Explaining Things
May. 9th, 2020 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorThere's a lot of things I wish I was better at, especially explaining things.
Sometimes I think I've done the best I can in that regard and I can't really fault myself if my message doesn't get across. There's a lot of other things besides my limitations that can prevent that from happening: people not being able to understand or not wanting to understand something is not always a situation that can be remedied by the person trying to be understood. Sometimes it's not a situation that can realistically be remedied by the person who doesn't understand what's being said, either. And here I'm not even talking about being agreed with but, like, just the other party actually even understanding what I'm saying. There are times where it's clear to me that the other person doesn't understand what I am trying to say, so any thoughts of working towards agreement are besides the point anyway, since even if the person were inclined to agree, they wouldn't understand what they were agreeing to.
But of course, I know that I sometimes fail greatly in explaining things in ways I could presumably improve upon. Perhaps I don't give enough examples, or I focus too much on examples, or I give the wrong examples. I may unknowingly leave out important aspects of what I wish to explain. I may be too disorganized in my explanation. I may digress too much on some unimportant topic. I may become mentally or emotionally exhausted with trying to explain what I want to say and simply stop abruptly when the effort becomes too much for me, rather than completing my thoughts on a topic. My attention may wander to something else. These are all things I must consider when trying to communicate.
Still, sometimes I wish I could just send my entire collected thoughts on something straight from my brain to someone else's. They may still not see things my way, or even understand what I'm going on about, but at least I wouldn't have to translate and distill everything into words.
Sometimes I think I've done the best I can in that regard and I can't really fault myself if my message doesn't get across. There's a lot of other things besides my limitations that can prevent that from happening: people not being able to understand or not wanting to understand something is not always a situation that can be remedied by the person trying to be understood. Sometimes it's not a situation that can realistically be remedied by the person who doesn't understand what's being said, either. And here I'm not even talking about being agreed with but, like, just the other party actually even understanding what I'm saying. There are times where it's clear to me that the other person doesn't understand what I am trying to say, so any thoughts of working towards agreement are besides the point anyway, since even if the person were inclined to agree, they wouldn't understand what they were agreeing to.
But of course, I know that I sometimes fail greatly in explaining things in ways I could presumably improve upon. Perhaps I don't give enough examples, or I focus too much on examples, or I give the wrong examples. I may unknowingly leave out important aspects of what I wish to explain. I may be too disorganized in my explanation. I may digress too much on some unimportant topic. I may become mentally or emotionally exhausted with trying to explain what I want to say and simply stop abruptly when the effort becomes too much for me, rather than completing my thoughts on a topic. My attention may wander to something else. These are all things I must consider when trying to communicate.
Still, sometimes I wish I could just send my entire collected thoughts on something straight from my brain to someone else's. They may still not see things my way, or even understand what I'm going on about, but at least I wouldn't have to translate and distill everything into words.