If you know what I mean! :D

Does it happen to anyone of us out there that we say something to someone and the other person interprets it into a different meaning which we didn’t mean to convey?

If you say – No, then you are lying. Every Human brain is like ‘Harley Davidson’ bike. They all look the same (of same model) yet they are different from other. The only difference is how many times or how often does it happens with us.

Like with me – it happens every 2^nd time! I don’t know where I go off the track or why I am so much prone to these situations where my opinion does not match with that of the other person.

Is it because people come from different background, culture and education levels or it’s their attitude, ego, stubbornness which calls the clash!

I am still in the middle of the quest trying to find out the answer to - "How we can speak in such a way that our exact emotions and meaning is conveyed to the other person?"

Weird? Not exactly.

As I said earlier every one of us has come across this situation one or other time where we meant something else than what it ended up being comprehended.

So what happened?

Why our message was not delivered with the real meaning?

I've been thinking lately about the way people can view the same thing so differently. The same work can be something one person loathes, another is completely undecided toward, and a third loves so much they fall all over themselves to tell everyone how incredible it is.

Maybe it's because I come from a scientific and technical background where algorithms decide how something will work but my views and thoughts are always anthropological which is bloody fascinating to me. It's so interesting to think about what it is that leads people to their different subjective views, and even more interesting to think about what the actual "quality" of the work itself is since no one's opinion is more accurate or true than another's.

We should not comment or discuss someone’s life without their involvement and permission so not taking the real life scenario; I’d pick my opinion about the stories we read in the books and novels. How for one of us a character is the linchpin of the story and to another it was merely a player. I've tried to analyze my own preferences and I think it probably goes, in order of what's most important to me in a story or series:

1) Characters I connect with

2) Character development

3) Good plot (bonus points if it's intricate or keeps me guessing)

4) Grammar/other editing accuracies (it bothers me the least unless it just changes the meaning of the story)

For me, it's about the characters. Period. If I don't like the protagonists or don't understand/connect with them, it's really hard for me to get into a story, no matter how brilliant the plot or world or writing may be.

I used to think writing style was at the bottom of my list because if I love the characters, I will even read things that are difficult to understand due to being written so poorly – but I think that wouldn't be accurate if I did. I've since been met with stories that sound like they'll have a good plot but the writing style isn't one I normally incline toward and I don't feel a strong enough connection to the characters to carry me through it.

So once more it probably comes back to characters for me.

Well, it's probably about the characters for everyone to some extent, because isn't that why we spend so many hours reading and watching stories about fictional people doing fictional things? When we go to watch a movie, don’t we just start imagining ourselves as the male/female protagonist if we like the characters and sometimes we even start living those fiction characters in our life as well for a short (but considerable) period of time?
We all remember doing “Bade bade desho mein choti choti baatein hoti rehti hai, Senorita (In big countries, silly things happen all the time, Senorita!)” once in our life time. Or “Rishtey mein toh hum tumhare baap lagte hai, naam hai Shehanshah!” and “The name is Bond, James Bond!”

What were we doing in those moments? We were living those ‘Characters’ right! But I'd be curious to see if everyone else would put their ‘Must Haves’ in the same order I do.

Is grammar more important than characters or character development for some people? Do some put plot above all else?

Well like I said in the beginning, every human brain is different and we all have different views about a same story and its characters. For my friend Aman, ‘Mogambo’ was the good guy in the movie Mr. India and similarly I think ‘Karna’ was the most outstanding character among all the other characters in the Hindu Mythology book ‘Mahabharata’ after ‘Bhishma Pitamaha’.

Coming back to the opening discussion, how and why our thoughts get conveyed different from our words?

I think a lot of dynamics are responsible for it. Sometimes it’s our tone, or word choice, mood of the other person, your mood as a matter of fact, people around you, sometimes we know we are lying to the other person but we are terrible liars and hence get caught.

Sometimes we try to act smart, intelligent and sophisticated and that pretence kills the scene or sometimes we are actually smart, intelligent and sophisticated but the person at the other end is naïve and novice which again puts us in the back seat because we didn’t deal with the situation as it should have been.

Also, sometimes it’s just the other person who does not want to understand and has already made a conclusion.

Every story has three parts: a beginning, middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that some of the stories don't go on forever. I think it’s just because while we write that story, we don’t care enough to give attention to our co-partner, the other person with you in the story. We consider ourselves as the protagonist and create our character as good as possible and overlook the fact that if it’s a story, it entails two characters (at least). And the funny part is that we have developed a habit of giving excuses for everything we do wrong.

“He didn’t deserve me”

“I don’t deserve him.”

“We love each other but we have made an understanding that if our families oppose it, we’d be apart.” (Dam’t you got to be kidding me with that crap!)

“Why should I go and try to explain him again? If he really loves me so much, he should understand me in the first time already.” (Oh c’mon… if you ‘really’ love him so much you won’t care to explain it to him a million times, lady!)

“It’s okay it was not that important.” (That’s where the problem starts; it’s always a small lightning which blows off the whole building later.)

Sometimes other people around us influence us and we end up in misunderstanding what the other person meant to say.

What I want to say via this write-up is you should have people those love you around you as long as possibly can. We do not know how much time we have to be with the ones we want to be with.  So enjoy it. Value it. Preserve it. Talk as much as you can. Talk as many times as you can.

If you love someone, tell them right away after reading this article. Pick that cell phone and type those three words and hit the ‘SEND’ button.

If you had a fight last night, tell her you’re sorry and all that matters to you is her happiness and not that stupid China bowl you were arguing about.

If you are away from someone, tell that person that you will see him soon.

We live in a shallow world and with today’s competitive corporate life we have, we miss a lot. We miss to talk things out. We wait for the weekends and we never get that weekend because every weekend we say to ourselves “I’ve got one weekend, I’ll not spoil it over an argument.”

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. Talk about everything.

And if you think you can’t talk to him/her, let me give you a secret!

Write… write everything you wanna say to her/him. Write a handwritten note, may be on a napkin or on the backside of a visiting card. Write honestly. Write from your heart.

Just write!

SaNj