It’s funny how her story doesn’t match your story. Funny how two people in the exact same situation—your scientific control—can’t retell the same thing.
“‘Then the king said it was good.’ Hey Monica—try emphasizing each word individually. The sentence is completely different each time! Isn’t that cool?” It was.
I’m brooding in my corner, corrected on a minor mistake. They made a bigger deal of that than it needed to be. Let it go, Monica. You’re here to learn.
Watch your tone, WATCH YOUR TONE—repeating madly in my head. Respond well: it matters.
The hallmark of adulthood seems to be reading between the lines. Reading a paragraph a text and feeling out the speakers’ point. They won’t say it—that would be rude (it’s even worse if they’re direct.)
If you can find the message, a point for you. If you can respond independent of the delivery, multiple points awarded. If you can send back your own message, wrapped in words that surround and cradle it: points unsaid and earned.
I think that’s why we love talking to people—it pulls us away from the mishmash in our heads, sends an adrenaline rush when all of this judging and evaluating needs to happen all at once. Rushes of victory when our listener responds; when we say something clever. It’s hard, though, too—lots of people, with strong personalities.
I think that’s why we love schoolwork, because it depends on no one but yourself. Because it’s your mishmash, with no inputs. Just outputs, scrupulously chosen, exactly as you like them and with satisfaction stamped across your skull. A task given, a task accomplished. But schoolwork ends eventually.
In all the hard work, all the conflicts, being wrong, there is frustration, fear, and happiness. Because growing is hard, being wrong is hard, listening, interpreting, and responding is hard, but you’re better at the end than what you were. Better for every kind critique than what you were.
If my default setting weren’t arrogance, I’d rejoice in being corrected, in learning that what I thought about the world has changed in some small way. But I share the world’s desire to be correct in my every aspect. I can’t rejoice, at least immediately. But I can walk along the bridge at night, talk a bit, let off steam. I can think, and absorb.
I can revise expectations, appreciate what’s been said. Love the people who care enough to correct me.
I can change my tone, change my view, place the emphasis on a different word. Find the similarities between my controls, not the differences.
We’re wrong, all the time. I don’t know why I resist it. I’m here to learn, to read between the lines.
I’m here to rejoice.
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I always forget how much work becoming better is :). It’s always worth it, though. Here’s a picture from this Saturday, when we had some new members join us!
Dimsum with Paige, Penny, Iulia, me, Olivia, Yiing, and Alice