Inspiration & Paradox 43: When great understanding of each other in verbal communication leads to great misunderstanding in others

It seems paradoxical that the more you understand how and what the other person thinks, the lesser the verbal signals you will provide, and the more bizarre the conversation can become for outsiders, and the greater the misunderstanding it could cause in others. Give you an example that I encountered this morning:

I hit my little toe real hard against an old table leg accidentally this morning. It was excruciatingly pain, and I told my husband that I was going to sell the table to the “garong gunu” man (man who goes from house to house to look for old stuff to buy) as it was getting too much in my way. I said I will sell it for 100 bucks. He said the garong gunu man would laugh. Even though I knew that he actually meant my price was ridiculously high and I was asking too much, I purposely added “you mean the garong gunu man will be too thrilled to know that it’s only 100 bucks, ok, then let it be 200 bucks, how about that”. I knew my husband understood that I wasn’t serious about it and I also knew he wasn’t serious and what he meant exactly when he next said with a plain smile on his face – “Okay, 200 bucks then”. That’s how our conversation on the table ended. And I thought in my heart no outsider would ever understand our kind of language. Interestingly, many things are somehow left unspoken when two persons know each other well enough to interpret words the way they are supposed and intended to mean.