I didn't have a lot of time to meditate today, Equation. I was too busy dealing with loud, imprecise attempts to communicate. So tonight I would like to know - How can communication be so difficult?!?
Communication is entirely predicated on a mutual understanding of context. Words, gestures, noises - they all mean nothing without an agreed upon context. And agreed upon context is built up through shared experience. So some portion of what I have experienced must match some portion of what you have experienced in order for us to be able to communicate.
Some critical part of what I am/understand/expect must match some part of what you are/understand/expect in order for the message that I send you to be received as I intended it. And in order for a 100% understanding of message, intent, and context to occur, sender and receiver must be identical. This means that, while we may understand enough about the messages we receive to be able to take the appropriate actions, we can never be completely certain that we have understood all the nuances of the messages. That's depressing.
It's a miracle that anything gets effectively communicated when you really stop to think about it. (Ooh, miracle - am I allowed to use that word in here?)
Seriously though... Upon considering how much of our conscious experience is spent communicating with others or in thinking about past or future communications with others, I have to wonder - Why is communication so important and yet so complicated? What kind of a design is that? Why this tug of war between the experience of an isolated self and the desire to mirror/match someone else in order to communicate?
I want to lapse into my quasi-mystical vision of The Equation and believe that this tension expresses a fundamental truth about our nature... A variable in an equation possesses an identity of its own, but its value at any given time is dependent upon the values of the other elements of the equation. How it is expressed depends entirely upon the other elements of the equation.
Symbolizing a dual nature... Not bad, Equation. You continue to impress me.
