.

After that, I’ll be able to talk, really TALK to you. Then I’ll know that what I say and what you hear is identical. No doubt that would  be wonderful, wouldn’t it?

Next, we’ll wipe out my filter too!

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