"I didn't mean…"
My old reliable pair of
wrap-around-my-glasses, 100% UV-blocking sunglasses broke recently, and
the replacement pair I picked up had dark golden-orange lenses. When I
first wore them I had a hard time finding our car in a crowded parking
lot: the bright blue that I'm looking for is a dull green through the
lenses. Which was to be expected. The real surprise was the first time
I took them off after wearing them for an extended period on a very
bright day.
I took them off moments after coming into the
house. All the curtains were closed, and I had accidently left one of
the fourescent lights in the living room on when I left. The room
seemed flooded with an eery blue light. It was almost unearthly. I
spent several seconds trying to figure out where the weird light was
coming from, until I realized that it was an illusion. I'd been wearing
the lenses that filtered out the blue end of the light spectrum long
enough that my brain had started adjusting the image---adding virtual
blue to everything, as it were. So when I got into a low-light
situation where the existing illumination was skewed slightly toward
the blue, all that blue was exaggerated.
Our brain does stuff like that for us all the
time. Usually it's helpful---we don't have to spend long moments
studying every situation, because the brain is so good at extrapolating
from incomplete information. Unfortunately, that ability can also cause
problems, and not just when things we see.
I was chatting with an acquaintance recently,
and he was going on a bit about how mean, selfish, and inconsiderate
most people are. It's a litany we've all heard, and may have even
repeated ourselves a few times. But this particular rant was getting a
bit over the top, so I finally said, "You know, not everyone is as bad
as all that. There are at least as many nice people as mean people in
the world, it's just easier to notice the bad."
He became quite incensed and even defensive.
He insisted that his perception was accurate and resented me calling
him a liar.
Except I hadn't called him a liar. I
apologized for upsetting him, and tried to re-explain what I meant.
Eventually I figured out what the problem was. When I had said that not
everyone is as bad as his examples, what he heard me say was that his
examples were not as bad as he claimed. When I said that we run into
considerate folks as often as rude and thoughtless ones, he heard me
say that everyone he encountered were actually polite and nice. Which
aren't the same things at all. As I tried to rephrase things, he
insisted that I had said exactly that, but now was trying to backpedal.
It wasn't that he was being a jerk. Nor was he
delusional. It was a case of the brain filling in gaps. He heard the
first few words of my reply, his brain leaped ahead, anticipating where
I was going with it and started composing a retort. So that by the
midpoint of my sentence, he was only half-listening to what I was
saying. That same part of the brain picked out the words or phrases
which matched what he was expecting me to say, and distorted the rest
to make it all make sense.
He remained certain that I had said something
different than the actual words spoken because memory isn't like a
video recorder. The actual images and sounds aren't encoded indelibly
on a reliable medium. It's more like a sloppy person taking shorthand.
Or just someone trying to write a conversation by hand while it's
happening. You have to skip words, make abbreviations, scribble
side-notes in the margins, and so on, just to try to keep up. Worse than that, when we go back over a memory, we
sometimes unconciously change and edit as we go along. We recall what we thought the other person meant, not
necessarily the exact words.
And it isn't just one way.
I'm fairly certain that I said, "Not everyone
is as bad as all that," but maybe I didn't phrase it precisely that
way. We remember what we meant, not always exactly word-for-word what
we uttered. Maybe I did say something that implied he was exaggerating.
I don't know, because all I have is my own recollection. Which I may
well be altering a bit to rationalize my side of things.
We don't have a reliable way of checking
ourselves on these things. Which is why we should all give each other a
bit more slack. If someone says that didn't mean it, we should believe
them. And if someone says we said something we didn't mean to, we
should be willing to admit that maybe we did. I try to remind myself of
that, but still I feel like a complete idiot whenever I realize I
haven't afforded someone else the benefit of the doubt that I hope they
are giving me.
If you know what I mean.
--Alexander Pope
.