One of the most puzzling parts of learning a language is the intense feeling that if you can understand somebody, so can everybody else.
So if I’m with a friend that doesn’t speak English, and somebody speaks to me in Spanish and I understand them without any trouble, it feels like the person with me should also be able to understand it.
You start to rationalize this belief, too. You think things like, “well, the vocab this person used was pretty basic so anyone who took one Spanish class would understand” or “those are common words so I’ll bet the understand”.
When you think about it, you realize it’s obviously not true. There’s no way somebody without any Spanish training is understanding as well as me, someone who has spent thousands of hours with the language.
And yet it requires conscious effort to internalize the fact that they cannot understand as well as you can. Or probably at all.
And it sort of just feels like a total failure of empathy.
If I used empathy more in this situation, I should be able to understand, on all levels, that this person cannot understand even though I can.
The experiences, abilities, and understanding of every other person on the planet are completely different than my own, and I think it’s easy to lose track of that.
But it makes me think: in similar situations, but where you can more reasonably rationalize your sentiment, wouldn’t you genuinely believe that the other person should have an experience much more similar to your own?
I find that in my work, I’m often impatient with clients who struggle to understand something related to their website that to me, is clear as day.
It’s easy for me to rationalize. “This doesn’t require any special skills,” or “there aren’t very many steps and it isn’t complicated”.
But at the same time, it’s something that’s easy to me because I’ve spent a long time doing it.
I think there are situations like this almost everywhere, and I’m confident that I’m not the only one experiencing this.
I can certainly think of countless times where a family member or friend was really impatient with me in some task where they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing it as well as them. Despite, often, it being a task that I was brand new to or had some other obvious disadvantage.
I think we develop ideas of the world around us and as we interact with it, we come to an understanding about how things are.
It’s easy to believe that this understanding is universal and that it applies to everyone. But it’s not. How we perceive the world and understand it may, indeed, be relevant to our own lives and selves, but it may be the complete opposite for someone else.
I think this comes up all the time when you look at groups that are often discriminated against.
If you aren’t in one of those groups, it’s so easy to dismiss their grievances and assume that they aren’t a big deal. Even if you acknowledge some of the specific forms of discrimination they face, you still cannot possibly understand what it feels like to face it day after day.
You can try, but you’ll never truly understand.
I think there are instances of this type of thing everywhere, and I know that I do it all the time.
I find myself unintentionally judging others for their choices and do not spend enough time reflecting on that and using empathy to understand that their values, experiences, and understand of the world vary wildly from my own.
They probably judge most of my choices.
The solution, I think, is to develop more empathy and really put it to work. Hopefully I can keep that in mind and do it much more going forward.