Awkward Turtle

My catchphrase for the month is awkward turtle. I also think that awkward turtles are possibly the cutest animals in the world; at least, as cute as you can get from a hand gesture formed from two hands.

But why awkward turtle?

Introspection in the past few months has led me to believe that awkward turtles breed because interpersonal communication is so rife with problems, missteps, and mishaps, allowing these fascinating creatures chances to proliferate. This stems from our natural inclination to maintain what we know is safe combined with the inherent problems in communication; how can we accurately tell someone not just exactly how we feel to ourselves, but in a form that they would understand? The best we can probably do is some form of approximation; they might be able to 'partially' understand what we are thinking, what we are seeing but they would never be able to view the world directly from our eyes. Our individual worlds are limiting solely by our perception and awkward turtles are born from the junction between how we see things, and how someone else perceives things. Neither side is right nor wrong, but they are clearly right or wrong to one another.

Standardized language is the best way to solve this problem; rather, barring some telepathic technology that gets made within the next century or so, or we act like Tolkien's ents and spend years explaining every single thought (which, though not terribly efficient, might not be such a bad idea). However, there are enough problems with interpretation that we still have a terribly large population of awkward turtles; particularly in anything dealing with 'feelings,' and 'emotions,' irrational constructs that innately do not have any standard in order to be measured by.

Romance, particularly, is pretty icky. Expectations, wants, things that tie into our core behaviors and our core wants in the world are probably the most easily misunderstood; particularly when we're faced with something, someone, or some object that we personally desire. How can someone else understand particularly how badly we want something, unless they've had a similar 'comparable' experience (and even then, not really)? Tis a quandary that has led to many an awkward turtle's birth and sure to birth many more.

I'm a pretty big fan of the show 'Lie to Me' which, ironically, has a character that solves this problem through 'radical honesty,' where he states whatever he was thinking at the time directly and without premeditation. While not having the advantage of an 'easing' into other people's perceptions, it does at least prevent people from misunderstanding the reason behind premeditation (mainly because there is no premeditation). That alone perhaps contributes to some depth of clarity that whatever our current discourse on communication is, fails to maintain.

Who knows.

Today is cloudy and therefore, I'm lazy. Also, possibly late for class.

Cheers.