The other day I spent time with a friend who'd had outpatient surgery. My role was to see to it that she got her pain pills and to keep her awake until the next dose. We decided to play cards. I was amazed that she could see to do it. We had some laughs as she made some plays that I thought were completely illegal. We both compromised but it made for a rather weird game.
Well, I have been playing cards on the computer and guess what? We were both right for the games we were playing but we were playing different games! She was playing a form of Rummy and I was playing Gin! Nearly the same, but significantly different. In Rummy you can add on to the others run and keep going or vice versa. In Gin you have to have a discard to go out, but not in Rummy.
Isn't that just like life? How many times have I been at cross purposes with someone and not known why? I will explain and explain and accuse the other of either not listening or willfully misunderstanding, when actually we weren't playing the same game. Or not on the same page, and sometimes, not in the same universe.
I have lived in Minnesota for over 35 years and I still misunderstand and am misunderstood. I come from NY and inadvertently hurt others by being direct. I also get in trouble for not knowing the code. For example, I planned an event for a certain day and my boss told me to try to find another date because she "wasn't comfortable with that day." I could not find another day that worked and went ahead. She confronted me and asked why I did it when she told me not to. I explained that she didn't say not to do it, just that she would prefer it on a different day if possible because she wasn't comfortable with it. How could I play when I didn't know the rules?
How much of the misery of what had been a happy marriage was because we were miscommunicating? All the communication workshops in the world can't help when one person is trying to state as clearly as possible what she is trying to say and the other is speaking in a subtle code. She gets louder, in hopes of being understood and he gets quieter and stops trying. Subtlety is lost on me.
I am not a mindreader. I have hurt the people I love by sometimes saying the way I think or feel in a less than tactful way. Recently I realized that someone I care about was giving off waves of dislike while trying to smile. Sometimes it gets through to someone as clueless as me. I care about this person and every person in that household. I am so sorry for making them feel bad.
What game am I playing? Am I winning or losing? I sure hope to have fun participating whether I know the rules or make them up on the spot.
Some of us belong to a place more than others. We carry it with us. Some of us belong to too many places, or nowhere at all, explicitly. But we recognize where we do not quite fit, no matter what we do. And we're fine with that, though in some corner of a self, we wonder what it would be like if we fit somewhere, just a little bit more.
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