Misunderstanding everyone (including myself) – The delicate art of constant confusion
Written on April 5th, 2025 by Zerotistic
I’m not sure anymore if I’m the one misunderstanding them, or if they’re misunderstanding me. All I know is that I’m surrounded by a restless swarm of assumptions—mine, theirs—and trying to see clearly in the midst of it feels like stumbling through fog with a flashlight that barely works. Lately, I’ve started to suspect that clarity might not even exist, that perhaps we’re all just spinning illusions in our heads while pretending they’re truths we can share.
A friend once commented, half in jest, that I’d probably die because I’m too “plugged into the computer.” I laughed it off at the time, but the remark has stayed with me. There’s a frightening symmetry in how we tie ourselves to devices that hold entire worlds of information and distraction, while neglecting the real, flesh-and-blood realm that demands our involvement. Maybe he was right in some metaphorical sense: I might not literally expire from too much screen time, but a part of me is already withering in the digital glow. And yet, I can’t bring myself to unplug. The screen doesn’t question my motives the way people do; it doesn’t flinch or twist my words. It just hums away in silent acceptance of my presence.
That’s the irony of human relationships: we say we want to connect, but the minute we do, we bruise each other. I’ve heard a claim that everything in the universe is just energy vibrating at different frequencies, that we’re all part of a grand shared consciousness. If that’s the case, we must be a scattered and disagreeable consciousness, each of us vibrating off-key. And if there’s some cosmic truth that says death doesn’t even exist, that “life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves,” it sure doesn’t feel like it. There’s too much tension, too much tangible pain. I find it hard to believe we’re all the same consciousness when everyone’s so quick to accuse and condemn.
Sometimes I wonder if simply existing is an act of unintentional violence. People say, “Try not to hurt others,” but half the time, we do it by just being ourselves. We occupy space someone else wants; we speak words that grate on someone’s ears; or we withdraw and hurt them by not being present enough. If you do nothing, you can still hurt someone because your inaction might be a form of neglect. It’s a vicious cycle, a labyrinth with no exit. Every path is lined with potential misunderstandings waiting to ensnare you. I’d like to believe there’s some solution—maybe a universal forgiveness for the ways we bruise each other—but I haven’t found it.
I suppose some people feel slighted simply because they assume I’m judging them. Maybe I am. Or maybe they have a persecution complex, as they say, and interpret everything I do (or don’t do) as a personal slight. But then again, perhaps they sense that I hold them in contempt because, in rare moments of honesty, I might actually feel superior. Or maybe it’s the other way around: I feel inferior to them, so I project a haughty air to hide it. We’re all so tangled in these contradictory emotions that I can’t tell who’s on top. That’s the nature of misunderstanding: you’re never sure whose lens is warping reality.
I read somewhere that “Even if we know each other, understanding each other is another matter.” The distinction hit me like a stray gust of wind on a hot day—unexpected and unsettling. We can share time, experiences, even secrets, but do we ever really know what throbs inside someone else’s mind? If I’m honest, I barely understand my own. Some days, I wake up energized and weirdly hopeful, believing maybe I’ve been too harsh about life and people. Then, by midday, a cloud of doubt descends, and every exchange with another person seems fraught with unspoken tension. By evening, I’m resigned again, retreating to the lonely comfort of a screen that never asks, “Why are you like this?” Is that living? Or is it just a slow dissolution of self-awareness?
I don’t even understand my body’s relationship to my mind, let alone how anyone else perceives me. Sometimes, it feels like my body actively sabotages me. I’ll plan a day of productivity and calm reflection, and then I find myself sinking into a fatigue so dense, it feels like gravity doubled its hold on me. Or maybe I’ll want to express warmth toward someone, but my posture stiffens, my voice becomes curt, and I end up conveying the exact opposite. I saw a quote: “I don’t understand why my body goes out of its way to harm my mind, when it can do it itself.” That resonates painfully well. It’s as if I’m constantly caught between a mind that demands understanding and a body that resists it. Throw other people into this mix—people with their own fractal complexities—and it’s no wonder everything devolves into crossed wires and lingering resentments.
Could it be that our biggest tragedy is believing we should be able to understand one another perfectly? We’re told from childhood that communication is key, that empathy solves all problems. But what if the best we can do is approximate understanding, to recognize the edges of one another’s loneliness without fully bridging the gap? People speak grandly about unconditional love or universal compassion, but I suspect those are illusions. We are too deeply entrenched in our personal vantage points. Maybe the true best-case scenario is that we learn to live with partial understandings, kindly acknowledging that we’ll never see completely eye-to-eye, yet choosing not to tear each other apart over it.
That idea used to give me hope, oddly enough. I once believed that partial understanding could be enough if everyone was gentle about the gaps. But life has shown me otherwise: a small miscommunication can erupt into a colossal misunderstanding that severs relationships. One slip of the tongue can feed into someone’s fear that they’re being looked down upon, or into my fear that I’m being cast aside. And so the illusions we harbor become self-fulfilling: we interpret a gesture or a word according to our anxieties, and we warp the moment until it becomes a living testament to our worst suspicions.
Yet, ironically, I cling to those illusions too. If I’m being gut-level honest, it’s easier for me to believe people misunderstand me than to consider I might be misunderstanding them. At least if they’re the problem, I don’t have to fix anything about myself. I can hide behind the notion that I’m special, that I see truths they don’t. But maybe I’m not special at all. Maybe I’m just as oblivious as the rest, but in a different flavor. That realization gnaws at me, so I push it away. If I can maintain the stance that it’s them who refuse to see me correctly, I can keep a scrap of dignity.
And then I think about that notion of everything being “energy condensed to a slow vibration,” that we’re all one consciousness. If that’s true, why is it so riddled with conflict? You’d think that, on some cosmic level, we’d share a single will, a universal sense of unity. But maybe that’s the punchline: we’re one consciousness fracturing itself into billions of minds so that we can experience the drama of misunderstanding. The ultimate cosmic tragicomedy. Maybe the point is to grasp that the friction we create is how this collective imagination propels itself forward. Or maybe it’s just random chaos, and we’re layering meaning onto it so it doesn’t drive us insane.
Days pass, and I remain unsure if I’m the persecutor or the victim, the misunderstood or the one who fails to understand. It’s possible to be both, I suspect. But the question is, does it matter? We live in a state of flux, where illusions are as real as anything tangible. If I hurt someone, I might not know until they react; if they hurt me, it might be unintentional, but the wound remains. We rub against each other like shards of glass, hoping we’ll somehow become polished instead of shattered. It’s a fragile hope, and I can’t say I share it wholeheartedly. But I still can’t shake the desire for genuine connection—some patchwork understanding that, while incomplete, might at least keep the edges from cutting too deep.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether I’m misunderstood or if I misunderstand them. Maybe the question is whether we can make peace with the fact that perfect understanding is an impossible goal. If we can do that, we might find a tentative harmony in the half-light of partial comprehension. Or we might simply retreat behind our flickering screens, content to escape the swirling chaos of real human interaction.
In the end, I can’t say which option is less painful. For now, I’ll keep existing, contradictions and all, sometimes plugged into the computer, sometimes stepping outside to observe the sky and wonder if that cosmic vibration is humming through me as well. And in those moments of introspection, I might realize that the dream of total understanding—like death—may not exist in the way I assume. It might be just another story we tell ourselves. And maybe that’s enough to keep going, if only for one more day, one more conversation, one more chance to see if misunderstandings can be softened into something that resembles fragile acceptance.