I Wonder Why
Well of course I wonder about all manner of things. Why, for example, when we have the potential to be so much more than we are, we turn out to be just the way we are. Why is that? Why, when we owe so much to those who have gone before and paved the way for us, do we forget what we owe those pioneers? Why don't we use our brains to their full, or even partial potential? Why do we so often view strangers as...strange? Why do we have a public persona and a private one? Does this mean that we are ashamed of who we truly are, or does it possibly mean we want to keep ourselves to ourselves, protect our privacy.
On this particular occasion my whys belong to none of the above. I wonder why someone like me feels restrained in certain ways. I can understand restraint when being with strangers, although truth to tell, so many of us, myself including behave in a rather unrestrained manner with strangers. And why is that? Do we feel that because they are strangers whatever we say will not come back to haunt us? Is that it?
All right, let's cut to the chase. My oldest son, now 45 years old, has a habit of speaking very softly. When I speak on the telephone with him I have to concentrate, focus my attention, lest I miss something. But no matter how hard I try to listen to his every word I invariably let something important drift by me. Actually, I don't 'let' anything drift by, it's that his voice carries through the line in a most inadquate way, so that I cannot hear distinctly, quite often, just what he is saying. So why, for heaven's sake, don't I ask him to speak louder, more distinctly, for me. I believe I know why. I fear hurting his feelings. Silly as it is, that's what I think. The end result is that he will tell me something and I will respond with queries or conclusions totally inappropriate to what he has told me. When he responds to that his voice has an edge to it, a slight annoyance. Such as to say what's the matter with her anyway, can't she hear what I'm saying, doesn't she understand my meaning? Well, no - to both. And I think of my conversations with my mother, my impatience with her, with her responses to things I said in the past. I concluded, all too often, that too many things were beyond her understanding, that she was simple. Mea culpa.
Hey, not really. She was simple. And simply frustrating. Is this what happens to people when they become old and older? I'm getting there. Is it really legitimate to compare my experience with my mother to that with my oldest son and our difficulty in communicating over the telephone? No such difficulty that I know of occurs when we speak face to face. Which, admittedly, isn't that often given that we live in different cities.
I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, fairly well read, and fully engaged with the world and everything that occurs within it. I'd like to believe he feels likewise about me. What if he really feels the way I did about my mother? Egad. Truth is, my mother wasn't dreadfully intelligent. Not stupid by any means, but obtuse and stubborn; her education was notoriously lacking. Not that one cannot acquire a good life's-experience kind of education, but I don't feel she ever did. She had a dull mind, and that's that.
Moving on. When I speak with my granddaughter, a nine-year-old child who is quite intelligent, enjoys an excellent vocabulary for her age, and is pleasingly articulate, I have the same kind of problem. Not face to face. But over the telephone. When she's communicating something to me over the telephone I can barely make out her words at times. Now, with her I do ask that she repeat what she's said. And guess what? Makes little difference. There was a time when she tended to slur her words in keeping with the lingua franca of small children, but she really doesn't any more. I try to respond to what I think she has said to me and guess what? Way off key. Then she indicates a slight impatience with me, and insists I didn't understand, repeating what she had really said. And the light comes on.
I don't think I'm becoming heard of hearing. It's possible, I imagine, at age 68 to experience a diminishment of aural ability. But in my case I don't think that's what's happened. Truth to tell, I believe I've always had a bit of a disconnect in aural communication. In fact I know I have. And the funny thing is, when that has happened, and I realize it has happened off and on for as long as I can recall, even back to when I was a young girl, I felt ashamed, somehow responsible, inadequate to the situation at hand. I would always hesitate to ask someone to repeat their statement or question, and try to overcome the difficulty as best I could.
Odd, isn't it? It's the manner or behaviour of someone who is self-contained and also suffers from low self esteem. But I don't consider myself to be a shy person or someone who suffers from low self esteem. I am, rather, a fairly self-assured person. I take pride in my level of understanding of people and situations, the information I have been able to assimilate and broaden my realization of the world and its denizens; I am a fairly well informed person.
Just the way it is. Is it? Is it pride then that stops me from admitting I need more information, that I haven't understood something? No, it's not that I haven't understood what I have heard, it is that I haven't heard, so understanding could not be forthcoming. It is pride, nonetheless, the fear of being thought to be slow, stupid, uncomprehending that keeps me from requesting a repeat statement, elucidation. Is there any reasonable cure for this? Ah, do I truly care?
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 06, 2005
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