Tangible Truth

I fondly recall one of my good friends from college sharing her initial thoughts about my personality, "At first I thought you were an ass, then I discovered you had a heart and weren't such a jerk." That truth used to smarted, but now I can read it and laugh. People skills still aren't my forte, but like a good wine mine are still improving with age (or if they are continually getting worse I'm naively oblivious and duped by my own awesomeness). Her initial evaluation of me was based on her tangible experiences of things I had said in my classes. (Which I found odd, because I consider intellectual pursuits impersonal (except when it's my research!) requiring a side step from emotions, while attempting an objective look.) I guess what changed her perception of my ass-itudes was my dry and puny humor. Especially when my humor was so dry and my statements so obtuse that their sheer ridiculousness caused even the most callous and closed off person in the room to bust out laughing (most of the time that was me). But seriously, when you and the professor are sharing an open philosophy joke and no one else gets it, its still funny. Even though you might look like a jerk. Which helps me get to our point: why do we experience miscues, misunderstandings and miscommunications in the best of intentions? What is it in our communication that cause us to erroneously judge each other, then discover we've erroneously judged?

For starters we can look at language games. I'm not talking balderdash, scrabble or that other game that hence shall not be named where you say silly things trying to guess a silly phrase and sound like you have no clue what you're saying (yep I forgot the name of the game). I'm talking about spending time in someone's presence, learning how they communicate, and understanding why they sound like a total jerk, even though they might be nice. This game could be called, "The Art of Learning Culture" it takes a lifetime to learn how to play and the rules keep changing. Seriously, THE RULES KEEP CHANGING! One of our greatest joys is that life goes on, but sometimes it goes on without us noticing. We get distracted by our focuses: the important things in life that steal our attention from the people around us. We can get so focused on a task (developing our own way of talking about something we're discovering) that we lose out on talking with others about the rest of life. If we solely focus on one thing in life, it may consume us and hinder us from talking with others. Not talking in the sense of saying, "Hey how's it going?" But in the sense that our singular passion, that effects everything we do and is the sum total of all things we live for, drives others away because people don't know how to talk about other things with us. Until they catch a glimpse of our humanity (or sense of humor).

Why?

It's hard to understand people not like us. And by not like us I mean: play a different sport, study a different subject, come from another town (state or country), speak a different language (sprechen sie etwas anderen?), have a bigger body, have a smaller body, wear funky clothes, have funky hair or are permutatively different from us (maybe their vocabulary is one size too large). Our differences can makes us forget that we are all the same. The way we express ourselves might change and is not the same from every mountain to hill, but we are all made out of the same dust. What's amazing about our dust? It doesn't sit in the same place. It moves. It changes. It grows. It waxes. It wanes. It shows.

Our expressions of speech and the expressions of our faces are constantly changing; we are not meant to get stuck in one way of being, even though we may be meant to get stuck in a subject of study (it keeps evolving and changing the longer we spend time staring, prodding and questioning it). For example, I'm learning that the gravitational force of the sun bends light around it, not towards it. My basic understanding is floored; I thought gravity sucked. I'm not saying I'm going to study the properties of light in the universe for the rest of my life, but I am saying that the shifting of focus can help us reach new insights and keep us from becoming stagnant.

And that's exactly what humor and shared joy does, it keeps us from being stagnant and reminds us that 'others' aren't the stagnant objects in the universe we thought they were.

In the moment of a shared joke, something happens. When we decide to let our walls down and crack a smile (maybe even a giggle or two (who giggles anymore chuckles are the proper way to laugh!)), the person laughing and the person telling them joke have a shared moment of comradery. It's this moment of comradery that begins to break down our preconceived notions of who the other person is, and whether or not we can enjoy them. Because life is about joy. About finding things we love to do and pursuing them. Even though pursuing our joy takes us through some very dry and dusty places. And maybe, just maybe those asses are misunderstood nice people :)