A Powerful Misunderstanding
And my word of the year for 2024
You will misunderstand this post - I promise.
Pause. What did you make that opening sentence mean? What was your semantic reaction? Did it excite and empower you, or are you curious, or did you disagree, or did you interpret it as a slight against your intelligence? Is it possible you misunderstood it?
Even though the opening sentence is only 7 words, it is rife with the possibility of misunderstanding. If you looked up each word in the dictionary you would notice that there are multiple meanings for each word. How do you know which one I meant? I don’t even know which one I meant.
Perhaps it isn’t possible to completely understand anyone or anything. In other words, we are always misunderstanding everything and everyone. I’m not saying that is the truth - it is simply my current misunderstanding.
We’ve all had the experience of being in a conversation where we say something, and the other person says “oh, so you mean X” - and it is the opposite of what we meant. Or we have witnessed two people in an argument and it is so clear they are misunderstanding each other. But I’m not saying that misunderstanding happens sometimes. I’m saying that it always happens. Including right now as you are reading this.
If understanding isn’t possible - which I know can be hard to hear and accept at first, but maybe that is because you are misunderstanding it - then the only game in town is misunderstanding. And if the only option is misunderstanding, it makes no sense to ask if you are misunderstanding correctly, or if you have the right misunderstanding, or even the “best” misunderstanding.
Instead what I notice is that there are simply more or less useful ways of misunderstanding. There are empowering and disempowering ways of misunderstanding. There are workable and unworkable ways of misunderstanding.
It makes no sense to me to stay with a disempowering, unworkable, useless misunderstanding. If they are all misunderstandings, then what works is to switch to an empowering, workable, useful misunderstanding.
If you think I’m saying that meaning doesn’t matter and it is ok to simply make up whatever you want and we should pretend that everything is awesome - you have misunderstood me.
So what am I saying? I don’t really know, because I misunderstand this too. But it occurs for me that if I am always misunderstanding everyone and everything, then I have a lot of freedom and power to make my life and all of my relationships work - without changing anyone or anything except my misunderstandings.
In my life, some of the most powerful breakthroughs have come from realizing I was misunderstanding something or someone. There is a quote I love that summarizes this for me:
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” ~ Mark Twain
What I love about that quote is that Mark Twain never said or wrote it. It turns out the quote itself “just ain’t so” - it is a misunderstanding. It sounds like something Mark Twain would write, but it was misattributed to him. The actual quote is:
"I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so." ~ Josh Billings
In the world of statistics there is saying:
"All models are wrong, but some are useful" ~ George Box
And a great mathematician once said:
"truth ... is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations" ~ John von Neumann
Of course, I am misunderstanding all of these quotes, but I’m doing it in an extremely empowering and workable way for me.
But how do I know what is empowering and workable? It depends on what I am up to in the world - what I am creating. Pick any relationship or project in your life and ask “what do I want to create here?” - that is what you are up to. Then take any upsets or frustrations or breakdowns and ask “is this misunderstanding moving me forward towards what I want to create?”. If the answer is no, it is a disempowering misunderstanding. And since it is a misunderstanding, you are free to play with the words and create an empowering misunderstanding.
I noticed I often have disempowering misunderstandings with my wife. When they used to occur for me as “understandings”, I would act in a righteous and unworkable manner - making her wrong in my head, or out loud. Now they still happen, but they occur as misunderstandings. And it makes no sense to me to take a righteous action based on a misunderstanding.
I get that this is counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, counter-common-sense, and rife with the possibility of misunderstanding. I love that about it. I have a very empowering misunderstanding of it. I’ve actually chosen misunderstanding as my word of the year for 2024.
I also get that you are misunderstanding this. The only question is are you misunderstanding it in an empowering and useful way? And if not, are you willing to play with words until you do?
I’d love for you to share your misunderstanding and any questions in the comments.
“What is simple is always wrong. What is not is unusable.” ~ Paul Valéry
Misunderstandings are powerful. A different POV can find a different solution, sometimes a better solution. Big fan of the 'Medici Effect' that says breakthrough innovation occurs when we merge ideas from separate domains. Most people would say "You misunderstand, you can't apply Psychology, Biology, etc. into domain Economics, Technology, Philosophy", and yet that 'misunderstanding' is where the most innovation happens.
Or, of course, maybe I've had a misunderstanding on where you were hoping I'd go with this comment and post. Yet I still benefitted. I still learned something/had an insightful idea. What a powerful misunderstanding :)
I like how you include “knowing what you’re up to” in the expanded system here. It is the access to creative energy and flow I used to lose whenever I declined to choose what I was up to. I say right on and write on!