Understanding

It isn’t that I don’t understand what you’re saying, I assure you.

I’ve listened, intently, as you’ve explained your points, addressed your concerns and itemized every wrong, real or imagined, that you feel has been done you, and through it all I haven’t said a word, allowing you to make your position crystal clear.

I understand what you’re saying.

It’s just that it would take a team of German scientists, a NASA supercomputer and the world’s most powerful electron microscope to determine how little I cared about your tiny, pointless problems.

So, that’s my position. Do we understand one another?

Communication

“Honey, we need to talk.”

“You’re quite right, we very much do. We need to talk. But more than that, we need to write, we need to sing, communication is basically the most fundamentally important activity we, as humans, undertake. It’s been said that our opposable thumbs are what separates us from the beasts, but they really aren’t. Plenty of primates have thumbs. What separates us from the beasts is our ability to communicate with one another, to conceptualize on an abstract level, to make complex plans and, working together, to make those plans a reality. You raise a point both subtle and prescient, my darling. We do need to talk. Everyone does. But how often to we stop to really reflect properly upon this underlying truth of the human condition. Thank you. Thank you, you truly have given me a lot to think about on this day…”

“No, you’re misunderstanding me. I suspect you’re deliberately misunderstanding me. What I meant is: I need to talk to you here, now. This isn’t working out between us, I want to break up with you.”

“Yeah, I know. I was just seeing how much of your time I could waste before you got around to saying it.”