Misunderstanding Combines Passion and Language

Misunderstanding is a product of passion and language either between persons of different countries and cultures, or between two people of the same language and race, in the same room at the same time. Misunderstandings occur any time there is a conversation, particularly a passionate conversation.

Misunderstandings during a passionate conversation may generate a result that is half fact-half fiction, deviating from the true conversation, yet powerful and inflammatory in memory. Anger is a passionate response to what a person believes they have heard, and that anger may be baseless, the reason for which would float away with the breeze of reason.

As with the child’s game called ‘Telephone’, in which children pass a sentence down the line, any telling of an event or conversation is influenced by the passions, convictions and language of the teller, not necessarily those of the original speaker. And true to the age old game, when a conversation reaches the next stage – the retelling – truth has already evaporated into thin air, leaving only a skeleton - the listener’s perception of the truth.

A passionate person who misunderstands a message can quickly spread their interpretation, using passion or anger as its vehicle. Unconscious re-write under passion can impact at work by undeservedly damaging a co-worker's reputation, cause uncomfortable friction within an organization, or dangerously goad one tribe of people to vilify another.

Every one of us has passion – a passion for a person, a country, or a cause that is dear to our heart. Passion is the foundation of our rights – human rights, personal rights, religious rights. But passion has no language but the language of excitement, and passion can fog our ability to clearly comprehend and communicate in any tongue. Through one’s own passion for a particular subject, we begin to hear what we expect to hear, and confirm what we expects to confirm, whether true or not. And because passion assigns pre-conceived values, if the speaker is of another persuasion, language, or culture, personal passion often assigns pre-judgments to their character and motive.

Yet truth, not passion and emotion, is the real foundation upon which we live. Distortion of the truth may make for passionate and sensational telling – even excite a crowd - but ultimately truth is the sole foundation upon which to build our world. Yet truth can be dull, and the temptation to rewrite truth to generate excitement by infusing one’s own passionate perspective can be irresistible.

In relationship-building, particularly cross-cultural relationships, passionate response must be detected when first appears in the 'telephone line' of communication. That is the point at which passion can be tempered, cooled, and the door opened to reason. With reason comes open-mindedness, and open-mindedness brings harmony to the office, organization, country, or family.