communication

2 posts

Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good

Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”

-Nina Simone

There are small understandings — bringing home the wrong thing for dinner because you misheard your significant other’s request — and there are absolutely huge misunderstandings. This post is about a major misunderstanding which occurred when I was a child that took years to properly sort out in my psyche.

When I was about seven, I attended the wake for a very elderly distant relative who had passed away. It was a big, Italian-American affair in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, filled with emotion, elaborate floral displays, copious food and flowing conversation. It was unsurprising that at certain points, I was left unattended, free to mingle and (hopefully for me) find someone else close to my own age to connect with. Unfortunately for me, that never happened.

I had already followed the adults in their Catholic ritual of passing the coffin, kneeling and crossing myself. The whole experience was creepy, but at least the old man in the coffin did seem to be at peace. I returned to my seat, turned to one side and held my breath in complete shock — the dead guy was sitting right next to me!  He was still alive!

What no one in my large extended family had remembered to tell me was that the man who died had an identical twin brother, who was in fact very much alive. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have felt the need to run from the room in absolute panic. I remember hiding in the women’s bathroom on the floor below the viewing area, trying to figure out what had just happened. Eventually, someone took pity on me and compassionately explained things to me, but I was still quite shaken by the experience.

My point here is that obviously, there is a difference between misunderstandings which are accidental and innocuous and those which are mean-spirited and malicious. Yet sometimes (as in the very odd circumstance I described above) even an innocuous misunderstanding can have far-reaching and lasting consequences.

I’d like to invite in the comments for you to share misunderstandings — small or large — that have stayed with you over the years (or maybe just ones that are fresh in your memory). If there is an ultimate lesson you learned, please share that also.