mylifeinrambles.blog

I want to talk about something that has been bothering me. And I want to be honest that I am a little exasperated about it, because pretending I’m not would be, ironically, exactly the kind of behavior I’m about to complain about.

A lot of people do not say what they mean. A lot of people do not mean what they say. And a lot of people — this is the part that really gets me — do not understand why either of those things is a problem.

Let me break this down, because there are actually three separate failures happening here, and they’re often braided together in a way that makes each of them harder to see.

Failure one. Saying things you don’t actually mean.

This is the person who tells you they want something. A relationship. A promotion. A closer friendship. A honest conversation. Then when the thing shows up — the relationship deepens, the promotion is offered, the friend asks a real question, the honest conversation begins — they suddenly don’t want it. They back away. They get vague. They act as though the thing that has arrived is somehow different from the thing they claimed to want.

And when you point this out, gently, they say something like well, I didn’t really mean it like that. Or I meant something different. Or my personal favorite, you’re taking this too literally.

No, my friend. I am taking this exactly as literally as language works. Words have meanings. When you say I want a serious relationship, the person hearing you is going to assume you want a serious relationship. Not a fun-shaped simulation of one that dissolves the moment it becomes actually serious. If you didn’t mean serious, you needed to say something else.

This is not a communication problem. This is a self-knowledge problem. And it is a self-knowledge problem the person is passing on to everyone around them, because the rest of us have to guess what they actually meant while pretending we don’t notice that they don’t know either.

Failure two. Being sloppy with language and then blaming other people for misunderstanding you.

This one is related but subtly different. This is the person who says something, gets the natural response to what they said, and then insists that what they said isn’t what they meant. Well, that’s not what I was trying to say. You’re misunderstanding me. You’re twisting my words.

Okay. Let me try this framing. If you are consistently being misunderstood, at some point you have to consider the possibility that the problem is not that everyone in your life has poor reading comprehension. The problem is that you are choosing your words badly, or you have not thought carefully about what you actually mean before opening your mouth, or you are using vocabulary you don’t actually own — words that sound close to your point but aren’t quite it.

Being misunderstood is sometimes the fault of the listener. But if it happens all the time, in all your relationships, with many different people, the common denominator is you. And the problem is not that they can’t understand you. The problem is that you have not yet done the work of understanding yourself well enough to say what you actually mean, clearly, in the first attempt.

This is the part that really gets me. The blame gets shifted outward with an ease that would be impressive if it weren’t so tiresome. You misunderstood. You took it wrong. You’re being sensitive. You don’t get me. All of which translate to: I didn’t say what I meant, and I would like you to do the work of figuring out what I meant while also apologizing for not having figured it out yet.

That is a lot to ask. I am not going to do it. Neither should you.

Failure three. Using words without knowing what they actually mean.

This one might be the most maddening of the three, because it is also the most fixable and yet nobody seems to want to fix it.

Words have definitions. This is not a controversial claim. It is how language works. When you use a word, you are calling on the shared meaning that word carries — the meaning that dictionaries record, that everyone in the conversation is going to assume you meant when they hear it.

But a lot of people are reaching for words without actually knowing what those words mean. They use want when they mean need, and need when they mean want. They use always when they mean sometimes and never when they mean rarely, which is not just imprecise, it is inaccurate. They use soon to mean anything from in ten minutes to within the calendar year. They use fine to mean not fine. They use maybe to mean no. They use whatever to mean at least four different things depending on the tone, none of which are ever the neutral shrug the word actually is.

They tell you they are sorry when what they mean is I would like this conversation to end. They tell you they understand when what they mean is I have stopped listening. They tell you they love something when what they mean is I do not object to it. And then, when you take them at their word — because taking someone at their word is the entire basis of communication — they act surprised that you thought the words meant what the words meant.

Here’s the thing. When you use a word incorrectly, one of two things happens. Either the person you’re talking to catches the misuse and internally downgrades everything else you say, because now they can’t be sure what any of your words mean. Or they don’t catch it, and they respond to what the word actually means rather than what you thought it meant — and then you blame them for misunderstanding when the misunderstanding was, in fact, your own.

