Most people agree that if you want to communicate with someone else, you have to meet him halfway. It’s all about give and take, and we have to be willing to do both. But what many people have never stopped to consider is that the halfway point changes, depending on who you are talking to. Also, over time, the halfway point may shift.
The Dallas Metropolitan area — Source: Wikipedia
I used to have a friend who lived near Ft. Worth. We were both living in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. I was living in Grand Prairie, which was more on the Dallas side, and she was living in a suburb of Ft. Worth. Driving time between us was close to an hour. My friend was very meticulous about the concept of give and take. She kept records of which of us had driven to the other’s house last. And she made sure that the next time around, the other person was the one to make the drive. We used to meet about once a week, and this was a good system, so long as I lived in the Metroplex. It was almost like meeting at the halfway point between us, in that each of us traveled the same distance to meet the other. It was fair. It was equal.
And then one day I moved to Houston. Now it took me five hours to drive to Grand Prairie, where there was still a house I could stay in. I could make the five hour drive to Grand Prairie for a weekend visit, and I hoped she could come from her house to meet me there. My friend, however, insisted that every second visit, I had to drive all the way to Ft. Worth from Grand Prairie to see her, even though I had just driven five hours to get to Grand Prairie. She did not understand that the halfway point had shifted. In time, I found this so exhausting that even if a visit to the Metroplex could be managed, I did not bother to call up my friend.
Now the same issue applies between any two people when they are trying to communicate. It can be exhausting to always have to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, when they never try to understand your point of view. Yes, everybody is capable of perspective shifting, but the amount of shift depends on how different the other person is from you. If you have a friend that is very different, then each should shoulder at least half the difference, or the friendship will be unsustainable.
In communicating with another person, you have to choose the medium of communication. For instance, you might decide on a language that both of you speak. One of you may be a native speaker of that language and the other may be a non-native. If someone is speaking to you in your language, while using a language that is not his own, you must understand that he has already come more than halfway to meet you, and any gaps in communication due to imperfect use of your language are yours to bridge.
By the same token, if someone who is not good at non-verbal communication is bending over backwards to try to understand someone whose primary mode of communication is non-verbal, the non-verbal communicator needs to make more of an effort to bridge the remaining gap, because the verbal communicator has already made a big effort.
Some people rely very heavily on their cultural background to interpret everything that is said to them. They don’t realize that someone else from a different background may interpret things differently. Take hair color, for instance. Hair color is not an absolute, because the concept of color is culturally mediated.
Where I come from, my hair would be considered dark brown, but not black. Black hair, according to Israeli understanding, should have blue highlights. If the highlights are reddish, then the hair, even though quite dark, is considered dark brown, not black. But according to American standards, my hair is black. I make allowances for these differences by taking into account the background of the person I am speaking to. If an American describes someone as having black hair, I know it means a different range of darkness than if someone from Israel described the same person.
Many people, however, are not aware of these slight cultural variations in the color concept. To them color is an absolute. This became really evident to me when I went to teach in Taiwan, and there were other westerners in the English department where I taught.
One day, I was scheduled to give a talk about “Cycles in Language”. The students in my department prepared a poster to announce the talk. As part of the poster, they drew a representation of me holding a microphone and giving the talk.
I liked the picture, and I thought it was a fairly accurate caricature, except that possibly they had slimmed me down a little. But one of my colleagues turned to me and said: “Did you see what they did with your hair? They are sure all westerners have red hair, so they gave you red hair, when actually it’s pitch black.”
I looked at him. He was a blond American. I considered setting him straight about how actually my hair is not black by Israeli standards. And the picture was not of a redhead, but a brunette. But then I thought better of it. I just nodded. “Yeah.”
How we perceive color depends on where we come from. But how we perceive other people’s perception of color depends on how practiced we are at perspective shifting. People who don’t understand that color is culturally relative cannot see what you see. They can only ever see what they see.
The first step toward placing yourself in another person’s shoes is understanding that not all other people are the same as the other people you have met before. Some are closer to you, because they come from a similar place, and so the halfway point is also closer. Some are standing much further away, and so to meet them halfway, you have to go further yourself.
Most people are happy to meet others halfway. The problem is recognizing where halfway is. Sometimes that requires a little trial and error, as we get to know each other.
There is, however, one type of person who will never meet you halfway: the person who thinks there is “normal” and “not-normal”, and that if your perspective is different from his, it is just wrong, and that’s all there is to it. That sort of person is doomed to be a permanent stranger, because he thinks that meeting another person half way is only half the distance between one normal person to another. In other words, half of zero.
But for everybody else out there, there is always hope, as we gradually adjust our perspective, looking for the magical halfway point that will allow us to get together and share thoughts.
Vacuum County is all about perspective shifting. Order here
Great topic. I like how you used hair color as an example. I’m Greek and I’ve had that hair conversation with each of my children. When they get to a certain age, they start to get peeved that classmates say their hair is black when it’s not. If it were, there would be that blue you’re talking about, but there’s red so it’s brown. My kids get frustrated with this as I did when I was growing up. In fact I just had this conversation two days ago with my youngest. Great to hear it really explained in your article.
Michelle, it is very validating that you have come across this issue, too! I am going to share your comment with my daughter and my mother.
I always thought your hair was darkish brown. Of course my hair is also dark brown, and not absolutely black. I do remember in one class when everyone had blond and red hair they thought my hair was black. It is dark, but not that dark. To people who have never seen darker hair upclose, or only rarely, I guess that is why some think this. There are shades of dark hair. Interesting topic to discuss and think about.
Thanks, Julia. I thought the same about your hair.
I think that your explanation of how lighter-haired people came to think that all dark hair is black is correct, only that I would add that over time, in a population geared toward lighter-haired people, these perceptions became ingrained, ossified and part of the linguistic heritage of the culture. After a while, it isn’t simply the perception of one or two individuals. It becomes part of the definition of “black hair” . And because people’s perceptions are embedded in language, they stop seeing the brown hair and actually see only black.
Good points, Aya. I noticed this phenomenon when I still go up to the mountains, and there are communities where people look very western European. I even experienced it at a birthday party when some little girl asked why my dad and I were so dark. My sisters look more like their mom, and I sometimes think part of the reason I was treated differently in school is yes I did not look exactly like the norm. I find things are different now living in the city though with more diverse populations. There are many different types of people with a range of hair colors, but what I find perplexing is women who want to go blond, or always streak their hair blond. There is definitely a veneration of lighter hair, even among people who actually have darker hair as the norm.
Yes, there is definitely a bias toward blond in the current culture worldwide. Even in Taiwan, some people dye their hair.
I know it was not always like this, though. In Ferdowsi’s “ShahNameh”, which is a poem about the Persian kings, Zal is born with blond hair, and his parents expose him to the elements as a baby, thinking it some kind of deformity.