"I Am Only an Experimenter"

Communication is one of the most harrowing endeavors that we as a people face.  Despite our daily dependence on interpersonal interaction, there is yet to be one language or dialect that perfectly captures our personal ideas and beliefs. English lacks a certain "je ne sais quoi,"Arabic could stand to be a little more "gung ho" about things, and Russian "è un casino!"

Bad puns aside, we as a race of people continue to struggle to get our ideas across to a second party and have often chosen to deal with this all-encompassing language barrier in one of two ways:

1. Charging ahead in a blaze of confidence, 

assuming the other person's adequate understanding 

of our words. 

2. Slowly silencing ourselves out of fear of 

misunderstanding and 

accompanying judgement.

I have more often been on the latter end of the spectrum, completely lacking confidence in my ability to communicate and generally keeping out of the spotlight for fear of being mislabeled. I looked forward to the day when the Vulcan Mind Meld became a reality, when all my thoughts and emotions could be perfectly conveyed through a single touch, and until that day hid largely in the shadows of other people's conversation. 

But acting from the other end of the spectrum often leads to more blame than is due any communicator or interpreter.  These conversations are often riddled with "How can you *not* understand what I said? It was clear as day!" and a general inflexibility to alter one's word choice and continue to discuss a given topic. 

What we fail to realize in both situations is that communicating with someone is like looking through a frosted windowpane into their conscious.  We can never fully make out the idea within, nor can it clearly shine through the glass to the outside world.  Only the foggiest outline is perceived, and the more we shout at each other from either side of the window, the more fog fills the pane.  Communication is instead a constant process, a circling around until a vaguely similar understanding can be reached, and in that process there will always be mistakes, misunderstandings, and fumbled words no matter how hard we try.  We can never escape that. 

This realization is in large part why I have begun this blog - to put my words into practice and dissipate my fear of being misunderstood or judged for my opinions.  I am at the age where I feel I am still developing many of my beliefs, that what I think today will most likely be entirely altered by tomorrow.  So I have made excuses for myself, avoiding releasing these thoughts into the world until they are fully formed, a complete, perfect picture.  But I am learning that a person is never fully "complete," their opinions never finished developing (or something is wrong) and that once sent out, my words will inevitably look different to each new perspective that comes across them. 

So I hope that you enjoy gazing through the frosted windowpane of my conscious, and know that nothing I write here is intended to offend, insult, or pass judgment on anyone.  It is more the starting point of my journey, a personal place to sort out my own changing life and find the bravery to put pieces of myself out into the world, smudged and imperfect as they are wont to be. 

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter.  Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false.  I unsettle all things.  No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back."