If you don’t know what a word means, look it up. This is not an unreasonable ask. There is a dictionary in the phone in your pocket. Type the word. Read the definition. Ask yourself if that is what you actually meant. If yes, proceed. If no, find the right word. This is the entire skill. It takes fifteen seconds. It will change how the rest of your life goes.

Because here’s what happens when you get in the habit of using words correctly. People start trusting your language. They stop having to translate. They stop having to guess. They stop preparing themselves for the moment when you’ll pull the rug out and claim you meant something different. Your communication starts doing work rather than requiring endless clarification. And your relationships get dramatically easier, because everyone around you can finally take what you say at face value.

Now here’s where all three failures braid together.

If you don’t know what you actually want — Failure One — you cannot possibly communicate it clearly, which produces Failure Two. And if the vocabulary you’re reaching for doesn’t match what you’re actually trying to say — Failure Three — the words that come out of your mouth are further and further from the thing inside you that needed to be expressed. Then, when everyone around you responds to the words you actually said, you get to blame them for misunderstanding — which protects you from ever having to face that you didn’t know your own mind, didn’t build your own vocabulary, and didn’t do the work of matching the two together before speaking.

This is how entire relationships operate. One person is fuzzy about what they want. They say things they haven’t quite thought through, using words they don’t quite own. Then when reality doesn’t cooperate with the version they had in their head — which they never fully articulated, even to themselves — they blame the other person for not tracking the internal version they never actually shared out loud.

The other person is stuck. There is nothing to respond to. You can’t have a real conversation with somebody who reserves the right to reveal, retroactively, that whatever they said isn’t what they meant.

So here is what I would like people to do, if I could distribute a memo.

Before you say what you want, take five minutes and figure out what you actually want. Not the socially acceptable version of what you want. Not the version that sounds impressive. Not the version that’s easy to say. What you actually want. If the answer is I don’t know yet, that is a completely acceptable answer. Say that. I don’t know yet. I’m still figuring it out. That is real, honest communication and I will happily engage with it.

Then, before you use a word to say what you want, make sure you know what the word means. If you’re not sure, look it up. If the definition doesn’t match your intent, find a different word. This is not a small thing. Words are the tools you are using. If you’re using the wrong tool for the job, you are going to produce the wrong result. Take five seconds and pick the right tool.

What I will not engage with is the version where you claim to know exactly what you want, insist on it firmly using words you have not bothered to define, and then — when the thing you asked for shows up — pretend you never quite said what you actually said.

Say what you mean. Then, and this is the important part, mean it. Live with the words after they leave your mouth. Own the version of things you asked for when it arrives. If you’re not sure yet, say you’re not sure. If you change your mind, say you changed your mind — but say so clearly, and own that as a change, not as a claim that the original words meant something different.

Words are not just decoration. They are the way we tell each other who we are and what we want. If the words you’re using don’t match what’s inside you, the problem is not that the world is misunderstanding you. The problem is that the words are not doing their job, and the words are not doing their job because you have not done the work.

Do the work. Or, if you can’t do the work yet, at minimum, stop blaming everyone else for the fact that you haven’t.

One final thought, warmly.

None of this is impossible. It is a skill. Skills can be built. If you have been the person who says things you don’t mean, or the person who consistently insists on being misunderstood, or the person who has been using words you never actually stopped to define — you are not doomed. You are just early in the practice. The practice looks like this. Pause before you speak. Ask yourself what you actually mean. If you don’t know, say so. If you do know, pick a word that actually captures it, and check that word if you’re not sure. Then say the closest version to your meaning your vocabulary can build. And live with what you said.

You will get better at this the more you do it. The relationships around you will get better because you’re doing it. The people you love will feel safer, because they will not have to guess what version of you they’re dealing with today, or what your version of a particular word happens to be this week.

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Know what your words mean before you use them. That’s it. That’s the entire thing. It is not a personality trait. It is a practice. And the world would be a genuinely better place if more of us committed to it.